“Can you find out anything, Johnson?” she asked faintly. “I--I can’t! He doesn’t even say where they were married or--or anything.” “Married in a lunatic asylum, I suppose,” Mr. Carter returned fiercely. “He says--as plain as can be--that he hasn’t known the creature three months!” “Good gracious! I didn’t get as far as that, I----” William’s mother stopped short; she was afraid of making matters worse. Emily, who had stopped eating to listen, came suddenly to the surface. “Listen, mama! She’s French, isn’t she?” “I--I suppose so, dear.” Mrs. Carter shuddered slightly. “I’m afraid she is.” “Then I don’t see how Willie did it in three months. I read somewhere--in a magazine, I think--that it took months and months to court a French girl, and both parents have to say ‘yes,’ and you’ve got to have birth certificates, and the banns have to be posted for three weeks, and even then you can’t do it in a hurry; you’ve got to have a civil marriage and a religious marriage, and--and everything!” “Good Lord, Emmy! How does a fellow run away with his best girl?” Leigh asked. “He can’t!” Emily, having the floor, held it proudly. “He just can’t! It wouldn’t be legal; he’s got to have his birth certificate.” “Humph!” Mr. Carter glared over the top of William’s letter at his wife. “William didn’t happen to carry his birth certificate hung around his neck, did he?” Mrs. Carter shook her head, her eyes fixed on Emily. For the first time she felt it was to be her portion to hear wisdom from the mouths of babes and sucklings. “Emmy, are you sure you read all that?” she inquired anxiously. “Of course she did, mother,” said Daniel, speaking for the first time, his low, deep voice breaking in on the shrill excitement of the family clamor. “It’s French law.” That settled it. Daniel had studied law in old Judge Jessup’s office, and there was nothing in law, domestic and international, that Judge Jessup didn’t know. Mr. Carter turned his distorted countenance upon his second son. “Is that really a fact, Dan?” Dan nodded. He was not eating. He had thrust aside an almost untouched breakfast. The hand that he stretched out now for a glass of water was a little unsteady, but his father did not notice it. Mr. Carter was scowling at the letter again. “It’s as plain as day here, he’s known her less than three months. Take three weeks for the banns out of that, and you get seven or eight weeks. The young donkey! Where were her people, I’d like to know?” Mrs. Carter gasped. Horrible thoughts had been assailing her from the first, and she could no longer suppress them. “D-do you think she can be respectable?” she quavered tearfully. Mr. Carter was mute. He had no adequate language in which to express his own views upon that point, but his gloomy look was eloquent.