Anna the Adventuress

"When you married me----"

Her little hand flashed out across the table.

"John," she said, "I can spare you that question. I had been about as

foolish and selfish as a girl could be. I had done the most

compromising things, and behaved in the most ridiculous way. But from

the rest--you saved me."

Sir John breathed a long deep sigh. He sat up in his chair again, the

colour came back to his cheeks.

"John, don't!" she cried. "You think that this is all. You are going

to be generous and forgive. It isn't all. There is worse to come.

There is a tragedy to come."

"Out with it, then," he cried, almost roughly. "Don't you know, child,

that this is torture for me? What in God's name more can you have to

tell me?"

Her face had become almost like a marble image. She spoke with a

certain odd deliberation carefully chosen words which fell like drops

of ice upon the man who sat listening.

"Before I met you I was deluded into receiving upon friendly terms a

man named Hill, who passed himself off as Meysey Hill the railway man,

but who was in reality an Englishman in poor circumstances. He was

going to settle I forget how many millions upon me, and I think that I

was dazzled. I went with him to what I supposed to be the British

Embassy, and went through a ceremony which I understood to be the

usual form of the marriage one used there. Afterwards we started for a

motor ride to a place outside Paris for _dejeuner_, and I suppose the

man's nerve failed him. I questioned him too closely about his

possessions, and remarked upon the fact that he was a most inexpert

driver, although Meysey Hill had a great reputation as a motorist.

Anyhow he confessed that he was a fraud. I struck him across the face,

jumped out and went back by train to Paris. He lost control of the

machine, was upset and nearly killed."

"Did you say," Sir John asked, "that the man's name was Hill?"

"Yes," she answered.

"The man who was found dead in your sister's room was named Hill?"

"It is the man," she answered. "I killed him."

Sir John clutched at the table with both hands. A slow horror was

dawning in his fixed eyes. This was not the sort of confession which

he had been expecting. Annabel had spoken calmly enough and steadily,

but his brain refused at first to accept the full meaning of her

words. It seemed to him that a sort of mist had risen up between them.

Everything was blurred. Only her face was clear, frail and delicate,

almost flower-like, with the sad haunting eyes ever watching his.

Annabel a murderess! It was not possible.