"I do not quite know," said the lawyer. "Of course we are as yet very much in the dark. I should not wonder if we found that there had been two marriages. All this is what we have got to find out. The lady certainly lived in great intimacy with your brother before her first husband died." "How do you know anything about it?" asked Lord George. "I happened to have heard the name of the Marchese Luigi, and I knew where to apply for information." "We did not mean that any inquiry should be made so suddenly," said Lord George angrily. "It was for the best," said the Dean. "Certainly for the best," said the unruffled lawyer. "I would now recommend that I may be commissioned to send out my own confidential clerk to learn all the circumstances of the case; and that I should inform Mr. Stokes that I am going to do so, on your instructions, Lord George." Lord George shivered. "I think we should even offer to give his Lordship time to send an agent with my clerk if he pleases to do so, or to send one separately at the same time, or to take any other step that he may please. It is clearly your duty, my Lord, to have the inquiry made." "Your manifest duty," said the Dean, unable to restrain his triumph. Lord George pleaded for delay, and before he left the lawyer's chambers almost quarrelled with his father-in-law; but before he did leave them he had given the necessary instructions. CHAPTER XXIX. MR. HOUGHTON WANTS A GLASS OF SHERRY. Lord George, when he got out of the lawyer's office with his father-in-law, expressed himself as being very angry at what had been done. While discussing the matter within, in the presence of Mr. Battle, he had been unable to withstand the united energies of the Dean and the lawyer, but, nevertheless, even while he had yielded, he had felt that he was being driven. "I don't think he was at all justified in making any inquiry," he said, as soon as he found himself in the Square. "My dear George," replied the Dean, "the quicker this can be done the better." "An agent should only act in accordance with his instructions." "Without disputing that, my dear fellow, I cannot but say that I am glad to have learned so much." "And I am very sorry." "We both mean the same thing, George." "I don't think we do," said Lord George, who was determined to be angry. "You are sorry that it should be so,--and so am I." The triumph which had sat in the Dean's eye when he heard the news in the lawyer's chambers almost belied this latter assertion. "But I certainly am glad to be on the track as soon as possible, if there is a track which it is our duty to follow." "I didn't like that man at all," said Lord George. "I neither like him nor dislike him; but I believe him to be honest, and I know him to be clever. He will find out the truth for us." "And when it turns out that Brotherton was legally married to the woman, what will the world think of me then?"