'Yes, you told me so yourself--that you went first to the only lodging in which your wife had been known as Mrs. Manston, and when you found that the lodging-house-keeper had gone away and died, and that nobody else in the street had any definite ideas as to your wife's personal appearance, and came and proposed the arrangement we carried out--that I should personate her. Your taking all this trouble shows that something more serious than love had to do with the matter.'
'Humbug--what trouble after all did I take? When I found Cytherea would not stay with me after the wedding I was much put out at being left alone again. Was that unnatural?'
'No.'
'And those favouring accidents you mention--that nobody knew my first wife--seemed an arrangement of Providence for our mutual benefit, and merely perfected a half-formed impulse--that I should call you my first wife to escape the scandal that would have arisen if you had come here as anything else.'
'My love, that story won't do. If Mrs. Manston was burnt, Cytherea, whom you love better than me, could have been compelled to live with you as your lawful wife. If she was not burnt, why should you run the risk of her turning up again at any moment and exposing your substitution of me, and ruining your name and prospects?'
'Why--because I might have loved you well enough to run the risk (assuming her not to be burnt, which I deny).'
'No--you would have run the risk the other way. You would rather have risked her finding you with Cytherea as a second wife, than with me as a personator of herself--the first one.'
'You came easiest to hand--remember that.'
'Not so very easy either, considering the labour you took to teach me your first wife's history. All about how she was a native of Philadelphia. Then making me read up the guide-book to Philadelphia, and details of American life and manners, in case the birthplace and history of your wife, Eunice, should ever become known in this neighbourhood--unlikely as it was. Ah! and then about the handwriting of hers that I had to imitate, and the dying my hair, and rouging, to make the transformation complete? You mean to say that that was taking less trouble than there would have been in arranging events to make Cytherea believe herself your wife, and live with you?'
'You were a needy adventuress, who would dare anything for a new pleasure and an easy life--and I was fool enough to give in to you--'
'Good heavens above!--did I ask you to insert those advertisements for your old wife, and to make me answer it as if I was she? Did I ask you to send me the letter for me to copy and send back to you when the third advertisement appeared--purporting to come from the long-lost wife, and giving a detailed history of her escape and subsequent life--all which you had invented yourself? You deluded me into loving you, and then enticed me here! Ah, and this is another thing. How did you know the real wife wouldn't answer it, and upset all your plans?'
'Because I knew she was burnt.'
'Why didn't you force Cytherea to come back, then? Now, my love, I have caught you, and you may just as well tell first as last, WHAT WAS YOUR MOTIVE IN HAVING ME HERE AS YOUR FIRST WIFE?'
'Silence!' he exclaimed.
She was silent for the space of two minutes, and then persisted in going on to mutter, 'And why was it that Miss Aldclyffe allowed her favourite young lady, Cythie, to be overthrown and supplanted without an expostulation or any show of sympathy? Do you know I often think you exercise a secret power over Miss Aldclyffe. And she always shuns me as if I shared the power. A poor, ill-used creature like me sharing power, indeed!'
'She thinks you are Mrs. Manston.'
'That wouldn't make her avoid me.'
'Yes it would,' he exclaimed impatiently. 'I wish I was dead--dead!' He had jumped up from his seat in uttering the words, and now walked wearily to the end of the room. Coming back more decisively, he looked in her face.
'We must leave this place if Raunham suspects what I think he does,' he said. 'The request of Cytherea and her brother may simply be for a satisfactory proof, to make her feel legally free--but it may mean more.'
'What may it mean?'
'How should I know?'
'Well, well, never mind, old boy,' she said, approaching him to make up the quarrel. 'Don't be so alarmed--anybody would think that you were the woman and I the man. Suppose they do find out what I am--we can go away from here and keep house as usual. People will say of you, "His first wife was burnt to death" (or "ran away to the Colonies," as the case may be); "He married a second, and deserted her for Anne Seaway." A very everyday case--nothing so horrible, after all.'
He made an impatient movement. 'Whichever way we do it, NOBODY MUST KNOW THAT YOU ARE NOT MY WIFE EUNICE. And now I must think about arranging matters.'
Manston then retired to his office, and shut himself up for the remainder of the evening.
