n't care how
much money he spends or how much he burns his hands. I don't suppose
his purse is so very long but that he may come to the bottom of it."
This was nearly all that passed between Mr. Stokes and the Marquis. Mr.
Stokes then went back to town and gave Mr. Battle to understand that
nothing was to be done on their side.

The Dean was very anxious that the confidential clerk should be
dispatched, and at one time almost thought that he would go himself.
"Better not, Mr. Dean. Everybody would know," said Mr. Battle.

"And I should intend everybody to know," said the Dean. "Do you suppose
that I am doing anything that I'm ashamed of."

"But being a dignitary----" began Mr. Battle.

"What has that to do with it? A dignitary, as you call it, is not to
see his child robbed of her rights. I only want to find the truth, and
I should never take shame to myself in looking for that by honest
means." But Mr. Battle prevailed, persuading the Dean that the
confidential clerk, even though he confined himself to honest means,
would reach his point more certainly than a Dean of the Church of
England.

But still there was delay. Mr. Stokes did not take his journey down to
Brotherton quite as quickly as he perhaps might have done, and then
there was a prolonged correspondence carried on through an English
lawyer settled at Leghorn. But at last the man was sent. "I think we
know this," said Mr. Battle to the Dean on the day before the man
started, "there were certainly two marriages. One of them took place as
much as five years ago, and the other after his lordship had written to
his brother."

"Then the first marriage must have been nothing," said the Dean.

"It does not follow. It may have been a legal marriage, although the
parties chose to confirm it by a second ceremony."

"But when did the man Luigi die?"

"And where and how? That is what we have got to find out. I shouldn't
wonder if we found that he had been for years a lunatic."

Almost all this the Dean communicated to Lord George, being determined
that his son-in-law should be seen to act in co-operation with him.
They met occasionally in Mr. Battle's chambers, and sometimes by
appointment in Munster Court. "It is essentially necessary that you
should know what is being done," said the Dean to his son-in-law. Lord
George fretted and fumed, and expressed an opinion that as the matter
had been put into a lawyer's hands it had better be left there. But the
Dean