‘You shall hear me to the end,’ she answered quietly, ‘and then pronounce whether I am or not. The house in which we were visitors was only two miles from a cathedral city. He of whom I have been speaking—’ ‘Mr. Bertram.’ ‘I will call him Bertram, although I am bound to tell you that name is not the true one. Mr. Bertram proposed a marriage before the registrar in the cathedral town. We both had been long enough resident in the neighbourhood for the necessary notice. Indeed, that notice had been given some days before I gave my most reluctant consent. At the last, harassed by Mr. Bertram’s importunity, loving him with a girl’s first romantic fancy, and believing that I was the object of a most devoted love, without an adviser or friend at hand to whom I could appeal, conscious that I was guilty of ingratitude and disobedience towards the dearest and best of parents, I suffered myself to be hurried into this wretched union. We walked across the park early one morning, and went to the registrar’s office, where the brief form was gone through, and my lover told me I was his wife. I went home that very day, for the necessity of a fortnight’s notice to the registrar had deferred the marriage to the last day of my visit. I went back to the parents who loved and trusted me, weighed down by the burden of my guilty secret.’ ‘Was Mr. Bertram’s rank superior to yours? and was that his reason for secrecy?’ asked Geoffrey. ‘He made me believe as much. He told me that he hazarded position and fortune by marrying me, and I believed him. I was not quite nineteen, and had been brought up in a small country town, brought up by people to whom falsehood was impossible. You may suppose that I was an easy dupe. Some time after my return he appeared in our little town. I implored him to tell my father and mother, or to let me tell them of our marriage. He refused, giving me his reasons for that refusal; using the same arguments he had employed before, and to which I was obliged to submit, reluctantly enough, Heaven knows. But when he claimed me as his wife, and reminded me that I was bound to follow his fortunes, I refused to obey. I told him that the marriage before the registrar had to me seemed no marriage at all, and that I would never leave home and kindred for his sake until I had stood before God’s altar by his side. This, which he called a mere school-girl prejudice, made him angry; but after a time he gave way, and told me that I should be satisfied. He would marry me in my father’s church, but our union must not the less remain a secret. He had a friend, a curate in a London parish, who would come down to perform the ceremony quietly one morning, without witnesses. The marriage before the registrar was ample for all legal purposes, he told me. This marriage in the church was to be only for the satisfaction of my conscience, and it mattered not how informal it might be. No witnesses would be wanted, no entry need be made in the Register.’