He is dead!" Dare looked bewildered, and then sank back with a gasp of disappointment into his chair.
Charles, whose temper was singularly irritable this morning, repeated with suppressed annoyance the greater part of what he had just said, and proved to Dare that the fact that Stephens was dead would in no way prevent the illegality of his marriage being proved.
When Dare had grasped the full significance of that fact he was quite overcome.
"Am I, then," he gasped--"is it true ?--am I free--to marry ?" "Quite free." Dare burst into tears, and, partially veiling with one hand the manly emotion that had overtaken him, he extended the other to Charles, who did not know what to do with it when he had got it, and dropped it as soon as he could.

But Dare, like many people whose feelings are all on the surface, and who are rather proud of displaying them, was slow to notice what was passing in the minds of others.
He sprang to his feet, and began to pace rapidly up and down.
"I will go after breakfast--at once--immediately after breakfast, to Slumberleigh Rectory." "I suppose, in that case, Miss Deyncourt is the person whose name you would not mention the other day ?" "She is," said Dare.

"You are right.

It is she.

We are betrothed.