"Good God! man, a marriage is not a thing a man could overlook or forget."

"Oh that's all right with a real marriage; or even with a mock marriage if a man didn't make a practice of it. But there might be some woman, with whom one had some kind of intrigue or irregular union, who might take advantage of it to place herself in better position. Such things have been you know, old chap!" he added sententiously. Athlyne laughed.

"Far be it from me to say what a woman might or might not do if she took it into her pretty head; but I don't think there's any woman who would, or who would ever think she had the right to, do that with me. There are women, lots of them I am afraid, who answer the bill on the irregular union or intrigue side; but I should certainly be astonished if any of them ever set out to claim a right. Now I have made a clean breast of it. Won't you tell me what all this is about?" The other looked at him steadily, as though to see how he took it, as he answered:

"There is, I am told, a woman in New York who is passing herself off as your wife!"

Athlyne sprang to his feet and cried out:

"What!"

"That's what I took it to mean! By the way—" this was said as if it was a sudden idea "I take it that your mother is not alive. I had it in my mind that she died shortly after you were born?"

"Unhappily that is so!"

"There is no dowager Countess?"

"Not for more than thirty years. Why?"

"The letter says 'Countess of Athlyne.' I took it to be your wife."

"Let me see the letter." He held out his hand. Vachell took from his pocket—the only private storage a man had in the Bird-cage—an envelope which he handed to his comrade, who took from it a torn fragment of a letter. He