"You--you did what?" Anna exclaimed.
"Called myself Anna," the girl repeated coolly. "It can't make any
difference to you, and there are not half a dozen people in Paris who
could tell us apart."
Anna tried to look angry, but her mouth betrayed her. Instead, she
laughed, laughed with lips and eyes, laughed till the tears ran down
her cheeks.
"You little wretch!" she exclaimed weakly. "Why should I bear the
burden of your wickedness? Who knows what might come of it? I shall
permit nothing of the sort."
Annabel shrugged her shoulders.
"Too late, my dear girl," she exclaimed. "I gave your name. I called
myself Anna. After all, what can it matter? It was just to make sure.
Three little letters can't make a bit of difference."
"But it may matter very much indeed," Anna declared. "Perhaps for
myself I do not mind, but this man is sure to find out some day, and
he will not like having been deceived. Tell him the truth, Annabel."
"The truth!"
There was a brief but intense silence. Anna felt that her words had
become charged with a fuller and more subtle meaning than any which
she had intended to impart. "The truth!" It was a moment of
awkwardness between the two sisters--a moment, too, charged with its
own psychological interest, for there were secrets between them which
for many months had made their intercourse a constrained and difficult
thing. It was Annabel who spoke.
"How crude you are, Anna!" she exclaimed with a little sigh. "Sir John
is not at all that sort. He is the kind of man who would much prefer a
little dust in his eyes. But heavens, I must pack!"
She sprang to her feet and disappeared in the room beyond, from which
she emerged a few minutes later with flushed cheeks and dishevelled
hair.
"It is positively no use, Anna," she declared, appealingly. "You must
pack for me. I am sorry, but you have spoilt me. I can't do it even
decently myself, and I dare not run the risk of ruining all my
clothes."
Anna laughed, gave in and with deft fingers created order out of
chaos. Soon the trunk, portmanteau and hat box were ready. Then she
took her sister's hand.
"Annabel," she said, "I have never asked you for your confidence. We
have lived under the same roof, but our ways seem to have lain wide
apart. There are many things which I do not understand. Have you
anything to tell me before you go?"
Annabel laughed lightly.
"My dear Anna! As though I should think of depressing you with my long
list of misdeeds."
"You have nothing to tell me?"
"Nothing!"
So Annabel departed with the slightest of farewells, wearing a thick
travelling veil, and sitting far back in the corner of a closed
carriage. Anna watched her from the windows, watched the carriage jolt
away along the cobbled street and disappear. Then she stepped back
into the empty room and stood for a moment looking down upon the
scattered fragments of her last canvas.