“‘Tell me this!’ I burst out, almost furiously. ‘How was it that you, who went ostensibly to guard me against misadventure, became accessory to some deception which rendered that marriage rite performed between me and Saviola of no legal effect? Tell me this, oh, traitor and hypocrite!’” CHAPTER XXXIII HOW IT HAPPENED “‘My dearest Elfrida, for my beastly stupidity I deserve all the reproaches you can heap upon me. But not the utter reproach of complicity in the deception that was practiced upon you. I never suspected Saviola of a design to deceive you. But the Italian was too deep for me. I went to insure you against mistake, not deception. But, as I say, the Italian was too deep for me.’ “‘What do you mean?’ I cried. “‘Saviola had studied the route to Scotland, with the design to deceive you. There were two stations on that route of similar names. One was Kelton, in Northumberland. The other was Kilton, in Scotland. Saviola took tickets for us all to Kelton, when he made us believe that they were for Kilton. We went by the night train, you remember. We got out at Kelton, near the border on the English side, believing all the time that it was Kilton, on the Scottish side. There, in England, you were married regularly enough; but because it was in England, and you were a minor marrying without the consent of your parents or guardians, therefore the marriage was illegal, null and void.’ “‘Did Saviola tell you this when you met in Paris?’ “‘Yes, but I had discovered the fact, to my great dismay and distress, before that.’ “‘When, and how?’ “‘In September I was going up to Scotland for a week’s shooting. I went by the same train that had carried us, but in the daytime. When we stopped at Kelton I recognized the station at which we had got out, the hotel where we had stopped for breakfast, and the distant church, with the manse beside it, where the marriage ceremony had been performed. And yet I knew then—as I had not known on that fatal night—that we had not crossed the border.’ “‘Then we were married in England?’ I wailed. “‘Yes! To settle the point, I asked a fellow passenger how far we were from the Scottish border. He told me just five miles. Still, I did not then suspect Saviola of having wilfully betrayed us. I thought he had confused the two—Kelton and Kilton—and had made a fatal mistake. And I cursed my own stupidity in not having foreseen and prevented it. I determined to seek you both out and have the mistake rectified by another and a regular marriage ceremony as soon as possible. I did not know where to find you, nor of whom to inquire for you, since your friends were all in the Canary Islands. It was by accident only that I met him in Paris, and learned the truth from his own lips, as I have already told you.’ “He ceased to speak. “Overwhelmed as I was I tried to make some little stand for my own dignity and self-respect. I said: