She took the letters from the postman and went indoors. One of the
letters was for herself. It was addressed to her in her name before she
married, the name she had neither signed nor seen written for five
years. It puzzled her that the writer of the letter should be familiar
with her present address and yet be ignorant of her change of name. She
could not recall having seen the handwriting before. The postmark was
London. It was doubtless due to the mistake in the name on the envelope
that the letter had not found its way into Arnott's box at the post
office, and so have been collected by him when he fetched his own
letters on the previous evening.
She went into the sitting-room, and seated herself near the window, and
turned the envelope about in her hands. Flailing to identify her
correspondent from the superscription, she finally opened it, and
withdrawing the closely written sheet of foreign paper, glanced first at
the signature. "Lucy Arnott" was written in clear, firm characters at
the foot of the page.
Pamela's amazement was unbounded. Who was Lucy Arnott? And why should
a connection of her husband address her as Miss Horton? She concluded
that it must be a connection of her husband; it was such an unlikely
accident that a stranger of the same name would write to her.
Curious, and vaguely troubled, Pamela began to read. She read the
letter through, read with white, set face, and a mind which failed to
grasp the significance of what the cold, formal phrases expressed with
perfect lucidity. It occurred to her that the thing was a cruel hoax, a
wicked, malicious lie. She could not credit the truth of the writer's
assertion that she was Herbert Arnott's lawful wife, and that therefore
Pamela was not a wife at all--was not legally married...
Pamela tried to realise this abomination, and then thrust the horror
from her as too terrible for credence. It could not be. She knew that
she was married. She had her marriage certificate. Everything had been
done in order. Whoever Lucy Arnott was, she could not disprove that.