you have profited by it, Mark.'

'He came back, after the old man died, to club life in London, and
seldom has been near the old place; indeed, it has been let till
recently, and he wants to let it again, but it is altogether too
dilapidated for that without repairs. So he came down to see about it,
and was taken ill there. But to return to what my father told me. He
was shocked to hear of the certificate, for he had implicitly believed
his brother's denial of the marriage, and he said Miss Headworth was so
childish and simple that she might easily have been taken in by a sham
ceremony. He said that he now saw he had done very wrong in letting
his mother-in-law take all the letters about "that unhappy business"
off his hands without looking at them, but he was much engrossed by my
mother's illness, and, as he said, it never occurred to him as a duty
to trace out what became of the poor thing, and see that she was
provided for safely. You know Mrs. Egremont says laissez faire is our
family failing, and that our first thought is how _not_ to do it.'

'Yes, utter repudiation of such cases was the line taken by the last
generation; and I am afraid my mother would be very severe.'

'Another thing that actuated my father was the fear of getting his
brother into trouble with General Egremont, as he himself would have
been the one to profit by it. So I do not wonder so much at his
letting the whole drop without inquiry, and never even looking at the
letters, which there certainly were. I could not get him to begin upon
it with my uncle, but Mrs. Egremont was strongly on my side in thinking
that such a thing ought to be looked into, and as I had found the paper
it would be best that I should speak. Besides that there was no
enduring that Gregorio should be pretending to hold us in terror by
such hints.'

'Well, and has there been a wife and family in a cottage all this time?'

'Aunt Margaret, he has never seen or heard of her since he left her at
Dieppe! Would you believe it, he thinks himself a victim? He never
meant more than to amuse himself with the pretty little governess; and
he took on board a Mr. and Mrs. Houghton to do propriety, shady sort of
people I imagine, but that she did not know.'

'I have heard of them,' said Lady Kirkaldy, significantly.

'She must have been a kind friend to the poor girl,' said Mark. 'On
some report that Lady de Lyonnais was coming down on her, wrathful and
terrible, the poo