Anna looked about her admiringly. It was just such a bedroom as she
would have chosen for herself. The colouring was green and white, with
softly shaded electric lights, an alcove bedstead, which was a miracle
of daintiness, white furniture, and a long low dressing-table littered
all over with a multitude of daintily fashioned toilet appliances.
Through an open door was a glimpse of the bathroom--a vision of
luxury, out of which Annabel herself, in a wonderful dressing-gown and
followed by a maid presently appeared.
"Too bad to keep you waiting," Annabel exclaimed. "I'm really very
sorry. Collins, you can go now. I will ring if I want you."
The maid discreetly withdrew, and Anna stood transfixed, gazing with
puzzled frown at her sister.
"Annabel! Why, what on earth have you been doing to yourself, child?"
she exclaimed.
Annabel laughed a little uneasily.
"The very question, my dear sister," she said, "tells me that I have
succeeded. Dear me, what a difference it has made! No one would ever
think that we were sisters. Don't you think that the shade of my hair
is lovely?"
"There is nothing particular the matter with the shade," Anna
answered, "but it is not nearly so becoming as before you touched it.
And what on earth do you want to darken your eyebrows and use so much
make-up for at your age? You're exactly twenty-three, and you're got
up as much as a woman of forty-five."
Annabel shrugged her shoulders.
"I only use the weeniest little dab of rouge," she declared, "and it
is really necessary, because I want to get rid of the 'pallor
effect.'"
Anna made no remark. Her disapproval was obvious enough. Annabel saw
it, and suddenly changed her tone.
"You are very stupid, Anna," she said. "Can you not understand? It is
of no use your taking my identity and all the burden of my iniquities
upon your dear shoulders if I am to be recognized the moment I show my
face in London. That is why I have dyed my hair, that is why I have
abandoned my role of _ingenuee_ and altered my whole style of dress.
Upon my word, Anna," she declared, with a strange little laugh, "you
are a thousand times more like me as I was two months ago than I am
myself."
A sudden sense of the gravity of this thing came home to Anna. Her
sister's words were true. They had changed identities absolutely. It
was not for a week or a month. It was for ever. A cold shiver came
over her. That last year in Paris, when Annabel and she had lived in
different worlds, had often been a nightmare to her. Annabel had taken
her life into her hands with gay _insouciance_, had made her own
friends, gone her own way. Anna never knew whither it had led
her--sometimes she had fears. It was her past now, not Annabel's.
"It is very good of you to come and see me, my dear sister," Annabel
remarked, throwing herself into a low chair, and clasping her hands
over her head. "To tell you the truth, I am a little dull."
"Where is your husband?" Anna asked.
"He is addressing a meeting of his constituents somewhere," Annabel
answered. "I do not suppose he will be home till late. Tell me how are
you amusing yourself?"
Anna laughed.
"I have been amusing myself up to now by trying to earn my living,"
she replied.
"I hope," Annabel answered lazily, "that you have succeeded.
By-the-bye, do you want any money? Sir John's ideas of pin money are
not exactly princely, but I can manage what you want, I dare say."
"Thank you," Anna answered coldly. "I am not in need of any. I might
add that in any case I should not touch Sir John's."
"That's rather a pity," Annabel said. "He wants to settle something on
you, I believe. It is really amusing. He lives in constant dread of a
reappearance of '_La Belle Alcide_,' and hearing it said that she is
his wife's sister. Bit priggish, isn't it? And if he only knew it--so
absurd. Tell me how you are earning your living here,
Anna--typewriting, or painting, or lady's companion?"
"I think," Anna said, "that the less you know about me the better. Is
all your house on the same scale of magnificence as this, Annabel?"
she asked, looking round.
Annabel shook her head.
"Most of it is ugly and frowsy," she declared, "but it isn't worth
talking about. I have made up my mind to insist upon moving from here
into Park Lane, or one of the Squares. It is absolutely a frightful
neighbourhood, this. If only you could see the people who have been to
call on me! Sir John has the most absurd ideas, too. He won't have
menservants inside the house, and his collection of carriages is only
fit for a museum--where most of his friends ought to be, by-the-bye. I
can assure you, Anna, it will take me years to get decently
established. The man's as obstinate as a mule."
