The figure in black had come a step or two nearer. She flung back her veil with a sudden passionate gesture.
‘Oscar Boyd!’ The words were spoken with a sort of slow, deliberate emphasis.
The lovers fell apart as though a thunderbolt had dropped between them. Oscar’s face changed on the instant to a ghastly pallor. With one hand, he clutched the back of a chair; the other went up to his throat, as though there were something there which stopped his breathing. For the space of a few seconds the ticking of the clock on the chimney-piece was the only sound that broke the silence.
Then came the question: ‘Who are you?’ breathed rather than spoken.
In clear incisive tones came the answer: ‘Your wife!’
The day was three hours older.
The news that Mr Boyd’s wife, who was supposed to have been drowned several years before, had unexpectedly proved that she was still in existence, was not long before it reached the ears of everybody at Rosemount, from Captain Bowood himself to the boy in the stables. As soon as he had recovered in some degree from the first shock of surprise, Oscar had gone in search of Mrs Bowood; and having explained to her in as few words as possible what had happened, had asked her to grant him the use of one of her parlours for a few hours. Mrs Bowood, who was the soul of hospitality, would fain have gone on the instant and welcomed Mrs Boyd, as she welcomed all her guests at Rosemount, and it may be with even more empressement than usual, considering the remarkable circumstances of the case. Mr Boyd, however, vetoed her proposition in a way which caused her to suspect that there must be something more under the surface than she was aware of; so, with ready tact, she forbore to question him further, and at once placed a sitting-room at his disposal.
In this room the husband and his newly found wife were shut up together. Mr Boyd looked five years older than he had looked a few hours previously. He was very pale. A certain hardness in the lines of his mouth, unnoticed before, now made itself plainly observable. His brows were contracted; all the gladness, all the softness had died out of his dark eyes as completely as if they had never had an existence there. He was sitting at a table, poring over some railway maps and time-tables. On a sofa, separated from him by half the length of the room, sat his wife. She was a tall, dark, shapely woman, who had left her thirtieth birthday behind her some years ago. She had a profusion of black hair, and very bright black eyes, with a certain cold, clear directness of gaze in them, which for some men seemed to have a sort of special charm. Certainly, they looked like eyes that could never melt with sympathy or be softened by tears. She had a long Grecian nose, and full red lips; but her chin was too heavy and rounded for the rest of her face. Her clear youthful complexion owed probably as much to art as it did to nature; but it was art so skilfully applied as sometimes to excite the envy of those of her own sex to whom such secrets were secrets no longer. In any case, most men conceded that she was still a very handsome woman, and it was not likely that she was unaware of the fact.
She sat for a little while tapping impatiently with one foot on the carpet, and glancing furtively at the impassive face bent over its books and maps, which seemed for the time to have forgotten that there was any such person as she in existence. At length she could keep silent no longer. ‘You do not seem particularly delighted by the return of your long-lost wife, who was saved from shipwreck by a miracle. Many men would be beside themselves with joy; but you are a philosopher, and know how to hide your feelings. Eh bien! if you are not overjoyed to see me, I am overjoyed to see you; and I love you so very dearly, that I will never leave you again.’ Only a slight foreign accent betrayed the fact that she was not an Englishwoman.
Oscar Boyd took no more notice of her than if she had been addressing herself to the empty air.