Nigel Ennison walked towards his club the most puzzled man in London.
There could not, he decided, possibly be two girls so much alike.
Besides, she had admitted her identity. And yet--he thought of the
supper party where he had met Annabel Pellissier, the stories about
her, his own few minutes' whispered love-making! He was a
self-contained young man, but his cheeks grew hot at the thought of
the things which it had seemed quite natural to say to her then, but
which he knew very well would have been instantly resented by the girl
whom he had just left. He went over her features one by one in his
mind. They were the same. He could not doubt it. There was the same
airy grace of movement, the same deep brown hair and alabaster skin.
He found himself thinking up all the psychology which he had ever
read. Was this the result of some strange experiment? It was the
person of Annabel Pellissier--the soul of a very different order of
being.
He spent the remainder of the afternoon looking for a friend whom he
found at last in the billiard room of one of the smaller clubs to
which he belonged. After the usual laconic greetings, he drew him on
one side.
"Fred," he said, "do you remember taking me to dinner at the
'Ambassador's,' one evening last September, to meet a girl who was
singing there? Hamilton and Drummond and his lot were with us."
"Of course," his friend answered. "_La belle_ 'Alcide,' wasn't it?
Annabel Pellissier was her real name. Jolly nice girl, too."
Ennison nodded.
"I thought I saw her in town to-day," he said. "Do you happen to know
whether she is supposed to be here?"
"Very likely indeed," Captain Fred Meddoes answered, lighting a
cigarette. "I heard that she had chucked her show at the French places
and gone in for a reform all round. Sister's got married to that
bounder Ferringhall."
Ennison took an easy chair.
"What a little brick!" he murmured. "She must have character. It's no
half reform either. What do you know about her, Fred? I am
interested."
Meddoes turned round from the table on which he was practising shots
and shrugged his shoulders.
"Not much," he answered, "and yet about all there is to be known, I
fancy. There were two sisters, you know. Old Jersey and Hampshire
family, the Pellissiers, and a capital stock, too, I believe."
"Any one could see that the girls were ladies," Ennison murmured.
"No doubt about that," Meddoes continued. "The father was in the army,
and got a half-pay job at St. Heliers. Died short, I suppose, and the
girls had to shift for themselves. One went in for painting, kept
straight and married old Ferringhall a week or so ago--the Lord help
her. The other kicked over the traces a bit, made rather a hit with
her singing at some of those French places, and went the pace in a
mild, ladylike sort of way. Cheveney was looking after her, I think,
then. If she's over, he probably knows all about it."