Anna looked at her steadily.
"He will find it difficult no doubt to alter his style of living,"
she said. "I do not blame him. I hope you will always remember----"
Annabel held out her hands with a little cry of protest.
"No lecturing, Anna!" she exclaimed. "I hope you have not come for
that."
"I came," Anna answered, looking her sister steadily in the face, "to
hear all that you can tell me about a man named Hill."
Annabel had been lying curled up on the lounge, the personification of
graceful animal ease. At Anna's words she seemed suddenly to stiffen.
Her softly intertwined fingers became rigid. The little spot of rouge
was vivid enough now by reason of this new pallor, which seemed to
draw the colour even from her lips. But she did not speak. She made no
attempt to answer her sister's question. Anna looked at her curiously,
and with sinking heart.
"You must answer me, Annabel," she continued. "You must tell me the
truth, please. It is necessary."
Annabel rose slowly to her feet, walked to the door as though to see
that it was shut, and came back with slow lagging footsteps.
"There was a man called Montague Hill," she said hoarsely, "but he is
dead."
"Then there is also," Anna remarked, "a Montague Hill who is very much
alive. Not only that, but he is here in London. I have just come from
him."
Annabel no longer attempted to conceal her emotion. She battled with a
deadly faintness, and she tottered rather than walked back to her
seat. Anna, quitting her chair, dropped on her knees by her sister's
side and took her hand.
"Do not be frightened, dear," she said. "You must tell me the truth,
and I will see that no harm comes to you."
"The only Montague Hill I ever knew," Annabel said slowly, "is dead. I
know he is dead. I saw him lying on the footway. I felt his heart. It
had ceased to beat. It was a motor accident--a fatal motor accident
the evening papers called it. They could not have called it a fatal
motor accident if he had not been dead."
Anna nodded.
"Yes, I remember," she said. "It was the night you left Paris. They
thought that he was dead at first, and they took him to the hospital.
I believe that his recovery was considered almost miraculous."
"Alive," Annabel moaned, her eyes large with terror. "You say that he
is alive."
"He is certainly alive," Anna declared. "More than that, he arrived
to-day at the boarding-house where I am staying, greeted me with a
theatrical start, and claimed me--as his wife. That is why I am here.
You must tell me what it all means."
"And you?" Annabel exclaimed. "What did you say?"
"Well, I considered myself justified in denying it," Anna answered
drily. "He produced what he called a marriage certificate, and I
believe that nearly every one in the boarding-house, including Mrs.
White, my landlady, believes his story. I am fairly well hardened in
iniquity--your iniquity, Annabel--but I decline to have a husband
thrust upon me. I really cannot have anything to do with Mr. Montague
Hill."
"A--marriage certificate!" Annabel gasped.
Anna glanced into her sister's face, and rose to her feet.
"Let me get you some water, Annabel. Don't be frightened, dear.
Remember----"
Annabel clutched her sister's arm. She would not let her move. She
seemed smitten with a paroxysm of fear.
"A thick-set, coarse-looking young man, Anna!" she exclaimed in a
hoarse excited whisper. "He has a stubbly yellow moustache, weak eyes,
and great horrid hands."
Anna nodded.
"It is the same man, Annabel," she said. "There is no doubt whatever
about that. There was the motor accident, too. It is the same man, for
he raved in the hospital, and they fetched me. It was you, of course,
whom he wanted."
"Alive! In London!" Annabel moaned.
"Yes. Pull yourself together, Annabel! I must have the truth."
The girl on the lounge drew a long sobbing breath.
"You shall," she said. "Listen! There was a Meysey Hill in Paris, an
American railway millionaire. This man and he were alike, and about
the same age. Montague Hill was taken for the millionaire once or
twice, and I suppose it flattered his vanity. At any rate, he began to
deliberately personate him. He sent me flowers. Celeste introduced him
to me--oh, how Celeste hated me! She must have known. He--wanted to
marry me. Just then--I was nervous. I had gone further than I meant
to--with some Englishmen. I was afraid of being talked about. You
don't know, Anna, but when one is in danger one realizes that the--the
other side of the line is Hell. The man was mad to marry me. I heard
everywhere of his enormous riches and his generosity. I consented. We
went to the Embassy. There was--a service. Then he took me out to
Monteaux, on a motor. We were to have breakfast there and return in
the evening. On the way he confessed. He was a London man of business,
spending a small legacy in Paris. He had heard me sing--the fool
thought himself in love with me. Celeste he knew. She was chaffing him
about being taken for Meysey Hill, and suggested that he should be
presented to me as the millionaire. He told me with a coarse nervous
laugh. I was his wife. We were to live in some wretched London suburb.
