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You shall hear the story of how we met; it is the story of his abduction of a lady whose name need not be mentioned; the story of his dastardly attempt to cozen her into a mock-marriage."
How to all present and to my Lord Rotherby's own face you had related the true story of what befell at Maidstone how I had gone thither, an innocent, foolish maid, to be married to a villain, whom, like the silly child I was, I thought I loved; how that villain, taking advantage of my innocence and ignorance, intended to hoodwink me with a mock-marriage.
Thereafter, he met her again at intervals, finding her naive love and humble adoration and obedience very pleasant; and, meeting her once at a peasant's fair, he jestingly yielded to the burlesque solicitations of a mountebank in a white mitre, paid a small fee, and went through an absurd ceremony of mock-marriage with her.
I was at first extremely unwilling, but when Philander told me it was to be only a mock-marriage, to secure me to himself, I was reconciled to it, and more when I found the infinite submission of the young man, who vowed he would never look up to me with the eyes of a lover or husband, but in obedience to his lord did it to preserve me entirely for him; nay farther, to secure my future fear, he confessed to me he was already married to a gentlewoman by whom he had two children. 'Oh! tell me true, my Sylvia, was he married to another! cried out the overjoyed lover.
Were ye present?" cried two or three in a breath. "I desire to lay before you all the story of how we met my lord there and I. It is so closely enmeshed with the story of that abduction and mock-marriage that the one is scarce to be distinguished from the other." Rotherby writhed to shake off those who held him. "Will ye listen to this fellow?" he roared. "He's a spy, I tell you a Jacobite spy!"
"Mock mock-marriage?" cried the duke and a dozen others with him, some in surprise, but most in an unbelief that was already faintly tinged with horror which argued ill for my Lord Rotherby when the story should be told. "You damned rogue " began his lordship, and would have flung himself upon Caryll, but that Collis and Stapleton, and Wharton himself, put forth hands to stay him by main force.
She had apparently persuaded Claudius that this was merely a mock-marriage, intended to avert some ominous auguries which threatened to destroy "the husband of Messalina;" but, whatever Claudius may have imagined, all the rest of the world knew the marriage to be real, and regarded it not only as a vile enormity, but also as a direct attempt to bring about a usurpation of the imperial power.
"That even at this hour, if the matter were put about, his lordship might be brought to account for it, and it might fare very ill with him. The law of England deals heavily with an offense such as Lord Rotherby's, and the attempt at a mock-marriage, of which there is no lack of evidence, would so aggravate the crime of abduction, if he were informed against, that it might go very hard with him."
"So it was all a conspiracy?" "Yes." "And Cenni's mock-marriage and your betrayal of the scheme?" "Were meant to win your confidence." "So Cenni co-operated with you?" "She had to. At first she opposed it, and meant to win you for herself. She is a poor girl, and dependent on Diodora's charity; and she had to give way." "And Diodora?" "It was she who designed the whole plot.
"Ay, of Lord Rotherby and not a word more than is true," put in the earl. "Do you know but you do not the extent of your precious son's villainy? At Maidstone, where I overtook them at the Adam and Eve he had a make-believe parson, and he was luring this poor child into a mock-marriage." Her ladyship stared. "Mock-marriage?" she echoed. "Marriage? La!" And again she vented her unpleasant laugh.
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