"If she is," he answered, "I am convinced that there are circ.u.mstances in connexion with that marriage which would make a divorce easy."

"You would marry a divorcee?" she asked.

"I would marry your sister anyhow, under any circ.u.mstances," he answered.

She looked at him curiously.

"I want to ask you a question," she said abruptly. "This wonderful affection of yours for my sister, does it date from your first meeting with her in Paris?"

He hesitated.

"I admired your sister in Paris," he answered, "but I do not believe that I regard her now as altogether the same person. Something has happened to change her marvellously, either that, or she wilfully deceived me and every one else in those days as to her real self. She was a much lighter and more frivolous person, very charming and companionable--but with a difference--a great difference. I wonder whether you would mind, Lady Ferringhall," he went on, with a sudden glance at her, "if I tell you that you yourself remind me a great deal more of what she was like then, except of course that your complexion and colouring are altogether different."

"I am highly flattered," she remarked, with subtle irony.

"Will you help me?" he asked.

"What can I do?"

"Go and see her. Find out what I have done or failed to do. Get me an interview with her."

"Really," she said, with a hard little laugh, "you must regard me as a very good-natured person."

"You are," he answered unconsciously. "I am sure that you are. I want her to tell me the whole truth about this extraordinary marriage. We will find some way out of it."

"You think that you can do that?"

"I am sure of it," he answered, confidently. "Those things are arranged more easily in any other country than England. At any rate she must see me. I demand it as a right. I must know what new thing has come between us that she should treat me as a lover one day and a monster the next."

She leaned back amongst the cushions of her chair. She was very pale, but she reminded him more at that minute than at any time of "Alcide"

as he had first known her.

"I wonder," she said, "how much you care."

"I care as a man cares only once in his life," he answered promptly.

"When it comes there is no mistaking it."

"Did it come--in Paris?"

"I do not know," he answered. "I do not think so. What does it matter?

It is here, and it is here to stay. Do help me, Lady Ferringhall. You need not be afraid. No trouble will ever come to your sister through me. If this idiotic marriage is binding then I will be her friend. But I have powerful friends. I only want to know the truth, and I will move heaven and earth to have it set aside."

"The truth," she murmured, with her eyes fixed upon him. "Well----"

She stopped short. He looked at her in some embarra.s.sment.

"Forgive me," he said, "but I want to hear it from your sister. It is her duty to tell me, and I would not have her think that I had been trying to work upon your sympathies to learn her secrets."

She was silent.

"You will go and see her," he begged.

"Yes, I will go," she promised, with a queer little smile. "It is against my husband's orders, and I am not sure that my sister will be particularly glad to see me. But I will go."

"I shall always be grateful to you," he declared.

"Don't be too sure of that," she answered enigmatically.

_Chapter XXIII_

MONTAGUE HILL SEES LIGHT AT LAST

At exactly ten minutes past ten Annabel rang the bell of her sister's flat. There was no response. She rang again with the same result.

Then, as she was in the act of turning reluctantly away, she noticed a thin crack between the door and the frame. She pushed the former and it opened. The latch had not fully caught.

The flat was apparently empty. Annabel turned on the electric light and made her way into the sitting-room. There was a coffee equipage on the table, and some sandwiches, and the fire had been recently made up. Annabel seated herself in an easy chair and determined to wait for her sister's return.

The clock struck half-past ten. The loneliness of the place somewhat depressed her. She took up a book and threw it down again. Then she examined with curiosity some knick-knacks upon a small round table by her side. Amongst them was a revolver. She handled it half fearfully, and set it carefully down again. Then for the first time she was conscious of an unaccountable and terrifying sensation. She felt that she was not alone.

She was only a few yards from the door, but lacked the courage to rise and fly. Her knees shook, her breath came fast, she almost felt the lurid effect of those tiny patches of rouge upon her pallor-stricken cheeks. Her eyes were dilated--fixed in a horrified stare at the parting in the curtains which hung before the window.

There was some one there. She had seen a man's head steal out for a moment and draw the curtains a little closer. Even now she could trace the outline of his shape behind the left-hand curtain. She was wholly unable to conceal her knowledge of his presence. A little smothered cry broke from her lips--the curtains were thrown aside and a man stepped out. She was powerless to move from her chair. All through that brief but measureless s.p.a.ce of time during which wonder kept him silent, as fear did her, she cowered there, a limp helpless object.

Her courage and her presence of mind had alike deserted her. She could neither speak nor move nor cry out.

"Annabel! G.o.d in Heaven, it is Annabel!"

She did not speak. Her lips parted, but no words came.

"What have you done to yourself?" he muttered. "You have dyed your hair and darkened your eyebrows. But you are Annabel. I should know you--in Heaven or h.e.l.l. Who is the other?"

"What other?"

Her voice seemed to come from a long way off. Her lips were dry and cracked.

"The Annabel who lives here, who sings every night at the 'Unusual'?

They call her by your old name. Her hair and voice and figure are as yours used to be. Who is she, I say?"

"My sister!" Annabel faltered.

He trembled violently. He seemed to be labouring under some great excitement.

"I am a fool," he said. "All these days I have taken her for you. I have pleaded with her--no wonder that I have pleaded with her in vain.

And all this time perhaps you have been waiting, expecting to hear from me. Is it so, Annabel?"

"I did not know," she faltered, "anything about you. Why should I?"