“Well, I scarcely know,” she responded, returning my glance unflinchingly. “We all of us have some little mystery or other in our lives, I suppose.”
I had taken her hand in adieu, and was still holding it.
“And are you no exception?”
“Ah! now, Doctor, you’re really too inquisitive.” And she laughed, just a trifle unnaturally I thought, as though I had approached an unwelcome topic.
“Well,” I said smiling, “I won’t press you further; it isn’t fair. Good-bye, and I trust I shall meet both your cousin and yourself at a date not far distant—that is, if I am still in town.”
“Oh, I hope you will be!” exclaimed her ladyship; “I can’t think why doctors go and bury themselves in the country.”
“There are just as many patients in the country districts as in the towns,” I responded. “And in the country one carries on one’s profession amid more congenial surroundings.”
I repeated my farewells, and, with a final and longing glance at my mysterious wife, went forth into the hall, and was let out by the liveried servant.
To approach my wife boldly and demand the truth was, I saw, useless. First I must, by my own careful observation, establish her identity with Beryl Wynd, and, secondly, clear up the mystery of how a woman could be dead and yet still live.
The expression of those clear, honest eyes, the form of the beautiful face, as flawless as that of Titian’s “Flora” in the Tribune of the Uffizzi, the unusual tint of that gold-brown hair were all unmistakable. They set at rest any doubt which arose within me that the woman whose hand I had held was not the same upon whose finger I had placed the wedding-ring. Incredible though it seemed, I had that morning spoken with my unknown wife, and she had not known me. We were strangers, yet united in matrimony.