“For Heaven’s sake, don’t speak of him any more!” she cried out.  “How do you think I can look you in the face—­” Her cheeks flushed deep, and her eyes rested on him with a momentary firmness.  “Mind this!  I am his wife, if promises can make me his wife!  He has pledged his word to me by all that is sacred!” She checked herself impatiently.  “What am I saying?  What interest can you have in this miserable state of things?  Don’t let us talk of it!  I have something else to say to you.  Let us go back to my troubles here.  Did you see the landlady when you came in?”

“No.  I only saw the waiter.”

“The landlady has made some absurd difficulty about letting me have these rooms because I came here alone.”

“She won’t make any difficulty now,” said Arnold.  “I have settled that.”

“You!”

Arnold smiled.  After what had passed, it was an indescribable relief to him to see the humorous side of his own position at the inn.

“Certainly,” he answered.  “When I asked for the lady who had arrived here alone this afternoon—­”

“Yes.”

“I was told, in your interests, to ask for her as my wife.”

Anne looked at him—­in alarm as well as in surprise.

“You asked for me as your wife?” she repeated.

“Yes.  I haven’t done wrong—­have I?  As I understood it, there was no alternative.  Geoffrey told me you had settled with him to present yourself here as a married lady, whose husband was coming to join her.”

“I thought of him when I said that.  I never thought of you.”

“Natural enough.  Still, it comes to the same thing (doesn’t it?) with the people of this house.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“I will try and explain myself a little better.  Geoffrey said your position here depended on my asking for you at the door (as he would have asked for you if he had come) in the character of your husband.”

“He had no right to say that.”

“No right?  After what you have told me of the landlady, just think what might have happened if he had not said it!  I haven’t had much experience myself of these things.  But—­allow me to ask—­wouldn’t it have been a little awkward (at my age) if I had come here and inquired for you as a friend?  Don’t you think, in that case, the landlady might have made some additional difficulty about letting you have the rooms?”

It was beyond dispute that the landlady would have refused to let the rooms at all.  It was equally plain that the deception which Arnold had practiced on the people of the inn was a deception which Anne had herself rendered necessary, in her own interests.  She was not to blame; it was clearly impossible for her to have foreseen such an event as Geoffrey’s departure for London.  Still, she felt an uneasy sense of responsibility—­a vague dread of what might happen next.  She sat nervously twisting her handkerchief in her lap, and made no answer.