The Imaginary Marriage | Page 8

then behind her appeared Lady Linden, flushed, and evidently
agitated.
"There," she said, "there, my dears--I have brought you together again,
and now everything must be made quite all right! Joan, darling, here is
your husband! Go to him, forgive him if there is aught to forgive. Ask
forgiveness, child, in your turn, and then--then kiss and be friends, as
husband and wife should be."
She beamed on them both, then swiftly retreated, and the door behind
Joan Meredyth quickly closed.
CHAPTER IV
FACE TO FACE
It was, Hugh Alston decided, the most beautiful face he had ever seen
in his life and the coldest, or so it seemed to him. She was looking at
him with cool questioning in her grey eyes, her lips drawn to a hard
line.
He saw her as she stood before him, and as he saw her now, so would

he carry the memory of the picture she made in his mind for many a
day to come--tall, perhaps a little taller than the average woman, tall by
comparison with Marjorie Linden, brown of hair and grey of eye, with
a disdainfully enquiring look about her.
He was not a man who usually noticed a woman's clothes, yet the
picture impressed on his mind of this girl was a very complete one. She
was wearing a dress that instinct told him was of some cheap material.
She might have bought it ready-made, she might have made it herself,
or some unskilled dressmaker might have turned it out cheaply. Poverty
was the note it struck, her boots were small and neat, well-worn. Yes,
poverty was the keynote to it all.
It was she, womanlike, who broke the silence.
"Well? I am waiting for some explanation of all the extraordinary
things that have been said to me since I have been in this house. You,
of course, heard what Lady Linden said as she left us?"
"I heard," he said. His cheeks turned red. Was ever a man in a worse
position? The questioning grey eyes stared at him so coldly that he lost
his head. He wanted to apologise, to explain, yet he knew that he could
not explain. It was Marjorie who had brought him into this, but he must
respect the girl's secret, on which so much depended for her.
"Please answer me," Joan Meredyth said. "You heard Lady Linden
advise us, you and myself, to make up a quarrel that has never taken
place; you heard her--" She paused, a great flush suddenly stole over
her face, adding enormously to her attractiveness, but quickly as it
came, it went.
What could he say? Vainly he racked his brains. He must say
something, or the girl would believe him to be fool as well as knave.
Ideas, excuses, lies entered his mind, he put them aside instantly, as
being unworthy of him and of her, yet he must tell her--something.
"When--when I used your name, believe me, I had no idea that it was
the property of a living woman--"

"When you used my name? I don't understand you!"
"I claimed that I was married to a Miss Joan Meredyth--"
"I still don't understand you. You say you claimed that you were
married--are you married to anyone?"
"No!"
"Then--then--" Again the glorious flush came into her cheeks, but was
gone again, leaving her whiter, colder than before, only her eyes
seemed to burn with the fire of anger and contempt.
"I am beginning to understand, for some reason of your own, you used
my name, you informed Lady Linden that you--and I were--married?"
"Yes," he said.
"And it was, of course, a vile lie, an insolent lie!" Her voice quivered.
"It has subjected me to humiliation and annoyance. I do not think that a
girl has ever been placed in such a false position as I have been through
your--cowardly lie."
He had probably never known actual fear in his life, nor a sense of
shame such as he knew now. He had nothing to say, he wanted to
explain, yet could not, for Marjorie's sake. If Lady Linden knew how
she had been deceived, she would naturally be furiously angry, and the
brunt of her anger would fall on Marjorie, and this must not be.
So, silent, unable to speak a word in self-defence, he stood listening,
shame-faced, while the girl spoke. Every word she uttered was cutting
and cruel, yet she shewed no temper. He could have borne with that.
"You probably knew of me, and knew that I was alone in the world
with no one to champion me. You knew that I was poor, Mr. Alston,
and so a fit butt for your cowardly jest. My poverty has brought me into
contact with strange people, cads; but the worst, the cruellest,