Alden Lytton flushed to the temples at hearing his true wife's pure and noble name brought into this dishonoring examination. He spoke sternly as he inquired:
"Upon what grounds do you make this charge? Where are your witnesses?"
"The Reverend Mr. Borden will please step forward," said the magistrate.
The strange clergyman came up to the table and stood there.
The magistrate administered the oath to this witness.
At the same moment Mr. Philip Desmond took his place at the table to conduct the examination.
"Yes, sir," answered the clerical witness.
"You are the rector of Saint Blank's Episcopal Church, Philadelphia?"
"Yes, sir. He is Mr. Alden Lytton," replied the rector, bowing gravely to the prisoner.
Alden acknowledged the courtesy by a nod, and then waited with more amazement and curiosity than anxiety to hear what sort of a case they would make out against him with the aid of this man, whom he never saw before, and yet who claimed to know him well.
"State, if you please, Mr. Borden, what you know of Mr. Lytton in regard to this case."
"In the month of September of last year Mr. Lytton came to my house in company with a lady to whom he wished to be married immediately. I conducted the pair into the church and married them there, in the presence of my sexton and his daughter. I registered the marriage in the church books and gave a certificate, signed by myself and the witnesses to the marriage. They then left the church together. I had never seen them before, and I have never seen them since until to-day, when I see and recognize Mr. Lytton, just as I should recognize his bride if I should see her."
"Your worship, the lady can be produced at once, to be identified by the witness," said Philip Desmond.
And he wrote on a slip of paper and handed it to a constable, who silently left the room.
Meanwhile Alden Lytton waited with constantly increasing curiosity to find out to whom he had been unconsciously married in the month of September, and in the city of Philadelphia. It flashed upon him suddenly that he had been in Philadelphia about the middle of the last September, and in company with Mary Grey. But he felt certain that he had never gone out with her while there; and he waited with intensely curious interest to hear how they could possibly make out a case against him.