"You don't mean to tell me that Mr. Stuyvesant Carter ever really married you!" said Michael incredulously.
"Sure!" said Lizzie proudly, "married me jest like enny swell; got me a dimon ring an' a silk lined suit an' a willer plume an everythin'." Lizzie held up a grimy hand on which Michael saw a showy glitter of jewelry.
"Have you anything to show for it?" asked Michael, expecting her of course to say no. "Have you any certificate or paper to prove that you were married according to law?"
"Sure!" said Lizzie triumphantly, drawing forth a crumpled roll from the folds of her dress and smoothing it out before his astonished eyes.
There it was, a printed wedding certificate, done in blue and gold with a colored picture of two clasped hands under a white dove with a gold ring in its beak. Beneath was an idealized boat with silken sails bearing two people down a rose-lined river of life; and the whole was bordered with orange blossoms. It was one of those old-fashioned affairs that country ministers used to give their parishioners in the years gone by, and are still to be had in some dusty corners of a forgotten drawer in country book stores. But Michael recognized at once that it was a real certificate. He read it carefully. The blanks were all filled in, the date she gave of the marriage was there, and the name of the bridegroom though evidently written in a disguised hand could be deciphered: "Sty. Carter." Michael did not recognize the names of either the witnesses or the officiating minister.
"How do you happen to have Mr. Carter's real name here when you say he married you under an assumed name?" he asked moving his finger thoughtfully over the blurred name that had evidently been scratched out and written over again.
"I made him put it in after I found out who he was," said Lizzie. "He couldn't come it over me thet-a-way. He was awful gone on me then, an' I cud do most ennythin' with him. It was 'fore she cum home from Europe! She jes' went fer him an' turned his head. Ef I'd a-knowed in time I'd gone an' tole her, but land sakes! I don't 'spose 'twould a done much good. I would a-ben to her before, only I was fool 'nough to promise him I wouldn't say nothin' to her ef he'd keep away from her. You see I needed money awful bad fer baby. He don't take to livin' awful good. He cries a lot an' I bed to hev thin's fer 'im, so I threatened him ef he didn't do sompin' I'd go tell her; an' he up an' forked over, but not till I promised. But now they say the papers is tellin' he's to marry her to-night, an' I gotta stop it somehow. I got my rights an' baby's to look after, promise er no promise, Ken I get him arrested?"