There's a letter, sir, that Mrs. Woolper left for you on the
mantelpiece."
"She was very good. That will do; you can go."
The girl departed, bewildered like her fellow-servants by the strangeness
of the day's proceedings, still more bewildered by the strangeness of her
master's manner.
CHAPTER VII.
"THERE IS A WORD WILL PRIAM TURN TO STONE."
When the servant was gone, Mr. Sheldon sat down and examined the document
she had given him.
Yes, it was in due form. A certified copy of the certificate
of a marriage performed that morning at the church of St.
Matthias-in-the-fields, Paddington, and duly witnessed by the registrar
of that parish. If this document were indeed genuine, as to all
appearance it was, Valentine Hawkehurst and Charlotte Halliday had been
married that morning; and the will and the policy of assurance deposited
with Mr. Kaye the bill-discounter were so much waste-paper.
And they had fooled him, Philip Sheldon, as easily as this! The furious
rage which he felt against all these people, and, more than against them,
against his own besotted folly for allowing himself to be so fooled, was
a sharper agony than had ever yet rent his cruel heart. He had been a
scoundrel all his life, and had felt some of the pains and penalties of
his position; but to be a defeated scoundrel was a new sensation to him;
and a savage impotent hate and anger against himself and the universe
took possession of his mind.
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