"The lady is here!" answered a once familiar voice at the half-open door of my sitting-room; and I jumped up to face a tall, slim figure in widow's weeds. "I hope you don't mind my surprising you?" went on the charming voice. "I wanted to see how you looked, when you saw my name."
"How do you do?" I greeted her, as we shook hands, and the page melted away and was forgotten. I tried to sound sincerely welcoming, for here she was, and I didn't want to hurt her feelings. But I wasn't as glad as some men would have been to see a celebrated beauty and charmer.
She explained that she had found herself in need of rest after her war work (the last time I had seen her was the day when I fled from the private hospital in London of my sister-in-law, Lady Haslemere), and she had thought a sea voyage might be beneficial. She added, with an air of beautiful boldness, that perhaps she'd come partly to meet me again. "I read that you were at the Belmont in New York; so I went there. But they said you were staying on Long Island. Country air will be as good for a tired nurse of wounded officers as it is for the wounded officers themselves, n'est ce pas? And it will be nice hearing your news, for we were rather pals!"
"Don was my best friend," I reminded her. "Here's his picture." And I took from the flat top of the desk where I had been writing, one of several framed photographs. A flush sprang to her cheeks as the husband's eyes looked into hers, and snatching the frame she dashed it down so violently that the glass smashed on the parquet floor.
"How cruel of you!" she cried. "He was a thief! He threw away my love and made me hate him. I thank Heaven he died!"
An impulse of anger shook me. If she had been a man I should have struck her. I'm not sure I didn't want to, as it was, in spite of her beauty—or even because of it, so did it flaunt itself like an enemy flag.
"It's you who are cruel," I said. "Not to me, but to Don's memory. I could never believe he did what you thought. There may have been some horrible mistake. And his death has never been proved——"
"He's dead to me; and the proof's incontestable, or I shouldn't wear these things," she almost sobbed, indicating with a gesture her black dress and veil.
In my secret heart I had thought in London, and continued to think, that the motive for draping herself in black might be more complex than she admitted. Sir Donald Allendale had sailed for America on strange circumstances months ago; had disappeared, and a body found floating in the East River had been (superficially, I thought) identified as his. If widow's weeds hadn't been an effective frame for Irene Allendale's dazzling beauty, I wondered if she would have mourned in so many yards of crape for a husband she professed to hate?
"Oh, well," I said, controlling myself, and realising that she had some excuse to execrate Donald's memory, "let's not discuss Don now. There were faults on both sides. He was jealous, and you made him miserable. You were the greatest flirt as well as the greatest beauty in India that year, and—but come to think of it, we needn't discuss that either. The present's enough. You've arrived on this side, and——"