Anna looked about her admiringly. It was just such a bedroom as she
would have chosen for herself. The colouring was green and white, with
softly shaded electric lights, an alcove bedstead, which was a miracle
of daintiness, white furniture, and a long low dressing-table littered
all over with a multitude of daintily fashioned toilet appliances.
Through an open door was a glimpse of the bathroom--a vision of
luxury, out of which Annabel herself, in a wonderful dressing-gown and
followed by a maid presently appeared.
"Too bad to keep you waiting," Annabel exclaimed. "I'm really very
sorry. Collins, you can go now. I will ring if I want you."
The maid discreetly withdrew, and Anna stood transfixed, gazing with
puzzled frown at her sister.
"Annabel! Why, what on earth have you been doing to yourself, child?"
she exclaimed.
Annabel laughed a little uneasily.
"The very question, my dear sister," she said, "tells me that I have
succeeded. Dear me, what a difference it has made! No one would ever
think that we were sisters. Don't you think that the shade of my hair
is lovely?"
"There is nothing particular the matter with the shade," Anna
answered, "but it is not nearly so becoming as before you touched it.
And what on earth do you want to darken your eyebrows and use so much
make-up for at your age? You're exactly twenty-three, and you're got
up as much as a woman of forty-five."
Annabel shrugged her shoulders.
"I only use the weeniest little dab of rouge," she declared, "and it
is really necessary, because I want to get rid of the 'pallor
effect.'"
Anna made no remark. Her disapproval was obvious enough. Annabel saw
it, and suddenly changed her tone.
"You are very stupid, Anna," she said. "Can you not understand? It is
of no use your taking my identity and all the burden of my iniquities
upon your dear shoulders if I am to be recognized the moment I show my
face in London. That is why I have dyed my hair, that is why I have
abandoned my role of _ingenuee_ and altered my whole style of dress.
Upon my word, Anna," she declared, with a strange little laugh, "you
are a thousand times more like me as I was two months ago than I am
myself."
A sudden sense of the gravity of this thing came home to Anna. Her
sister's words were true. They had changed identities absolutely. It
was not for a week or a month. It was for ever. A cold shiver came
over her. That last year in Paris, when Annabel and she had lived in
different worlds, had often been a nightmare to her. Annabel had taken
her life into her hands with gay _insouciance_, had made her own
friends, gone her own way. Anna never knew whither it had led
her--sometimes she had fears. It was her past now, not Annabel's.