Brion sought and found an accommodating chaplain--a jolly fellow, whom he had already met, the eve before his sailing, in Raleigh’s company. The pleasant cleric, very willing to oblige the friend of so great a friend, made no demur, was willing to take his handsome fee and eschew ceremonial, and in fact bound the couple man and wife that very afternoon in his own parlour. It was the merest formality, like signing a deed of gift to one already in possession of the property: and so, I think, the two regarded it. They had always been one. Then Brion, resolute to finish the business offhand, took his young bride to lodgings prepared for her, while he went alone to face the old harpy, her kinswoman, with the deed they had done. He went, armed with indignation and authority, to the handsome dwelling overlooking Sutton Pool and the Catwater where the abhorrent spinster lived, and saw her, and delivered himself. There was a scene. It seemed Mistress Medley knew of the ex-Judge by name, and held him in loathing as a reputed Papish recusant. She heaped terms of foulest abuse on Quentin Bagott’s head and on his house, which was already, she was rejoiced to know--if rumours which had been wafted across the moor were to be trusted--approaching the retribution which its iniquities deserved, and a choice example of which was to witness in this deed of infamy wrought by one of its nameless scions. Seduction and defilement, she was pleased to say, were natural to one bred in that atmosphere, and the will to surrender to them as natural in a child of Shame. But, as the girl had chosen her bed, so might she lie in it. For her part, she had only to declare that from that moment she cast the graceless bastard from her door, and desired never to see her face again.