Olivia glanced at Cripps. She had never met him. She wondered who he was, and why Claude did not introduce him to her, and what made both of them so glum. They hurried out of the house as though they were afraid of her. What could it mean? She would find out from Jack; she felt a renewed right to him now, and thought of hints, as she went, for Mr. Dalrymple, if they were still together. But Jack was alone; he was sitting in the dejected attitude engendered by a peculiarly long and low arm-chair. "Well?" said Olivia briskly. "Well?" responded Jack; but he looked at her without rising and without a smile; and both omissions were unlike the lover and the man. "I half expected to find Mr. Dalrymple with you. I'm so glad he isn't! I--it's my turn, I think!" "I haven't seen Dalrymple for over an hour," said Jack, with his heavy, absent eyes upon her all the time. "I wonder where he is?" Olivia would not ask him what the matter was; she preferred to find out for herself, and then tell _him_. She looked about her. On a salver were a decanter and three wine-glasses; one was unused; and on the floor there lay an end of pink tape. She picked and held it up between finger and thumb. "Lawyers!" she cried. "Yes, I've had a solicitor here." "Not to make your will!" "No. On a--on a local matter. Don't look at me like that! It's nothing much: nothing new, at all events." "But you are worried." She knelt beside his chair, and rested her elbows on the arm, studying his pale set profile. His eyes met hers no longer. "I am," he admitted; "but that's my own fault. As I say--it's nothing new!" "Who was the lawyer?" "You wouldn't know him." "I mean to know who he was. Mr. Cripps?" Jack did not answer. He rolled his head from side to side against the back of the chair. His eyes remained fast upon the opposite wall. "It is--the old trouble," Olivia whispered. "The trouble of two nights ago!" His silence told her much. The drops upon his forehead added more. Yet her voice was calm and undismayed; it enabled him at last to use his own. "Yes!" he said hoarsely. "Claude made a mistake. It was true after all!" "Hunt's story, darling?" "Hunt's story. There _was_ an English marriage as well as an Australian one. He had a wife at each side of the world! Claude made a mistake. He went to the wrong church at Chelsea--to a church by the river. He had always thought it was the parish church. It is not. St. Luke's is the parish church, and there in the book they have the marriage down in black and white. Cripps found it; but he first found it somewhere else, where he says they have the records of every marriage in the country since 1850. He would have looked there the day Claude was up, but he left it too late. He looked yesterday, and found it, sure enough, on the date Hunt gave. October 22d, 1853. And he has been to Chelsea and seen it there. So there's no mistake about it this time; and you see how we stand." "I see. My poor boy!"