"A moment. Madam saw her way to the revenge of jealousy. She took the place of the bride. And she was married as Miss Molly; she signed the name of Molly Miller; the licence was in that name. The clerk who was present has, I am sure, already carried the news all over the place. We have the evidence, therefore, of the bridegroom, the parson, the clerk, the licence, the registers. Who is to prove that the real Molly was at home all the time? Captain Crowle, perhaps, though I doubt. The girl herself--but who will believe her? My lord, you have married Miss Molly, and not the Lady Anastasia."
"Sir. You forget that I am the bride," Lady Anastasia interposed, quickly.
Mr. Purdon bowed and smiled, rubbing his hands softly. "With submission, madam. I do not advise that his lordship should carry her off, nor that he should claim her _ad mensam et torum_, as we scholars say. His principles would not, I am sure, allow that he should carry off an unmarried woman. Not at all. He will leave her with her friends. Indeed, he would prefer to do so. I suggest only that we should proclaim the marriage and lay hands upon the fortune."
"She is to be the countess. And what am I to be?"
"His lordship's best friend. You will rescue him in his deepest need; you will restore him to affluence; it will be a service, madam, of the purest and most disinterested affection, instead of an ugly and ruinous revenge. Heavens! Can you hesitate?"
Thus did he gloss over the villainy so that the poor woman almost believed that she was entering upon a course of virtuous benevolence, and, as the man said, a service of love.
"But the girl--Molly. She will not consent to be a countess in name."
"She and her friends will protest; but they will be overborne; meantime, she has the virtue and the pride of her station. Will she even consent, do you think, to call herself a countess when she is not married? Why, we actually make a ladder for ourselves to climb thereby, out of her virtue."
He looked at the lady no longer stealthily, but full in the face, with a smile, as if he was proposing a scheme of the noblest kind; as if there was nothing to be hidden, and there were no perjuries to be advanced.
Lord Fylingdale, too, turned to her with a face of inquiry and doubt.