Mildred Arkell: A Novel. Vol. 3 (of 3)Wood, Henry, Mrs.
General
Mildred Arkell: A Novel. Vol. 3 (of 3)
Wood, Henry, Mrs.
Fiction
"The other side? You mean the widow of Robert Carr the clergyman?" asked
Mr. Littelby, scarcely thinking, however, that Mr. Mynn could mean it.
"The widow and the brother--yes. Fauntleroy, of Westerbury, acts for
them. But he'll never, as I believe, bring so utterly lame a case into
court."
Mr. Littelby wondered what his new chief could mean; he did not
understand at all.
"I should have supposed the case would have been brought to an end by
you," he observed. "From the moment that the marriage was discovered to
have taken place, your clients, the Carrs of Eckford, virtually lost
their cause."
"But the marriage has not been discovered to have taken place," said Mr.
Mynn.
"Yes, it has. Is it possible that you have not had intimation of it from
Mr. Fauntleroy?"
Mr. Mynn paused a moment. Mr. George, who had been looking at his boots,
raised his head to listen.
"Where was it discovered?--who discovered it?" asked Mr. Mynn, with the
air of a man who does not believe what is being said to him.
"The widow, young Mrs. Carr, found the notice of it. In searching her
late father-in-law's desk, she discovered a letter written by him to his
son. It was the week subsequent to her husband's death. The letter had
slipped between the leaves of an old blotting-book, and lain there
unsuspected. While poor Robert Carr the clergyman was wearing away his
last days of life in those fruitless searchings of the London churches,
he little thought how his own carelessness had forced it upon him. He
examined this very desk when his father died, for any papers there might
be in it, and must have examined it imperfectly, for there the letter
must have been."
"But what was in the letter?" asked George Mynn, speaking for the first
time since the topic arose.
"It stated that he had married the young lady who went away with him,
Martha Ann Hughes, on the morning they left Westerbury--married her at
her own parish church, St.--St.--I forget the name."
"Her parish church was St. James the Less," said Mr. Mynn, speaking very
fast.
"Yes, that was it; I remember now. It struck me at the time as being a
somewhat uncommon appellation. That is where the marriage took place, on
the morning they left Westerbury."
Mr. Mynn sat down; he had need of some rest to recover his
consternation. Mr. George never spoke: he said afterwards, that the
thought flashed upon him, he could not tell how or why, that the letter
was a fraud.
"How did you know of this?" was Mr. Mynn's first question.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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