"Ye'll have to wait," he said dryly. "I've no power to marry ye at all as the State understands the term. Ye'll get a special licence, and then come to me. 'Tis wise advice, my dear, that ye should go back to your friends in London until things can be put straight. Make up your mind to that. I'm no better off in securing you to legal marriage than any man ye may stop in the street. Mr. Lassett knows that well, and he'll have told ye as much."
Harry nodded his head in unison with the words as though this was just the counsel he had expected. Maryska, thinking that she knew priests well, clasped her precious bag firmly in both her little hands and looked the enemy squarely in the face.
"We will pay you money," she said with much dignity. "I have ten pounds here, and you shall have it. What you say does not matter to us at all. We are not frightened of the judges, Harry and I. If you marry us to-day, we shall go away to Italy, and the gendarmes will not find us. He has said that I must go back to Hampstead, but I will never do so. I will kill myself if you do not marry us. Harry knows that it is true, and that is why we have come here. Perhaps, if you married us, he has some money and will add it to mine. There are other priests, but we do not wish to go to them. Oh, sir, will you not do it for those who love? Will you not make us happy? It is nothing to me this ceremony, but to him it is so much. And I have the money here; I will show it to you if you wish."
She began to fumble with the bag while the good father and Harry regarded her with an amazement beyond all words. Never had Maurice Healy heard such an address or seen so pretty a bargainer in that little room. And the horror of it all--her ignorance, her childish faith, her frank confession! He was as clay in her hands already--and she, a heathen.
"But, my dear young lady, 'tis far from understanding ye are," he gasped at length; "not a penny of your money would I be touching anyway. Don't you see I can't marry ye because the law will not let me? 'Tis not me, but the Parliament that has the making of it. Ye must take your money to them."
Maryska looked at him almost with pity. Harry's appeal to her might as well have been addressed to the stucco walls of the bungalow.