Free Anne Belinda by Patricia Wentworth Page B

her to sign, without the girl so much as raising her eyes. Anne felt a little chilled. She was in the mood in which one likes to assure total strangers that it is a lovely day. Her real need was a fellow creature to whom she could say, “I’m so dreadfully happy!”
    She signed the register, and, just as she was pushing it back, she saw Aurora Fairlie’s broomstick signature at the top of the left-hand page. There it was, large, black, awkward, and quite unmistakable.
    Anne fled to the refuge of the room that had been allotted her. Of all people in the world, she least wished to meet Aurora Fairlie. She was breathing a little quickly as she locked the door and set her suitcase down on the bed.
    Aurora! What an odd bit of luck that she should be here! Now, what exactly did Aurora know? That was the question; and no one but Jenny could answer it. Everything came back to Jenny in the end.
    Anne turned from the bed and went across to the dressing-table. She tilted the glass and looked long and earnestly at her own reflection. After a moment she took off her hat. She couldn’t go and see Jenny, looking like this. Her hair was too awful. She must have it properly cut and waved. For the rest, there was something a little unfamiliar in what she saw. Her skin had the even pallor that comes from an indoor life. She rubbed her cheeks, and as the quick blood stained them, she felt that she knew herself a little better. There were dark marks under her dark eyes, and her face was thin—a good deal thinner than it had been a year ago. This thinner oval of her face made her eyes look startlingly large. The likeness to Jenny was very much in abeyance.
    With a sudden movement she pushed the glass so that she could no longer see herself and went back to the bed. Sitting sideways on it, she opened the suitcase and, burrowing, produced three old letters. They were addressed to Miss Annie Jones. Anne removed the envelopes, tearing them into very tiny scraps and throwing the scraps out of the window. Then she took up the letters and read them through. They were all from Mr. Carruthers, and were written throughout in his own hand.
    The first, dated just over a year ago, began:
    â€œD EAR M ISS J ONES ,
    â€œIt is with great regret that I have to inform you of the sudden death of your father …”
    Anne read it through to the end, and then tore it up.
    The second letter also began with a regret. This time Mr. Carruthers regretted having to inform her that her name did not appear in her father’s will, everything having been left to her sister. Anne turned rather white as she laid the fragments of this letter beside the others.
    She took longer over the third letter. It ran:
    â€œD EAR M ISS J ONES ,
    â€œYour sister wishes you to be informed that she has a son, now a month old. She wishes you to know that she is very well. Your other sister has been travelling all this year with Miss Dawn. Your sister wished you to know this. Will you ring me up before communicating with your sister?
    â€œYours truly,
    â€œL. A USTIN C ARRUTHERS .”
    Anne caught the corner of her mouth between her teeth as she read. Not only Jenny to see, but Jenny’s baby. Lovely! Lovely! Lovely! Lovely and strange—Jenny with a baby! She shut her eyes for a minute and tried for a picture of it. Nothing would come but Jenny’s face. Not Jenny’s face as she wanted to see it, but as she had seen it last, white to the very lips, the eyes wild with terror.
    She jumped up with a quick little cry. Why did she always see Jenny like that? It was the thing that hurt most of all; and, more than anything else in the world, she wanted to blot it out with the picture of the real, happy Jenny, all love and smiles, with her little son in her arms. That was what she was going to see to-day.
    She glanced at the letter again. The pen was the pen of Mr. Carruthers; but the words were certainly Jenny’s words. Jenny was letting her