She came into a room with all the blinds up, the curtains pushed back, and floods of sunshine streaming in.
Just for an instant I was chilled with doubt of last night's impression, for her face was so pale and anxious that she was more like Rosemary than had been the red-rose vision at the theater. But she was genuinely surprised at sight of me.
“Why,” she exclaimed, “you are the lovely lady who sat next us at the play!”
“Does my name suggest nothing to you?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she echoed.
“Then, we'll sit down and I'll tell you a story,” I suggested,
I began with the Aquitania, the man in the cushioned deck chair, going home condemned to die, the beautiful girl who appeared on the second day out, the recognition. I mentioned no names. When I said, however, that years ago the two had been engaged, a sudden light flashed in my visitor's eyes. She would have interrupted, but I begged her to let me go on, and she sat silent while I told the whole story. Then, before she had time to speak, I said:
“There's just one thing I know! You are not the woman who came to England and married Ralston Murray. If you have a heart in your breast, you'll tell me where to find that woman. He will die unless she goes back to him.”
Her lips parted, but she pressed them tightly together again. I saw her muscles stiffen in sympathy with some resolve.
“The woman, whoever she was, must have impersonated me for a reason of her own,” she answered. “It's as deep a mystery to me as to you.”
I looked her in the eyes.
“That's not true, Mrs. Brandreth,” I flung at her, brutally. “In spite of what I've said, you're afraid of me. I give you my most sacred word that you shall be protected if you will help, as you alone can, to save Ralston Murray. It is only if you refuse your help that you may suffer. In that case my husband and I will fight for our friend. We won't consider you at all. Now that we have a strong clew to this seeming mystery and are already on its track, everything that you have done or have not done will soon come out.”
The beautiful woman broke down, and began to cry.
“What I did I had a right to do!” she sobbed. “There was no harm! It was as much for the sake of my husband's future happiness as my own, but if he finds out, he'll never love or trust me again. Men are so cruel!”
“Tell me who went to England in your place, when you pretended to sail, and he shan't find out. Only ourselves and Ralston Murray need ever know,” I urged.
“It was my twin sister,” she gasped, “my sister, Mary Rose Hillier, who sailed on the Aquitania as Mrs. Brandreth. It was the only way I could think of, so that I could be near my husband and watch him without his having the slightest suspicion what was going on. Mary Rose owed me a lot of money which I couldn't really afford. It was when she was still in England, before she came to America, that I let her have it. My mother was dreadfully ill, and Mary Rose adored her. She wanted to call in great specialists, and begged me to help her. At first I thought I couldn't. Guy and I are not rich! But he was flirting with a woman, a cat of a woman, you saw her last night. I was nearly desperate. Suddenly an idea came to me. I sold a rope of pearls I had, first getting it copied, and making my sister promise she would do whatever I asked, if I sent her the thousand pounds she wanted. You look shocked, I suppose because I bargained over my mother's health. But my husband was more to me than my mother or any one else. Besides, mother hadn't wished me to marry Guy. She didn't want me to jilt Ralston Murray. I couldn't forgive her for the way she behaved, and I never saw her after my runaway wedding.”
“So it was you, and not your sister, who was engaged to Ralston Murray eight years ago!” I couldn't resist.
“Yes, it happened abroad, as you know perhaps. Mary Rose was away at boarding school, and they never met, The whole affair was so short, so quickly over, I doubt if I ever even told Ralston that my sister and I were twins. But he gave me a lot of lovely presents, and refused to take them back, wrote that he'd burn them, pearls and all, if I sent them to him. Yes, the pearls I sold, he gave me when we were engaged. And there were photographs of him that Mary Rose wouldn't let me destroy. She kept them herself. She was sorry for Ralston, hearing the story, and seeing some of his letters. She was a romantic girl, and thought him the ideal man. She was half in love, without having seen him in the flesh.”