“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.”