'I hope not.' Again up went the glass, and he scrutinised the face of the ferryman. 'But, you see, I am in her hands. She can squeeze me till all my juice runs out. If it became known that I had married her, and she were, _par exemple_, to arrive in town and assert her rights as my wife, what should I do? What would my people say? What would they think in the office? And especially at present when I have cause to be sanguine. My expectations are so well grounded.' 'Expectations, Mr. Holwood?' 'I have a rich aunt, a maiden lady, who thinks very highly of me and my abilities. She is proud and pedigreeish――if I may coin the word. She would never forgive me――never――if she knew that I had united myself to an individual, however well-favoured, without ancestry――a fisherman's daughter, and not able to read or write!' 'Sir,' said Dench, 'with all due respect be it spoken, but I think you are vastly indiscreet in coming here under these circumstances. It is now eighteen or nineteen years since you have been here, and you ought to have kept away altogether.' 'I felt――hem!――that I must be satisfied. I did not rest easy, not knowing to what extent demands might grow. I desired greatly to learn something about her, and to find out if some compromise might be effected. Is it possible to get her to leave England?' 'No, sir. Not now that she has taken up with that smuggling Captain Rattenbury.' 'You stick a knife into me. Has she gone utterly to the bad? I would have done anything, anything in reason for her, if she could have maintained herself in respectability. I have sent her money regularly, as an annuity, paid through you. You have paid her punctually?' 'To the day――quarterly.' 'It would be simply fatal were she to appear on the _tapis_.' The gentleman pulled out his breastpin, and poked into the tube of the key in quest of a lodgment there, blew into it again, and replaced the pin. His long white fingers shook nervously. 'See here, sir,' said Dench, and drew a seat to the fireside, whereupon Mr. Holwood put one hand behind him, the other between his knees to the chair, and turned the chair and himself about, so as to face the boatman. 'Jane don't believe as she was properly married. Says I to her, my dear, he was under age, a mere boy.' 'But it was not so. I was twenty-one.' 'Well, well, sir, she supposes you were not, and that suffices. Says I to her, in the eye of the law, that did for you. It was no marriage at all. And then again, says I, where did it take place?' 'In Rousdon Church.' 'True you are, sir, but was not the church ruinated? The roof was off, and no service was ever said in it. She knows that, and in the eye of the law, says I, a church don't hold good if the roof be off.' 'It is not so.' 'Never mind. She has been led to think so. Then, said I, that is not all, the parson had been unfrocked by the bishop. And in the eye of the law――――' 'But was he so?'