"
"Not wrong!"
"Well, you know what I mean. She was the purest and best of women." Then
he went on with his tale. There had been two marriages, and he now
brought forth all the evidence of the former marriage. It had taken
place in a remote town, a village in the northern part of Prussia,
whither she had been taken by her mother to join him. The two ladies had
both been since long dead. He had been laid up at the little Prussian
town under the plea of a bad leg. He did not scruple to say now that the
bad leg had been pretence, and a portion of his scheme. The law, he
thought, in endeavoring to make arrangements for his property,--the
property which should have been his own,--had sinned so greatly as to
drive a wise man to much scheming. He had begun scheming early in the
business. But for his bad leg the old lady would not have brought her
daughter to be married at so out-of-the-way a place as Rummelsburg, in
Pomerania. He had travelled about and found Rummelsburg peculiarly
fitted for his enterprise. There was a most civil old Lutheran clergyman
there, to whom he had made himself peculiarly acceptable. He had now
certified copies of the registry at Rummelsburg, which left no loop-hole
for doubt. But he had felt that probably no inquiry would have been made
about what had been done thirty years ago at Rummelsburg, had he himself
desired to be silent on the subject.
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