it is."

"I do not believe that what he has told me is true. Some of it cannot, I
think, be true. Much of it is not so,--unless I am more deceived in you
than I ever was in any man. At any rate sit down." Then the schoolmaster
did sit down. "He has made you out to be a perjured, wilful, cruel
bigamist."

"I have not been such," said Peacocke, rising from his chair.

"One who has been willing to sacrifice a woman to his passion."

"No; no."

"Who deceived her by false witnesses."

"Never."

"And who has now refused to allow her to see her own husband's brother,
lest she should learn the truth."

"She is there,--at any rate for you to see."

"Therefore the man is a liar. A long story has to be told, as to which at
present I can only guess what may be the nature. I presume the story will
be the same as that you would have told had the man never come here."

"Exactly the same, Dr. Wortle."

"Therefore you will own that I am right in asking you to sit down. The
story may be very long,--that is, if you mean to tell it."

"I do,--and did. I was wrong from the first in supposing that the nature
of my marriage need be of no concern to others, but to herself and to me."

"Yes,--Mr. Peacocke; yes. We are, all of us, joined together too closely
to admit of isolation such as that." There was something in this which
grated against the schoolmaster's pride, though nothing had been said as
to which he did not know that much harder things must meet his ears before
the matter could be brought to an end between him and the Doctor. The
"Mister" had been prefixed to his name, which had been omitted for the
last three or four months in the friendly intercourse which had taken
place between them; and then, though it had been done in the form of
agreeing with what he himself had said, the Doctor had made his first
complaint by declaring that no man had a right to regard his own moral
life as isolated from the lives of others around him. It was as much as
to declare at once that he had been wrong in bringing this woman to
Bowick, and calling her Mrs. Peacocke. He had said as much himself, but
that did not make the censure lighter when it came to him from the mouth
of the Doctor. "But come," said the Doctor, getting up from his seat at
the table, and throwing himself into an easy-chair, so as to mitigate the
austerity of the position; "let us hear the true story. So big a liar as
that American gentleman probably n