exual frailty, I say the English law which refuses
Divorce on that ground alone is right, and the Scotch law which grants
it is wrong. Religion, which rightly condemns the sin, pardons it on the
condition of true penitence. Why is a wife not to pardon it for the
same reason? Why are the lives of a father, a mother, and a child to be
wrecked, when those lives may be saved by the exercise of the first of
Christian virtues--forgiveness of injuries? In such a case as this I
regret that Divorce exists; and I rejoice when husband and wife and
child are one flesh again, re-united by the law of Nature, which is the
law of God."

I might have disputed with him; but I thought he was right. I also
wanted to make sure of the facts. "Am I really to understand," I asked,
"that Mr. Herbert Linley is to be this lady's husband for the second
time?"

"If there is no lawful objection to it," Randal said--"decidedly Yes."

My good wife, in all your experience you never saw your husband stare
as he stared at that moment. Here was a lady divorced by her own lawful
desire and at her own personal expense, thinking better of it after no
very long interval, and proposing to marry the man again. Was there ever
anything so grossly improbable? Where is the novelist who would be bold
enough to invent such an incident as this?

Never mind the novelist. How did it end?

Of course it could only end in one way, so far as I was concerned. The
case being without precedent in my experience, I dropped my professional
character at the outset. Speaking next as a friend, I had only to say
to Mrs. Norman: "The Law has declared you and Mr. Herbert Linley to be
single people. Do what other single people do. Buy a license, and give
notice at a church--and by all means send wedding cards to the judge who
divorced you."

Said; and, in another fortnight, done. Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Linley were
married again this morning; and Randal and I were the only witnesses
present at the ceremony, which was strictly private.

2.--The Lawyer's Defense.

I wonder whether the foregoing pages of my writing-paper have been torn
to pieces and thrown into the waste-paper basket? You wouldn't litter
the carpet. No. I may be torn in pieces, but I do you justice for all
that.

What are the objections to the divorced husband and wife becoming
husband and wife again? Mrs. Presty has stated them in the following
order. Am I wrong in assuming that, on this occasion at least,