But it didn't. Mother was fooled there!" with a gleam of
malice. "The mine turned out to be worthless--after we were married."
Callandar drew a sharp breath and shook himself as if to throw off the
horror of some enthralling nightmare.
"You married him--this man--knowing that you were a wife already?"
"A fine sort of wife!" He quivered at the coarseness of meaning in her
tone. "We were never really married."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that it was all a farce. What's a ceremony? For all I knew it
wasn't even legal. When you did not answer my letter I thought that was
what your silence meant. I asked a girl to ask her father who was a
lawyer if a marriage was legal when the girl was under age and the
parents didn't know about it. He said sometimes it wasn't."
Callandar groaned. "And you married again--on that?"
"Yes. I had to, anyway. I couldn't hold out against mother. I daren't
tell her. She left us after the wedding, when the mine failed, and went
back to Cleveland. It was there she must have got your letter, and the
note I found last night.
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