‘I recollect an old man with a white beard. I think I have a vague recollection even of the name.’ ‘It is most extraordinary,’ cried the Rector, getting up from his chair, ‘that on an occasion of such importance you should not have remembered both place and name!’ ‘Ah! it was just because it was an occasion of such importance, and everything so dreadful and so strange.’ ‘Emily, I have hesitated to ask you: why in heaven’s name were you married like that? What was the cause?’ She pointed towards the book with a hand that trembled. ‘Papa has put it down there.’ ‘He has put down the fact, but no explanation. The explanation apparently was given to him, but not recorded. But you--why should you not tell me? A sudden marriage like that, in such headlong haste--why was it? What did it mean?’ Lady William was silent for some time, clasping her fingers and unclasping them, gazing into the vacant air. At last she said: ‘James, you will think me too great a fool if I say that I did not know, at the time.’ ‘Emily,’ he said, with a tone so sharp and keen that it went through her like a knife, ‘it is a long time since, and I have a right to know. Was it--was it through any fault of yours?’ She turned her eyes to him with a look of the utmost amazement. ‘Fault of mine!’ she said. ‘What could that have had to do with it--any fault of mine?’ She was a mature woman, and was supposed to know the world; but Mab herself could not have given him a more limpid look, could not have received his questions with more surprise. The Rector, quite confused, stepped back a pace, and said, ‘I beg your pardon,’ with a humility which was entirely out of his habits. He had grown quite pale, and glanced at her with a sort of fright, terrified lest perhaps it might dawn upon her what he meant. ‘I was bewildered,’ she said. ‘I was taken altogether by surprise. It was the romance that dazzled me--what seemed the romance--and all that they told me: that he had to leave England, must go, would be in danger of I know not what, yet would not go without me. And poor papa thought of--oh the folly, the pettiness of it!--the title, perhaps, and what he thought the connection. My poor father thought a great deal of connection.’ She smiled a little sadly, looking back with a sort of tenderness upon the weakness and folly of a time so long past. Then she drew herself up unconsciously, holding her head high. ‘I discovered the real meaning, but not till after. It was very bitter and terrible; but after all it is Mab’s father of whom we are speaking. James, let us return to the question of most importance. What is gained by this I don’t see. I don’t understand things of that kind.’