“Thanks; I prefer to stand,” he answered briefly. “I suppose you are prepared with your explanation, Ninette?”
She sank on to an arm-chair with an air of weary languor, the pug nestling against the folds of her gown.
“Yes, I am quite prepared,” she answered calmly. “But, first of all, I do not wish to be called Ninette any more: the sobriquet savours too much of Paris and Bohemianism. My real name, as I thought you were aware, is Marie, which my late husband preferred to translate into Mary. I was always plain English Mary to him, never the frivolous Ninette you knew.”
“Your late husband,” repeated Karne, a trifle cynically. “To whom do you allude?”
“To my second husband, of course,” she returned evenly. “Dr. Percival Arthur Neville Williams, of Harley Street, London, and Bolton Lawns, Surrey.”
Herbert paced the room in agitation. “You say that the late Dr. Neville Williams was your second husband,” he said incredulously. “Have you forgotten, or do you pretend to ignore the fact of your marriage with myself?”
“I do neither,” she rejoined, lifting the pug on to her knee. “As it happens, however, my marriage with you was annulled on the very day that the ceremony took place.”
The artist stood still and confronted her with amazement. He could hardly believe his ears. The marriage annulled! How could it have been annulled? Surely Ninette was trying to fool him, as she had so often done before. Judging by her manner, she attached but light importance to her words; her calmness quite irritated him. It might have been a little thing to her, but it meant a great deal to him.
“Listen!” she commanded, not heeding his evident excitement. “If you will be so good as to desist from tramping round the room like a caged lion, I will tell you everything. I need not tell you unless I like—I have kept it back all these years—but, for a certain reason, it pleases me that you should know now. To begin at the beginning: At the age of eighteen I was legally and properly married, in the presence of relatives and friends, to Armand Douste, an engineer in the French navy. Shortly after the wedding he was sent on a voyage from Marseilles to Hong-Kong, where he stayed two months. The boat on which he returned—the ill-fated Marie Antoinette—went down off Aden with all hands on board. There were five survivors, according to the newspapers, but Armand’s name was not amongst them; and after many futile inquiries, I naturally concluded that my husband had perished with the rest. The sudden bereavement was, of course, a great shock; but I could not afford to allow sentiment to affect my appetite, and I made as light of it as I possibly could. I stayed in Marseilles a few months longer; but meanwhile my mother died; and my father having lost heavily on the turf, I was obliged to consider some means of earning a livelihood. Armand had left me with only his current salary to live upon, intending to be back before the next quarter came due. I went to Paris, and adopted the profession in which you found me. My good looks and my talents were my sole stock-in-trade, so I was obliged to use them to the best of my ability. Then I met you; and although I had loved Armand devotedly, I rather admired your handsome face, and your quiet English ways. I was tired, too, of my mode of living at that time, and, wishing for a change, accepted your proposal of marriage. What happened then, you know. You were called home on the day of the wedding; I was left in Paris to await your return. Scarcely an hour after your departure, however, I was told that a gentleman wished to see me. I went into the salon, and to my astonished bewilderment, there stood my husband, Armand Douste! He seemed to me like one risen from the dead; and indeed he looked nearer death than life. He had been picked up by an English vessel bound for Singapore; where, having landed, he lay too ill to be moved for nearly eight months. As soon as he recovered, he worked his way back to Marseilles, and not being able to discover me there, eventually traced me to Paris. There, by dint of arduous perseverance, he found me, just married to another man!”
She paused to sip a fluid out of what looked like a medicine-glass. The talking seemed to tire her, and frequently she put her hand to her side as if in pain. Her interlocutor sat like one immovable. If what she were saying were true, he was free—free! Oh the joy of that thought! But he could not believe it—yet.