collar-bone in that cursed steeple-chase. Egad, I am getting too heavy
and growing too old for such schoolboy pranks."

"I have no doubt of Mrs. Morton's excellence, and I honour your motives;
still, when you talk of her gracing any station, you must not forget, my
dear brother, that she will be no more received as Mrs. Beaufort than she
is now as Mrs. Morton."

"But I tell you, Robert, that I am really married to her already; that
she would never have left her home but on that condition; that we were
married the very day we met after her flight."

Robert's thin lips broke into a slight sneer of incredulity. "My dear
brother, you do right to say this--any man in your situation would say
the same. But I know that my uncle took every pains to ascertain if the
report of a private marriage were true."

"And you helped him in the search. Eh, Bob?"

Bob slightly blushed. Philip went on.

"Ha, ha! to be sure you did; you knew that such a discovery would have
done for me in the old gentleman's good opinion. But I blinded you both,
ha, ha! The fact is, that we were married with the greatest privacy;
that even now, I own, it would be difficult for Catherine herself to
establish the fact, unless I wished it. I am ashamed to think that I
have never even told her where I keep the main proof of the marriage.
I induced one witness to leave the country, the other must be long since
dead: my poor friend, too, who officiated, is no more. Even the
register, Bob, the register itself, has been destroyed: and yet,