"I have done, Mr. Delamayn."

"Well? and what's your opinion?"

"Before I give my opinion I am bound to preface it by a personal
statement which you are not to take, if you please, as a statement of
the law. You ask me to decide--on the facts with which you have supplied
me--whether your friend is, according to the law of Scotland, married or
not?"

Geoffrey nodded. "That's it!" he said, eagerly.

"My experience, Mr. Delamayn, is that any single man, in Scotland, may
marry any single woman, at any time, and under any circumstances. In
short, after thirty years' practice as a lawyer, I don't know what is
_not_ a marriage in Scotland."

"In plain English," said Geoffrey, "you mean she's his wife?"

In spite of his cunning; in spite of his self-command, his eyes
brightened as he said those words. And the tone in which he
spoke--though too carefully guarded to be a tone of triumph--was, to a
fine ear, unmistakably a tone of relief.

Neither the look nor the tone was lost on Sir Patrick.

His first suspicion, when he sat down to the conference, had been
the obvious suspicion that, in speaking of "his friend," Geoffrey was
speaking of himself. But, like all lawyers, he habitually distrusted