“And she has told me something about the Registrar--something that I can scarcely bring myself to believe. Do you remember what I asked you to do for me, Harcourt?” “Perfectly. And I have got the letter containing your request in my possession--such a nice letter! You tell me in it that you have fallen over head and ears in love with an innocent little country girl, too poor and insignificant to be your wife, too virtuous to be your mistress. Another man might have accepted his fate, and either resigned the lady, or made some sacrifice of his own interests and married her. You were inclined to do neither, and you fell back upon a villanous expedient familiar to the readers of old-fashioned novels, and known as a mock marriage. You wrote to me about this in a half-playful tone, as if it were the simplest thing in the world--an elegant little comedy, out of which it would be your care, of course, to see that no harm should arise; and so on. The carrying out of the little conspiracy would be very easy. You suggested how it might be done. I had only to engage some clever scapegrace to enact the Registrar; hire a parlour in some obscure street _near_ a District Registrar’s Office--in the same street, if practicable; the ceremony would only occupy about ten minutes, and could be got over as quietly as the most commonplace morning call, if the fellow engaged to personate the Registrar knew what he was about. The dear little girl was the last person in the world to suspect anything amiss. In short, it was the simplest possible business, and all our dear good Harcourt had to do was to find the handy scamp who would act the official, and get himself well up in the little professional formula of signing and counter-signing, and so on, in some big books that he would get for the purpose. The certificate business would have to be finessed of course. The dear little girl would ask for no certificate, and the dear little girl’s witnesses must be conveniently shut up if they made their noses unpleasantly prominent.” “I begin to understand you,” said Roderick, with suppressed fury. “You have sold me; and you are going to defend yourself upon high grounds, conscientious scruples; and so on. Pray proceed. That sort of talk will sound so well from your lips.”