erringhall. It is I who
am persecuted by the man who calls himself your husband."

Annabel shivered a little and looked around her.

"He does not come here," she exclaimed, quickly.

"He spends hours of every day on the pavement below," Anna answered
calmly. "I have been bearing this--for your sake. Shall I send him to
Sir John?"

Annabel was white to the lips, but her anger was not yet spent.

"It was your own fault," she exclaimed. "He would never have found you
out if you had not personated me."

"On the contrary," Anna whispered quietly, "we met in a small
boarding-house where I was stopping."

"You have not told me yet," Annabel said, "how it is that you have
dared to personate me. To call yourself 'Alcide'! Your hair, your
gestures, your voice, all mine! Oh, how dared you do it?"

"You must not forget," Anna said calmly, "that it is necessary for me
also--to live. I arrived here with something less than five pounds in
my pocket. My reception at West Kensington you know of. I was the
black sheep, I was hurried out of the way. You did not complain then
that I personated you--no, nor when Sir John came to me in Paris, and
for your sake I lied."

"You did not----"

"Wait, Annabel! When I arrived in London I went to live in the
cheapest place I could find. I set myself to find employment. I
offered myself as a clerk, as a milliner, as a shop girl. I would even
have taken a place as waitress in a tea shop. I walked London till the
soles of my shoes were worn through, and my toes were blistered. I ate
only enough to keep body and soul together."

"There was no need for such heroism," Annabel said coldly. "You had
only to ask----"

"Do you think," Anna interrupted, with a note of passion trembling
also in her tone, "that I would have taken alms from Sir John, the man
to whom I had lied for your sake. It was not possible. I went at last
when I had barely a shilling in my purse to a dramatic agent. By
chance I went to one who had known you in Paris."

"Well!"

"He greeted me effusively. He offered me at once an engagement. I told
him that I was not 'Alcide.' He only laughed. He had seen the
announcement of your marriage in the papers, and he imagined that I
simply wanted to remain unknown because of your husband's puritanism.
I sang to him, and he was satisfied. I did not appear, I have never
announced myself as 'Alcide.' It was the Press who forced the identity
upon me."

"They were my posters," Annabe