“Funny!” said Priscilla suddenly, when they were sitting opposite to each other in the dining-car a few hours later. “Funny, isn’t it, that that man with the reddish hair who was working out his sentence for forgery should be the Reverend Sylvanus Purview, who read the marriage service between Marcus Blaydon and myself!” “Great Gloriana! Are you positive?” cried Jack. “As positive as I was about the other,” said Priscilla. “And what’s stranger still, he recognized me the moment we entered the tailor’s shop. I saw as much by his face, though I had not recognized him in his prison clothes. He was a temporary hand taken on by Mr. Possnett to do his duty when he was absent on his holiday. He lodged in Mrs. Bowman’s cottage, and went away without paying her. It created rather a scandal in our respectable neighbourhood.” “The rascal! I suppose he’ll lose his frock, now,” said Jack. “Mr. Possnett wrote to the Bishop about him; but he had left the diocese, and no one knew what had become of him,” said Priscilla. “Well, we know now. I wonder what it was he forged. He was clearly a bad egg from the first. How did you feel when you recognized him?” “Delighted,” cried Priscilla. “I felt as if I were paying him back in full the grudge that I owed him.” Jack laughed. CHAPTER XXXIV They remained in London that night, in order that they might tell Mr. Liscomb how they had fared on their visit to the prison. They had a good deal to discuss between themselves in the meantime. Upon one point they were in complete agreement, and this was with regard to Major Crosbie’s belief in the relationship existing between Marcus Blaydon and the woman who had signed herself ‘Lucy.’ He had endeavoured to be very cautious in all that he had said on this important point in their presence. He had been extremely careful not to commit himself in any way, or to leave them any chance of reproaching him afterwards for leading them to have false hopes that the marriage of Blaydon with Priscilla was a bigamous one. But in spite of his intelligent caution, the impression which he had produced upon them was that he at least was a firm believer that Blaydon and his Lucy were man and wife. They tried to reconstruct the whole of Blaydon’s story so far as Priscilla was concerned. It was quite plausible that, after marrying his Lucy in Canada and living with her for some years, they had quarrelled--had not Major Crosbie said that the letters betray a very ill-balanced temperament--one page showing her going into an extreme of affection and the next flying into an excess of abuse? This was eminently the sort of woman with whom a husband would quarrel, and from whom he would eventually fly.