“Why, the first fair dame,--and a pretty creature she was, with soft eyes like those of your wife’s pet doe, and yellow hair, but a mouth too sad for kisses, and a cheek too thin and white for my taste,--she showed us her marriage lines, and told how she was married some six years ago to this Sir Christopher in Paris, and there abode until a few weeks before that speaking, when, hearing strange rumors of her husband’s proceedings, she came over to seek him in Lun’on, and found the scent warm indeed, but Master Reynard fled over seas; and as she sought him up and down, her quest crossed that of this other lady, who had been indeed more deeply wronged than herself. And at that word, Number Two, a fine bouncing well-set-up figure of a woman, black eyes and hair, and a cheek like a sturdy rose, and a mouth I’d rather have seen at peace than trembling with rage, she took up the word, and told how not six months before, she too had wed Sir Christopher Gardiner, and she too showed her marriage lines, which if not so binding as the first ones had at least the merit of being writ in English; and furthermore she showed us schedules of jewels and coin, and silver- and goldsmith’s work, and much rare and costly apparel both for men and women, for she was a widow, and all of it gone over seas with Sir Christopher, who, it seems, after sending her for a day or two to visit friends in the country, had made a clean sweep of everything, and the same night set sail for Monhegan with Mary Grove, for whom, poor wench, she could find no name vile enough, laying all the blame, as is the wont of women, upon her, and making Sir Kit a victim of her wiles.” “You saw the marriage lines of both these women?” asked Bradford, leaning his forehead upon his hand as he sat beside the table, and sighing heavily. “Oh, yes,” returned Pierce, wondering at the effect of his story, but rather attributing it to the morbid sensitiveness of a church-member. “Yes, they were both of them as safe as a chain-cable; and though Sir Kit does seem to have slipped them, he couldn’t have parted them so long as the anchor of common law found holding-ground. Well, both women were clamoring to have us two catch the man and bring him back; but while the soft sweet first wife would have him brought back to duty and gently wooed into a better life, the full-rigged to’-gallant-s’il gallant buccaneer of a second wife only yearned to get him within reach that she might write the ten commandments on his face with her pretty little nails, and if she couldn’t recover her jewels, plate, and apparel, she would have the worth of them out of his hair and hide, and as for Mary Grove,--wow! man, you should have heard her! The ducking-stool, and the bilboes, and the white sheet, and the cart’s tail, and I know not what, were but the beginning of the blessings she longed to pour upon that poor little sinner’s head, oh me, oh me!”