‘It is a mere simple statement of fact that has to be made to them,’ she said. ‘I will write and say I have no certificates, but that one person is still alive who was present at my marriage if she can be found: and that my father----’ ‘For goodness’ sake!’ cried the Rector. ‘What, what do you mean--you are going to show your hand at once to these men, and let them see that you have no proof at all?’ ‘My father’s diary is the best of evidence,’ she said. ‘The law is not such a bugbear as you make it out to be. There must be some sense and justice in it: my father’s word, a clergyman, and a man of honour----’ ‘They may say it is a got-up thing, and what so easy as for me to write that entry in an old book? I write very like my father.’ ‘What folly, James! You! as little likely to cheat as my father, a clergyman, and a man of honour too!’ ‘We might say,’ said the Rector, ‘for I have been thinking it over too, my dear Emily--that you were married at St. Alban’s Proprietary Chapel, Backwood Street, Marylebone, on such a day and year, by the incumbent, the Reverend T. I. Gepps: and leave it to them to got a copy of the register for themselves--if they can,’ he added grimly. ‘The books, of course, ought to have been saved, and perhaps some of them may be. It is their business to find all that out.’ This specious suggestion staggered Lady William for the moment. ‘But when they find out that the church is burnt, the book destroyed, and the clergyman dead--which is a catastrophe almost too complete for the theatre--they may think we have chosen the place on that account, and that we mean fraud and nothing else.’ ‘I,’ cried the Rector, ‘meaning fraud--and you! It would be just as easy to suppose that I had forged the entry in my father’s diary. I hope we are two honourable people.’ Lady William shook her head. ‘I hope so too: but I could not send them on such a wildgoose chase, which would certainly harm us in the end, without letting them know the truth.’ ‘Oh, the truth,’ cried the Rector. ‘Isn’t it all the truth, both one thing and the other? The truth is all very well and can’t be altered were you to harp upon it for ever, but what they want and what we want is the proof.’ XLIII