Anna the Adventuress Part 20

Mr. Hill was exchanging greetings with his hostess, and salutations around the table.

"Thank you, ma'am. Glad to get back, I'm sure," he said briskly.

"Looks like old times here, I see. Sorry I'm a bit late the first evening. Got detained in the City, and----"

Then he met the fixed, breathless gaze of those wonderful eyes from the other side of the table, and he, too, broke off in the middle of his sentence. He breathed heavily, as though he had been running. His large, coa.r.s.e lips drew wider apart. Slowly a mirthless and very unpleasant smile dawned upon his face.

"Great Scott!" he exclaimed huskily. "Why--it's--it's you!"

Amazement seemed to dry up the torrents of his speech. The girl regarded him with the face of a Sphinx. Only in her eyes there seemed to be some apprehension of the fact that the young man's clothes and manners were alike undesirable things.

"Are you speaking to me?" she asked calmly. "I am afraid that you are making a mistake. I am quite sure that I do not know you."

A dull flush burned upon his cheeks. He took his seat at the table, but leaned forward to address her. A note of belligerency had crept into his tone.

"Don't know me, eh? I like that. You are--or rather you were----" he corrected himself with an unpleasant little laugh, "Miss Pellissier, eh?"

A little sensation followed upon his words. Miss Ellicot pursed her lips and sat a little more upright. The lady whose husband had been Mayor of Hartlepool looked at Anna and sniffed. Mrs. White became conscious of a distinct sense of uneasiness, and showed it in her face. She was obliged, as she explained continually to every one who cared to listen, to be so very particular. On the other hand the two young men who sat on either side of Anna were already throwing murderous glances at the newcomer.

"My name," Anna replied calmly, "is certainly Pellissier, but I repeat that I do not know you. I never have known you."

He unfolded his serviette with fingers which shook all the time. His eyes never left her face. An ugly flush stained his cheeks.

"I've plenty of pals," he said, "who, when they've been doing Paris on the Q.T., like to forget all about it--even their names. But you----"

Something seemed to catch his breath. He never finished his sentence.

There was a moment's breathless and disappointed silence. If only he had known it, sympathy was almost entirely with him. Anna was no favourite at No. 13 Montague Street.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"You appear," she said, without any sign of anger in her tone, and with unruffled composure, "to be a very impertinent person. Do you mind talking to some one else."

Mrs. White leaned forward in her chair with an anxious smile designed to throw oil upon the troubled waters.

"Come," she said. "We mustn't have any unpleasantness, and Mr. Hill's first night back amongst us, too. No doubt there's some little mistake. We all get deceived sometimes. Mr. Hill, I hope you won't find everything cold. You're a little late, you must remember, and we are punctual people here."

"I shall do very well, thank you, ma'am," he answered shortly.

Sydney and Brendon vied with one another in their efforts to engage Anna in conversation, and Miss Ellicot, during the momentary lull, deemed it a favourable opportunity to recommence siege operations. The young man was mollified by her sympathy, and flattered by the obvious attempts of several of the other guests to draw him into conversation.

Yet every now and then, during the progress of the meal, his attention apparently wandered, and leaning forward he glanced covertly at Anna with a curious mixture of expressions on his face.

Anna rose a few minutes before the general company. At the same time Sydney and Brendon also vacated their places. To reach the door they had to pa.s.s the end of the table, and behind the chair where Mr. Hill was seated. He rose deliberately to his feet and confronted them.

"I should like to speak to you for a few minutes," he said to Anna, dropping his voice a little. "It is no good playing a game. We had better have it over."

She eyed him scornfully. In any place her beauty would have been an uncommon thing. Here, where every element of her surroundings was tawdry and commonplace, and before this young man of vulgar origin and appearance, it was striking.

"I do not know you," she said coldly. "I have nothing to say to you."

He stood before the door. Brendon made a quick movement forward. She laid her hand upon his arm.

"Please don't," she said. "It really is not necessary. Be so good as to let me pa.s.s, sir," she added, looking her obstructor steadily in the face.

He hesitated.

"This is all rot!" he declared angrily. "You can't think that I'm fool enough to be put off like this."

She glanced at Brendon, who stood by her side, tall and threatening.

Her eyebrows were lifted in expostulation. A faint, delightfully humorous smile parted her lips.

"After all," she said, "if this person will not be reasonable, I am afraid----"

It was enough. A hand of iron fell upon the scowling young man's shoulder.

"Be so good as to stand away from that door at once, sir," Brendon ordered.

Hill lost a little of his truculency. He knew very well that his muscles were flabby, and his nerve by no means what it should be. He was no match for Brendon. He yielded his place and struck instead with his tongue. He turned to Mrs. White.

"I'm sorry, ma'am, to seem the cause of any disturbance, but this," he pointed to Anna, "is my wife."

The sensation produced was gratifying enough. The man's statement was explicit, and spoken with confidence. Every one looked at Anna. For a moment she too had started and faltered in her exit from the room. Her fingers clutched the side of the door as though to steady herself. She caught her breath, and her eyes were lit with a sudden terror. She recovered herself, however, with amazing facility. Scarcely any one noticed the full measure of her consternation. From the threshold she looked her accuser steadily and coldly in the face.

"What you have said is a ridiculous falsehood," she declared scornfully. "I do not even know who you are."

She swept out of the room. Hill would have followed her, but Mrs.

White and Miss Ellicot laid each a hand upon his arm, one on either side. The echoes of his hard, unpleasant laugh reached Anna on her way upstairs.

It was a queer little bed-sitting-room almost in the roof, with a part.i.tion right across it. As usual Brendon lit the candles, and Sydney dragged out the spirit-lamp and set it going. Anna opened a cupboard and produced cups and saucers and a tin of coffee.

"Only four spoonsful left," she declared briskly, "and your turn to buy the next pound, Sydney."

"Right!" he answered. "I'll bring it to-morrow. Fresh ground, no chicory, and all the rest of it. But--Miss Pellissier!"

"Well?"

"Are you quite sure that you want us this evening? Wouldn't you rather be alone? Just say the word, and we'll clear out like a shot."

She laughed softly.

"You are afraid," she said, "that the young man who thinks that he is my husband has upset me."

"Madman!"

"Blithering a.s.s!"

The girl looked into the two indignant faces and held out both her hands.

"You're very nice, both of you," she said gently. "But I'm afraid you are going to be in a hopeless minority here as regards me."