They parted from Mr. Jay, saying: "Remember
the address--14 Babylon Terrace. You dine with us to-morrow
week." Mr. Jay accepted the invitation, and added, jocosely, that
he was going home at once to get off his clean clothes, and to be
comfortable and dirty again for the rest of the day. I have to
report that I saw him home safely, and that he is comfortable and
dirty again (to use his own disgraceful language) at the present
moment.
Here the affair rests, having by this time reached what I may
call its first stage.
I know very well what persons of hasty judgment will be inclined
to say of my proceedings thus far. They will assert that I have
been deceiving myself all through in the most absurd way; they
will declare that the suspicious conversations which I have
reported referred solely to the difficulties and dangers of
successfully carrying out a runaway match; and they will appeal
to the scene in the church as offering undeniable proof of the
correctness of their assertions. So let it be. I dispute nothing
up to this point. But I ask a question, out of the depths of my
own sagacity as a man of the world, which the bitterest of my
enemies will not, I think, find it particularly easy to answer.
Granted the fact of the marriage, what proof does it afford me of
the innocence of the three persons concerned in that clandestine
transaction? It gives me none.
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