"
The Q.C. reflected. He saw at once he was in a tight corner. That
boisterous man, with the burly big hands, looked quite subdued and
crestfallen now. He could hardly have snubbed the most unassuming
junior. This was a terrible thing, indeed, for a man so unscrupulous
and clever as Montague Nevitt to have wormed out of the registers.
How he could ever have wormed it out Gilbert Gildersleeve hadn't
the faintest idea, Why, who on earth could have shown him the entry
of that fatal marriage--Minnie's first marriage--the marriage with
that wretch who died in Portland prison--the marriage that was
celebrated at St. Mary's, at Mambury? He couldn't for a moment
conceive, for nobody but themselves, he fondly imagined, had ever
identified Mrs. Gilbert Gildersleeve, the wife of the eminent Q.C.,
with that unhappy Mrs. Read, the convict's widow. The convict's
widow. Ah, there was the rub. For she was really a widow in name
alone when Gilbert Gildersleeve married her.
And Montague Nevitt, that human ferret, with his keen sharp eyes, and
his sleek polite ways, had found it all out in spite of them--had
hunted up the date of Read's death and their marriage, and had
bragged how he was going down to Mambury to prove it!
All the Warings and Reads always got married at Widdicombe or
Mambury.
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