Three days later they were married in the prison chapel. Mr. Hoskyns made a special journey to London and brought back the licence. One stipulation was made by Lionel—that the marriage should be kept a profound secret, and a profound secret it was kept. The witnesses were Mrs. Garside, Hoskyns, Mr. Dux, and the chief warder. Beyond these four, and the chaplain, the knowledge did not extend. Even the turnkeys, whose duty it was to attend to Lionel, had no suspicion of what had taken place. Three weeks had come and gone since the marriage of Lionel and Edith when Tom Bristow first set foot inside the gaol. CHAPTER XIII. A DINNER AT PINCOTE. Lionel Dering was blessed with one of those equable dispositions which predispose their owner to look always at the sunny side of everything; and even now, in prison, and with such a terrible accusation hanging over him, no one ever saw him downhearted or in any way distressed. There was about him a serenity, a quiet cheerfulness, which nothing seemed able to disturb; and when in the company of others he was usually as gay and animated as if the four walls of his cell had been those of his own study at Park Newton. The ordeal was, in any case, a very trying one; but it would have been infinitely more so but for the sweet offices of love and friendship which he owed in one case to his wife, and in the other to his friend. Either Edith or Tom saw him every day. But when all his visitors had gone, and night and silence had settled down on the grim old prison—silence so profound that but for the recurring voice of a distant clock, as it counted the hours slowly and solemnly, he could have fancied himself the last man left alive in the world—then it was that he felt his situation the most. He had been so used to an active, outdoor life, that he could not now tire himself sufficiently to sleep well.