man and wife--none of the few people who were acquainted with them
ever supposed them to be anything else. The right person to claim the
property (if the truth had been known) was a distant relation, who had
no idea of ever getting it, and who was away at sea when his father
died. He had no difficulty so far--he took possession, as a matter of
course. But he could not borrow money on the property as a matter of
course. There were two things wanted of him before he could do this.
One was a certificate of his birth, and the other was a certificate of
his parents' marriage. The certificate of his birth was easily got--he
was born abroad, and the certificate was there in due form. The other
matter was a difficulty, and that difficulty brought him to Old
Welmingham.

But for one consideration he might have gone to Knowlesbury instead.

His mother had been living there just before she met with his
father--living under her maiden name, the truth being that she was
really a married woman, married in Ireland, where her husband had
ill-used her, and had afterwards gone off with some other person. I
give you this fact on good authority--Sir Felix mentioned it to his son
as the reason why he had not married. You may wonder why the son,
knowing that his parents had met each other at Knowlesbury, did not
play his first tricks with the register of that church, where it might
have been fairly presumed his father and mother were married. The
reason was that the clergyman who did duty at Knowlesbury church, in
the year eighteen hundred and three (when, according to his birth
certificate, his father and mother OUGHT to have been married), was
alive still when he took possession of the property in the New Year of
eighteen hundred and twenty-seven. This awkward circumstance forced
him to extend his inquiries to our neighbourhood. There no such danger
existed, the former clergyman at our church having been dead for some
years.

Old Welmingham suited his purpose as well as Knowlesbury. His father
had removed his mother from Knowlesbury, and had lived with her at a
cottage on the river, a little distance from our village. People who
had known his solitary ways when he was single did not wonder at his
solitary ways when he was supposed to be married. If he had not been a
hideous creature to look at, his retired life with the lady might have
raised suspicions; but, as things were, his hiding his ugliness and his
deformity in the str