“Certainly the marriage was not legal without your father’s consent, and would have been annulled by him. But now he will permit his consent to be supposed. Let’s see! the widow of an army officer entitled to his half-pay, perhaps; I do not know—perhaps to a pension, too, as he died in the field of battle. Zuleime, upon the whole, I think that you were rash to attempt suicide. Your position and prospects are not so bad. If Major Cabell is anxious to possess you, now that he supposes you to be a maudlin, love-sick girl, grieving yourself to death over the grave of your lover, he will be quite as willing to marry you a year hence, when he knows you to be the widow of Captain Fairfax—for _that_, I understand, was his rank when he fell. Come, girl, live! Acknowledge your marriage, like a truthful woman! Bring your child into God’s world like a Christian woman! And after a sufficient time has elapsed, marry Major Cabell, like a sensible woman! For I do assure you, that the gallant Major is sufficiently enamored of your young beauty to wait that length of time, if compelled to do so.” “Ah, yes! I think he is enamored of me as the Shoshonowa was of poor Frank’s hair!” bitterly said the girl. “This marriage must be announced at once! Who performed the ceremony?” “Old Mr. Saunders, the Baptist preacher.” “What! He who was found dead in his bed.” “Yes, yes, it was he!” “Pity for your sake that he is dead! But, you doubtless had some confidant, some witness—Kate Kavanagh, perhaps, or some one else? Say! speak! There was some witness to your marriage, who can be produced to prove it?” “No! There was none! It was _so_ sudden!” “None!—no proof of your marriage? Yet stop—stay!—there is a chance yet, I believe; I do not know. You were married with a license, of course?” “Yes, yes!” “The county clerk who issued it will probably remember the occurrence. That will be something in your favor, though, alas! only imperfect, circumstantial evidence; for the mere taking out of a license is no conclusive proof of a marriage.” “Ah, great or small, as proof it is of no avail. The license was procured _blank_, for Carolyn and Archer, because he had forgotten her full name, and it was afterwards filled out with our names.” “No matter. You were married with it. And now I remember a saving thing! The clergyman who married you of course affixed his certificate of marriage to the license, and gave it to you. Where is it? All depends now upon that. Where is it?” “I do not know! I never saw it! If the parson gave one, probably Frank took charge of it!” Again a pause fell between them, and the noises of the wind and waters arose in gloomy concert. At last Georgia spoke— “Miserable girl! And so you have no proof whatever of this _asserted_ marriage?” “None! none! But oh, what does that matter, after all? God knows that we loved, and _were_ married, as He knows that we will soon be reunited!” “Wretched girl! who will credit the story?”