The Q.C. reflected. He saw at once he was in a tight corner. That boisterous man, with the burly big hands, looked quite subdued and crestfallen now. He could hardly have snubbed the most unassuming junior. This was a terrible thing, indeed, for a man so unscrupulous and clever as Montague Nevitt to have wormed out of the registers. How he could ever have wormed it out Gilbert Gildersleeve hadn't the faintest idea, Why, who on earth could have shown him the entry of that fatal marriage--Minnie's first marriage--the marriage with that wretch who died in Portland prison--the marriage that was celebrated at St. Mary's, at Mambury? He couldn't for a moment conceive, for nobody but themselves, he fondly imagined, had ever identified Mrs. Gilbert Gildersleeve, the wife of the eminent Q.C., with that unhappy Mrs. Read, the convict's widow. The convict's widow. Ah, there was the rub. For she was really a widow in name alone when Gilbert Gildersleeve married her. And Montague Nevitt, that human ferret, with his keen sharp eyes, and his sleek polite ways, had found it all out in spite of them--had hunted up the date of Read's death and their marriage, and had bragged how he was going down to Mambury to prove it! All the Warings and Reads always got married at Widdicombe or Mambury. There were lots of them on the books there, that was one comfort, anyhow. He'd have a good search to find his needle in such a pottle of hay. But to think the fellow should have, had the double-dyed cruelty to break the shameful secret first of all to Gwendoline! That was his vile way of trying to force a poor girl into an unwilling consent. Gilbert Gildersleeve lifted his burly big hands in front of his capacious waistcoat, and pressed them together angrily. If only he had that rascal's throat well between them at that moment! He'd crush the fellow's windpipe till he choked him on the spot, though he answered for it before the judges of assize to-morrow! "There's only one thing possible for it, Minnie," he said at last, drawing a long deep breath. "I must go down to Mambury to-morrow to be beforehand with him. And I must either buy him off; or else, if that won't do--" "Or else what, Gilbert?" She trembled like an aspen leaf. "Or else get at the books in the vestry myself," the Q.C. muttered low between his clenched teeth, "before the fellow has time to see them and prove it." CHAPTER XXIII. GUY IN LUCK. Guy Waring reached Waterloo ten minutes too late. Nevitt had gone on by the West of England express. The porter at the labelling place "minded the gentleman well." He was a sharp-looking gentleman, with a queer look about the eyes, and a dark moustache curled round at the corners. "Yes, yes," Guy cried eagerly, "that's him right enough. The eyes mark the man. And where was he going to?" "He had his things labelled," the porter said, "for Plymouth." "And when does the next train start?" Guy inquired, all on fire.