But the gentle Fokesell was rather anxious to make a public case of the matter, and finding that she was getting a good audience about her, shouted at the top of her voice, “Where’s your marriage lines? where’s your marriage lines?—where’s your marriage lines, I ask again, in the presence of all these respectable gentlemen.” This was the unkindest cut of all, and Mrs. Sandboys sought to escape up stairs, but Mrs. Fokesell was in no humour to let her off so easily. She could not forget the base insinuations that the lady had presumed to throw out respecting the apocryphal character of her absent Fokesell, and feeling satisfied of Mrs. Sandboys’ inability to justify _her_ character, by the production of her marriage certificate, she felt the more enraged that such a stigma should be cast upon her by such a person; accordingly, as Mrs. Sandboys endeavoured to get away from her, she seized that lady by the arms, and with her teeth clenched, proceeded to shake her violently against the wall, while the terrified Aggy shrieked “murder!” in her shrillest tones. At this critical state of affairs, a loud double knock at the street door made the passage echo with its clamour. This had the effect of inducing Mrs. Fokesell to relax her hold of the poor trembling Mrs. Sandboys, to whose great relief, on the door being opened, no less a person than her own dear Cursty made his appearance. Immediately that gentleman was fairly in the passage, the exasperated landlady sought to empty the vials of her wrath on the heads of the innocent couple, but Mr. Sandboys, observing the agitated state of his wife, and judging from a glance the nature of the scene that had transpired, thought it prudent to withdraw to his own apartment; though as he and Aggy ascended the stairs, they could hear Mrs. Fokesell in the passage below vowing all kinds of vengeance against them both on the morrow, and heaping on their names epithets that were not of the most choice or flattering description. Once by themselves, each began to console the other. Cursty of course believed that his beloved Aggy had suffered imprisonment for assaulting a policeman. Aggy too, in her turn, fancied that her dear Cursty had been only just released from the station-house, where he had been confined for being drunk and disorderly, and each sought to learn from the other what circumstances could possibly have induced them so far to forget themselves. Elcy, who looked upon them both as martyrs, was delighted to welcome them back again, for while each of her parents believed that the other had transgressed, she had been led to imagine that they both had been incarcerated for violating the law in some way or other.