"Yes?"
"When you have married me, go up to the house and see him. Before Sir Digby's people get there. Before they put the coins on his eyes." Her voice had gone very low. "He asked for you. At the end. Not by name; he had stopped using names by then. He asked whether the boy had eaten. I told him yes. I didn't know. I lied to him." She looked up. "That is the last lie I mean to tell you, Your Grace. I would like you to go and make it true."
The clock over their heads struck the half hour.
Ivo opened the vestry door. Beyond it, in the chancel, the rector and the attorney and Cordelia and Sir Digby Rendell all turned at once, like figures on a clock.
"Mr. Furnival," said the seventh Duke of Ellerholt, "I believe you are a surrogate of the Bishop of Lincoln and may grant a licence. I should like one, if you please. Quickly."
IV.
It was done in nineteen minutes, and afterward Mr. Furnival said that he had never in thirty years of holy orders performed the office so fast or so badly, and that he hoped God had been attending more closely than he had.
The licence was sworn at the vestry table. Ivo laid his hand on the rector's Testament and swore that he knew of no impediment of kindred or alliance, that he was of full age, that he had lodged in the parish the night before; Mr. Furnival wrote it out in a hand that skidded across the paper, and sanded it, and signed it, and only then remembered that he had no seal, and decided aloud that the Bishop would forgive him. Sir Digby Rendell stood in the doorway throughout and said, in a voice meant for the chancel, that this was a fraud upon the Church and he would see the Bishop told of it. Mr. Furnival, sanding, said that the Bishop would no doubt be glad to hear from Sir Digby, as he always was.
Then they were in the chancel, and the church was in front of them.
Nobody had left. Ivo had thought some of them would; he had half hoped it. Instead the whole nave sat in a stillness so complete that he could hear the rooks in the churchyard elms. They had heard, of course. The vestry door was oak, but it was old oak, and Sir Digby had not troubled to lower his voice. They knew the Duke was dead. They knew that the woman in black meant to marry his heir across his body, and they had stayed to watch her do it.
She walked to the chancel step and stood there, and he went and stood beside her.