His salary was a few paltry hundreds a year. Anna, I listened to all
that he had to say, and I called to him to let me get out. He laughed.
I tried to jump, but he increased the speed. We were going at a mad
pace. I struck him across the mouth, and across the eyes. He lost
control of the machine. I jumped then--I was not even shaken. I saw
the motor dashed to pieces against the wall, and I saw him pitched on
his head into the road. I leaned over and looked at him--he was quite
still. I could not hear his heart beat. I thought that he was dead. I
stole away and walked to the railway station. That night in Paris I
saw on the bills 'Fatal Motor Accidents.' _Le Petit Journal_ said that
the man was dead. I was afraid that I might be called upon as a
witness. That is why I was so anxious to leave Paris. The man who came
to our rooms, you know, that night was his friend."
"The good God!" Anna murmured, herself shaken with fear. "You were
married to him!"
"It could not be legal," Annabel moaned. "It couldn't be. I thought
that I was marrying Meysey Hill, not that creature. We stepped from
the Embassy into the motor--and oh! I thought that he was dead. Why
didn't he die?"
Anna sprang to her feet and walked restlessly up and down the room.
Annabel watched her with wide-open, terrified eyes.
"You won't give me away, Anna. He would never recognize me now. You
are much more like what I was then."
Anna stopped in front of her.
"You don't propose, do you," she said quietly, "that I should take
this man for my husband?"
"You can drive him away," Annabel cried. "Tell him that he is mad. Go
and live somewhere else."
"In his present mood," Anna remarked, "he would follow me."
"Oh, you are strong and brave," Annabel murmured. "You can keep him at
arm's length. Besides, it was under false pretences. He told me that
he was a millionaire. It could not be a legal marriage."
"I am very much afraid," Anna answered, "that it was. It might be
upset. I am wondering whether it would not be better to tell your
husband everything. You will never be happy with this hanging over
you."
Annabel moistened her dry lips with a handkerchief steeped in eau de
Cologne.
"You don't know him, Anna," she said with a little shudder, "or you
would not talk like that. He is steeped in the conventions. Every
slight action is influenced by what he imagines would be the opinion
of other people. Anything in the least irregular is like poison to
him. He has no imagination, no real generosity. You might tell the
truth to some men, but never to him."
Anna was thoughtful. A conviction that her sister's words were true
had from the first possessed her.
"Annabel," she said slowly, "if I fight this thing out myself, can I
trust you that it will not be a vain sacrifice? After what you have
said it is useless for us to play with words. You do not love your
husband, you have married him for a position--to escape from--things
which you feared. Will you be a faithful and honest wife? Will you do
your duty by him, and forget all your past follies? Unless, Annabel,
you can----"
"Oh, I will pledge you my word," Annabel cried passionately, "my
solemn word. Believe me, Anna. Oh, you must believe me. I have been
very foolish, but it is over."
"Remember that you are young still, and fond of admiration," Anna
said. "You will not give Sir John any cause for jealousy? You will
have no secrets from him except--concerning those things which are
past?"
"Anna, I swear it!" her sister sobbed.
"Then I will do what I can," Anna promised. "I believe that you are
quite safe. He has had brain fever since, and, as you say, I am more
like what you were then than you yourself are now. I don't think for a
moment that he would recognize you."
Annabel clutched her sister's hands. The tears were streaming down her
face, her voice was thick with sobs.
"Anna, you are the dearest, bravest sister in the world," she cried.
"Oh, I can't thank you. You dear, dear girl. I--listen."
They heard a man's voice outside.
"Sir John!" Annabel gasped.
Anna sprang to her feet and made for the dressing-room door.
"One moment, if you please!"
She stopped short and looked round. Sir John stood upon the threshold.
_Chapter XVI_