And so it happened.
She was alert suddenly; a look of great delight spread across her features as a man came towards our table.
"Oh, Harry," she cried, as if in surprise. "I wondered whether ... Oh, this is Sarah Standish."
He took off his hat and bowed and a deep shock ran through me. It was only the wig which might have deceived me for a moment. It was light brown, with luxuriant curls reaching to his shoulders. I saw the freckles across the bridge of his short pert nose and the long upper Up. It was a face I had seen before in the chapel in the house in Knightsbridge.
I was stunned. I could only stare at him in amazement.
"Sir Harry Fresham," Joan was saying proudly.
"I am delighted to make your acquaintance," he said.
It was the same voice which had said "We shall pray together" in the chapel.
I stammered: "I thought we had met before."
Both he and Joan were looking at me in surprise. I had been so taken aback that I feared I was behaving oddly.
"Mistress," Sir Harry was saying, "I think there must be some mistake. If we had met before, I am sure I should never have forgotten the occasion."
"They say we all have doubles," said Joan lightly. "I am glad you were able to meet Sarah. She is an actress, you know."
He was smiling at me and the likeness seemed more pronounced than ever. His was an unusual face, and the more I saw him the more like Reverend Martin he seemed to become. Mannerisms ... voice, and that long upper lip. It was quite uncanny.
"What are you ladies drinking?" he said, and it was the voice of Reverend Martin.
"Coffee," said Joan.
"Coffee," he said, faintly contemptuously, and then smiling at us both. "You must use a little wine for the stomach's sake. That is a command from the Bible," he added, looking at me with an expression which might have held some mischief in it.
I was too shaken to listen to their conversation. The resemblance was too strong and I could not rid myself of the conviction that the man who was sitting opposite me in Will's Coffee House was Reverend Martin.
I quickly took my leave of them and hurried back to the lodgings.
That night I had strange dreams. They were incoherent and muddled. Jack was in them, and he was laughing at me as though he was enjoying some joke at my expense, and then he was Reverend Martin sitting in the coffee house in his clerical garb and calling himself Sir Harry Fresham. It was all nonsense, yet when I awoke I could not dismiss it. I had been mistaken, of course. Why shouldn't there be two people so much alike that they could be mistaken for each other?
If I saw them together I should see the difference.
But my uneasiness had increased. I began to think that from the moment Jack had taken me to that house in Knightsbridge I had stepped out of reality. When I looked back, nothing seemed quite normal.
Why had Jack disappeared like this? I asked myself. Why had he not taken me to his home? I did not even know where it was. Was that not very strange? Why? Why? There were so many questions to be answered. I had brushed them aside, but now I needed to know the answers.
I should demand to know, I assured myself, as soon as he came back. Was he not coming at the end of the week? I was being foolish to allow myself to fall into such a state of uncertainty, merely because I had met a man who looked like that strange Reverend Martin.
The next day I arose early. It was Wednesday. On Saturday the week of Jack's absence should be over. It was not long to wait.
I stayed in the next day, waiting, hoping that he would come. All I needed was to see him, to tell him of my meeting with Sir Harry Fresham, and how it had startled me.
All would be well. I was just fanciful because he was not here. When he came back, he would reassure me.
On Friday I could not rest, so I decided I would call at the house to see Martha and Rose.
When I arrived I knew something had happened and I was overcome with relief when Maggie rushed out to greet me.
We fell into each other's arms and then I saw the consternation in her face.
"Sarah!" she cried. "Where have you been? Fm sure they have not told me aright. Tell me it is not true."
I said: "I don't understand ..."
"Martha and Rose ... they said you had married Lord Rosslyn."
"It's true, Maggie. I am so happy. It is wonderful."
She did not speak. Her Ups were trembling. Then she was fierce and angry.
"Oh, Sarah, Sarah, what have you done? What have you done?"
"Maggie ..."I began.
She was staring at me in utter dismay:
"You cannot have married Lord Rosslyn. He is already married. He has been married for the last ten years or more."
I sat in the parlor with Maggie. I was numb, bewildered, and I asked myself whether of late in the depths of my mind I had guessed that something was not as it should be.
She made me tell her all about it. How he had taken me to his lodgings and there had tried to make me his mistress.
"And when I refused ... he thought up this plan."
"And you were deceived by it."
"Kitty had always talked to me about men and how I must never be taken in ... I was in love with him. He is very charming, Maggie."
"Charming!" she snorted. "Yes. I'll warrant he can lay on the charm thick and fast when it's about ruining some innocent young girl."
"Oh, Maggie, Maggie, what have I done?"
"Nothing that can't be mended in time."
"But I ... it's not the same. Kitty ..."
"Kitty would have been the first to understand, and you're not the only one, I might tell you, to be deceived in this way. I've heard for some time that it's been a habit of these young town dandies, and some not so young either, old enough to have a bit more decency. Mock Marriage, they call it ... the game they go in for when they can't get their way without. They look on it as a sort of sport."
"Oh no, no, Maggie." And I took refuge from my shame in disbelief. "It could not be true." I could not believe it.
"If you take my advice, you'll never see him again," Maggie said. "That is, if you can help it."
I was silent. I thought of him returning to the lodgings, calling my name, waiting to catch me up in his arms.
Never to see him again. When I loved him, wanted to be with him. I wanted to hear him deny this charge against him.
Yet in my heart I believed it. I had the evidence of my own eyes, had I not? From the moment Sir Harry Fresham looked at me in the coffee house, I had felt this suspicion. I had known that the man sitting opposite me, calling himself Sir Harry Fresham, was the same Reverend Martin who had conducted a bogus form of marriage in the chapel in Knightsbridge.
I knew Maggie was right, yet I was fighting hard to prove her wrong. I was bewildered and miserable, and very much afraid.
Maggie was brisk and practical.
"It's not the first time this has happened to a girl ... not by a long way, I can tell you. You're lucky. Some might have left home, romantically eloped ... Romantic! I'd give these villains romantic! Poor things, what can they do? Deceived just to satisfy the lust of these rakes and give themselves up to be joked about. What can the poor girl do when she learns the truth? But it is not so with you, Sarah. You have a home. I thank the Lord that I came back in time."
"Oh, Maggie, I'm so miserable ... But it's not true. I am sure you are mistaken. I'm sure it's not true."
She held me against her and stroked my hair. "You've got a home. Always remember that. I'm back now and if he comes here I'll know what to say to him."