"
"Whom do you suspect?"
"I suspect no one now."
There was a shade of sadness in her tone, and her eyes wandered
wistfully over to the young artist.
"Upon my soul!" exclaimed Mr. Walraven, "I never heard or read of
the like. It's perfectly astounding. Did you ever hear anything so
extraordinary, Sir Roger?"
The baronet had been sitting like a man stunned by a blow. Now he turned
his eyes from Mollie's for the first time, and tried to speak.
"I am utterly bewildered," he said. "The whole story sounds like an
impossibility--incredible as a fairy tale."
"It is quite true, nevertheless," said Mollie.
"And you are a wedded wife?"
"I am."
"You're nothing of the sort!" burst out Carl Walraven. "You're
free--free as air. It would be outrageous, it would be monstrous, to let
such a marriage bind you. You are free to wed to-morrow if you choose;
and let the villain come forward and dispute the marriage if he dare!"
"He speaks the truth," said Sir Roger, eagerly. "Such a marriage is no
marriage. You are as free as you were before, Mollie.
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