Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 7).djvu/166

 "The gentleman has been in his room for some little time," exclaimed a waiter who had now come upon the scene. "Would madam like me to announce her arrival?"

"No," she said, turning very pale. "I will go to him without being announced. Will you come with me, Dr. Halifax?"

We went upstairs, and the chambermaid conducted us to the door of No. 39. We knocked. The door was locked from within, but our summons was immediately answered by the approach of a manly step. The door was flung open and Mainwaring, with a Baedeker's guide in his hand, stood before us.

Mrs. Mainwaring rushed to him and impulsively endeavoured to throw her arms round his neck. He started back in astonishment which was not feigned.

"May I ask?" he said, looking at me, his eyes darkening with anger, "to what I am indebted for this—this most extraordinary intrusion? "

"Don't you know me, Edward?" sobbed the poor girl. "I am your wife."

"You must be mad," he said. He looked at her with a blank stare of undisguised astonishment and even disgust. "I have not the pleasure of this lady's acquaintance," he said, addressing me in an icy tone.

"You don't know me?" she panted. "Oh, surely that must be impossible. I am your wife, Edward. Look at me again, and you will remember me. T am Nancy's mother— pretty Nancy, with her curling hair; you know how fond you are of Nancy. Don't you remember Nancy, and Bob, and baby?—I am their mother. Dear, dear Edward, look at me again and you will know me. Look at me hard—I am your wife—your own most loving wife."

Notwithstanding her agitation, Mrs. Mainwaring had been quiet and self-restrained up to this moment. The intensity of her passion now seemed to transform her. She flung aside her travelling hat and jacket. She was desperate, and despair gave to her sudden beauty.

In all my experience of the sad things of life, I seldom saw more terrible pathos than that which now shone out of the eyes and trembled round the lips of this poor young woman. She was so absorbed 1n trying to get her husband to recognise her that she forgot my presence and that of the amazed chambermaid who, devoured with curios1ty, lingered near.

"Edward," she said again, going up to her husband, "it is impossible that you can have forgotten me. I am your wife. I have been your wife for six years."

"Good Lord, madam!" he exclaimed, bursting into a terrible laugh. "If you were my wife six years ago, I must have married you when I was a boy. I had not left school six years ago. I am only twenty-three at the present moment. Do you mean to maintain that I married you when I was a lad of seventeen?"

"Edward, dear Edward, don't you know me?" she kept on pleading.