But when the footman had the same answer for all--namely, that Mrs. Jack Wingfield was “not at home,” the feeling was very general that it was rather too soon for Mrs. Jack Wingfield to give herself airs, though it seemed that airs were to be looked for from her as inevitably as in an opera by Balfe. Another day brought the newspapers, but there was still no news, in even the most enterprising of them all, bearing upon the incident which had caused Mrs. Jack Wingfield to think that for some time at least she would do well to be “not at home” to any visitors. But on the afternoon of the third day a visitor called to whom she did not deny herself. Her father was admitted and found himself awaiting her coming in the library. She did not keep him waiting for long. “Well, father, is not this a shocking business?” she said, before he had even greeted her. “A shocking business! A shocking business to find you still here, Priscilla,” he said. “Where should I be if not with my husband?” she said. “Your husband! Your husband isn’t here; you know that well, my girl.” “The only husband I have ever known is here. Please do not fancy that I recognize as my husband that contemptible fraud to whom you gave me.” “However badly he treated you, however grossly I was taken in by him, he is still your lawful husband. Marriage according to the rites of the Church is a sacred bond. It is not in the power of man to sever it. You swore ‘for better for worse.’” “I did not swear at all. That is one of the fictions of the Church like the ‘Love, honour, and obey’ paragraph. Do you tell me that I must honour a felon, love a trickster, and obey a blackguard?” “It is God’s holy ordinance; you cannot deny that, however blasphemous you may become in your words.” “Do you tell me that it is God’s holy ordinance that I should worship with my body a swindler--a man who only wanted to get me into his power to prevent his swindling from sending him to the gaol that he deserved? Do you think that it would be in keeping with the holy ordinance of God for me to live with a wretch who made his scurrilous joke about the ring he had just put on my finger a few minutes before the handcuffs were put on his wrists?--a blackguard who went straight from the gaol to a woman in America--who allowed the report of his heroic death--oh, how you laid stress upon that heroic death of his, and called me indecent because I was sincere enough to thank God for having delivered me from him!--he allowed the report of his death to be published in order that he might have a chance of blackmailing my husband.” “Your husband! Your--I tell you, girl, that Marcus Blaydon is your husband, and that so long as you remain under this roof John Wingfield is your paramour. I warned you of him long ago. I did my duty as a father by you in warning you that he did not mean to wed you; and didn’t my words come true?”