"I am off to town to-night. You won't mind, will you?" Michael went on. "Just to see if everything is all right, and to get her guardian's consent and a special license, and I shall be back by the six o'clock train on Thursday in time to get the ceremony over that night; and then, by the early morning express, if you'll wait till then, we'll go South together, and so for Paris and freedom!" Henry actually rose from his chair. "And the bride?" he asked. Michael laughed. "Oh, she may go to the moon, for all I care; she leaves directly after the ceremony with her certificate of marriage, which she means to brandish in the face of her relations, who are staying at the Inn, and so exit out of my life! It is only an affair of expediency." "It is the affair of a madman." Michael frowned, and his firm chin looked aggressive. "It is nothing of the kind. You told me yourself that you would rather marry old Bessie--a woman of eighty-four--than Violet Hatfield; and now, when I have found a much more suitable person--a pretty little lady--you begin to talk. My mind is made up, and there is an end of it." Mr. Fordyce interrupted. "Bessie would have been much more suitable--a plain pretext; but you have no idea what complications you may be storing up for yourself by marrying a young girl--What is the sense in it?" he continued, a little excited now. "The younger and prettier she is makes her all the more unsuitable to be used merely as a tool in your game. Confound it, Michael!" "And her game, too," his host reminded him. His eyes were flashing now, and that expression, which all his underlings knew meant he intended to have his own will at any cost, grew upon his face. "You forget that in Scotland divorce is not an impossibility and--_I am going to do it, Henry_. Now, I had better write to old Fergusson, my chaplain, and tell him to be in readiness, and I suppose I ought to see my lawyers in Edinburgh, although, as there are no settlements and it is just between ourselves, perhaps it does not matter about them." "How old is the girl?" Mr. Fordyce felt it prudent to ask. "It is a pretty serious thing you contemplate, you know." "Oh! rot!--she is seventeen, I believe--and for that sort of a marriage and mere business arrangement, her age is no consequence." Henry turned to the window and looked out for a moment, then he said gravely: "Is it quite fair to her?" Michael had gone to his writing-table, and was busily scribbling to his chaplain, but he looked over his shoulder startled, and then a gleam of blue fire came into his eyes, and his handsome mouth shut like a vise.