"You may trust me," George Sheldon said gravely. "Stop a moment, though; I have a proposition to make. If my brother Philip has induced that girl to make a will, as it is my belief he has, we must counter him. Come down with me to Doctors' Commons. You've a cab? Yes; the business won't take half an hour." "What business?" "A special licence for your marriage with Charlotte Halliday." "A marriage?" "Yes; her marriage invalidates her will, if she has made one, and does away with Phil's motive. Come along; we'll get the licence." "But the delay?" "Exactly half an hour. Come!" The lawyer dashed out of his office. "At home in an hour," he shouted to the clerk, and then ran downstairs, followed closely by Valentine, and did not cease running until he was in the King's Road, where the cab was waiting. "Newgate Street and Warwick Lane to Doctors' Commons!" he cried to the cabman; and Valentine was fain to take his seat in the cab without further remonstrance. "I don't understand--" he began, as the cabman drove away. "I do. It's all right; you'll put the licence in your pocket, and call at the church nearest which you hang out, Edgware Road way, give notice of the marriage, and so on; and as soon as Charlotte can bear the journey, bring her to London and marry her. I told you your course six months ago. Your obstinacy has caused the hazard of that young woman's life. Don't let us have a second edition of it." "I will be governed by your advice," answered Valentine, submissively. "It is the delay that tortures me." The delay was indeed torture to him. Everything and everybody in Doctors' Commons seemed the very incarnation of slowness. The hansom cab might tear and grind the pavement, the hansom cabman might swear until even monster waggons swerved aside to give him passage; but neither tearing nor swearing could move the incarnate stolidity of Doctors' Commons. When he left that quaint sanctuary of old usages, he carried with him the Archbishop of Canterbury's benign permission for his union with Charlotte Halliday. But he knew not whether it was only a morsel of waste paper which he carried in his pocket; and whether there might not ere long be need of a ghastlier certificate, giving leave and licence for the rendering back of "ashes to ashes, and dust to dust." Valentine's first call, after leaving George Sheldon at the gate of Doctors' Commons, was at the head-quarters of the Ragamuffins. His heart sank as he ran into the bar of the hostelry to ask for the telegram which might be waiting for him. Happily there was no telegram. To find no tidings of a change for the worse seemed to him almost equivalent to hearing of a change for the better. What had he not feared after his interview with the surgeon of Bloomsbury!