"If I were you, and Lady Angela had promised to be my wife, I would not sit and hatch scruples about marrying her.

I would marry her first, and make her happy afterwards, and as for the rest--for the questions which you have asked me, and yet not put into words--I have never heard or seen in Lady Angela the slightest sign that you were not her lover as well as the man whom she was engaged to marry.

As for my own folly, since you seem to have noticed it, no one knows better than I that it is the rankest, most absurd presumption.

But with me it begins and ends.

That is a most absolute and certain fact." Ray rapped his pipe upon the table.
"Listen," he said.