“He caught himself up short,” she said, “as if he was vexed with himself for having let slip that other name, and I never heard it again the whole time Mr. and Mrs. Lesley were with us. I don’t think Susan knew much more about her husband’s affairs than I did, for he always treated her like a child; and even when he was kindest to her, he seemed to have a high and mighty way with her, that would have kept any timid person from asking questions.” Francis thanked Miss Banks very heartily for the trouble she had taken to enlighten him to the extent of her power, and then bade her good afternoon. “If you should meet with any one wanting apartments and board, either partial or entire, you’ll perhaps be kind enough to bear mother in mind,” the young lady said, as she escorted him to the door. He murmured some polite assurance that he would neglect no opportunity of promoting Mrs. Banks’s interest, and returned to the hansom, which had been waiting for him during his prolonged interview with the good-natured Jemima. From Woolcote Villas he drove to the office of the Marylebone registrar, and from that official he obtained an assurance that the marriage between Robert Lesley and Susan Turner, on the 27th of February, 1849, was, so far as his part of the business went, as legally binding as if the ceremony had been performed by the Archbishop of Canterbury within the solemn precincts of Westminster Abbey. “If they chose to be married in false names, that was their business,” said the registrar, “and they might find themselves bothered about it by-and-by. But, except where there’s property, it isn’t often that a person’s called upon to prove his marriage. I suppose, by your making the inquiry, there _is_ property in this case?” Francis Tredethlyn shook his head. “I know no more about that than you do,” he said. “Well, I shan’t forget that business in a hurry,” said the registrar, who was inclined to be communicative. “In the first place, the man was one of your regular tip-top swells, and that’s a kind of party we don’t often see here; and in the next place, he gave me a twenty-pound note, which was the first windfall of that kind that ever dropped into my pocket, and is more than likely to be the last.” “Can you tell me what the man was like?” “Tall and fair, with blue eyes and light hair; your regular swell: not the heavy military swell,--more of a delicate womanish way with him; but such as you may see by the dozen any afternoon in St. James’s Street or Pall Mall.” This description was no clearer than that given by Jemima Banks. Francis could scarcely walk through a London street without meeting with some man who might be described in the same words. He left the registrar’s office, and went back to his hotel; and, absorbed in the arduous duties of his toilet, thought alternately of lost Susan Tredethlyn, _alias_ Susan Lesley, and of beautiful Maude Hillary, who was so soon to be his wife.