“Well,” said Mademoiselle Laure, speaking with more kindliness as her companion showed signs of increasing weakness, “will you promise me to stay quietly at the shop while I go for a doctor?”
“A doctor! Oh, yes, yes,” said Audrey.
“Come then, quickly. I’m afraid of your fainting on the way.”
Audrey shook her head. Supported by her companion’s arm, she was now outside, and the fresh air of the evening revived her. They were only just in time, for the shop opposite was closing. They begged permission to enter, and Audrey drank a glass of wine and obediently tried, though she did not succeed in the attempt, to eat a biscuit. For on no other terms would Mademoiselle Laure consent to leave her.
“I will be back, Madame,” said the Frenchwoman, with an encouraging smile, as she went quickly to the door, “in five minutes. There is a doctor round the corner. I will fetch him. Wait for me.”
Audrey was indeed thankful to have the task of taking the necessary steps transferred to the shoulders of another. At first, in the dazed state which succeeded her first white heat of excitement, she had almost let herself be persuaded by the Frenchwoman into wondering whether she had not been the victim of her own imagination. But before Mademoiselle Laure left her, she had recovered her wits, and recognised that, in fetching a doctor, which was, after all, the most sensible thing that could be done, the woman was acknowledging the fact that there was something in what her employer had said.
The time seemed very long while she waited, but she dared not go back alone to the showrooms, and she now realised that it was not her place to send for the police, but the doctor’s.
The woman in charge of the shop grew impatient too, and they both watched the clock until five, ten minutes, a quarter of an hour, twenty minutes had passed.
Then Mademoiselle Laure suddenly appeared at the side-door, on the opposite side of the street, which led to the showrooms. She ran across the road, and beckoned excitedly to Audrey.
She was laughing.
Audrey trembled and could scarcely stand as Mademoiselle Laure took her by the arm and, without a word of explanation, beyond saying that the doctor was there, led the trembling woman back and up the stairs.
“Don’t take me in again, don’t, don’t,” whispered Audrey, whose nerve had given way completely under the long and terrible strain.
“But you must come, you must. Don’t you want to see the doctor?” said Mademoiselle Laure, whose voice and manner was as derisive as ever.
Audrey let herself be led, reluctant indeed, but submissive as a child, up the stairs and into the first of the two big, handsomely furnished showrooms.
The doctor, an elderly man of strictly professional aspect, who wore gold spectacles and spoke in a quiet and authoritative manner, bowed to her with a keen but kindly look.
At once he offered her a chair, and making a sign to Mademoiselle Laure to draw back the muslin curtain that veiled the nearest of the electric lights, he took Audrey by the wrist.
She drew a breath of amazement. Evidently he looked upon her as a patient.
“Oh, there’s—there’s nothing the matter with me, doctor,” said she breathlessly. “All I want to know is whether the—the poor woman died naturally, or—or was——”
Before she could get any further, she saw the doctor look up and exchange a grave glance with Mademoiselle Laure. Perceiving at once that he appeared to doubt her sanity, angry with the Frenchwoman, and determined to put an end to the misunderstanding, Audrey darted across the room towards the door of the fitting-room. “You have been misinformed, doctor,” said she quickly. “It is not to see me that you were called in, but an unhappy woman who——”
She had tried the door of the fitting-room, and it had opened in her hand. Audrey looked in, stopped short, turned giddy, fell back. Then, passing her hand across her eyes, and waiting a moment to recover herself, she went boldly into the room.
For a whole minute she stood staring round her, clenching her hands, trying to understand, to believe the evidence of her eyes.
Not only was the white-clad lady no longer there, but not a sign of her presence, a trace of a tragedy, was to be seen.
“Where—where is she? Where have you put—the body?” hissed she in a hoarse, peremptory whisper.
The doctor shrugged his shoulders, and spoke soothingly.
“Madame,” said he, “there has been nobody there. It is the result of an overactive imagination, upon a stomach left too long without food, and an overwrought system. I will write you out a little prescription; you must take a sleeping draught, and I will come and see you in the morning.”
And he looked round for paper and a pen.
Audreystared at the doctor.
“Thank you,” said she, “I don’t want either a prescription or a sleeping draught. I’m quite well, quite sane. I can’t have been deceived. I saw the woman, I heard her speak, I saw and heard, not so well, but still I did see and hear him—a man who dragged her out of this room and into the next.”
The doctor looked puzzled, as well he might. He rose from the chair which he had taken in order to feel her pulse and inquire into her symptoms, and he walked across the room and peered into the empty fitting-room.
Then he looked at her again, and then at Mademoiselle Laure, who was standing motionless, with her arms folded, and her thin lips tightly pressed together, a few paces away from them.
Audrey looked at her too.
“If,” said Audrey, “Mademoiselle Laure would speak out, probably she could tell us something.”
The Frenchwoman, whether she understood this or not, looked as if she caught only her own name, and she at once said, in French, that she had felt sure Madame must be mistaken when she told her extraordinary story. The doctor bowed his head, but it was evident that his command of colloquial French was not equal to discussion of the matter in any language but his own.
There was a rather awkward pause, and then Audrey said impatiently that she supposed there was nothing more to be done, if Mademoiselle Laure would not speak.
“I shall consult my friends to-morrow, and take legal advice upon this, if necessary,” she said. “Dr.——”
“Fendall, my name is Fendall,” said he, supplying the name when she paused.
“I am sorry to have disturbed you for nothing, as it appears. But you will be satisfied presently that I was justified in sending for you, and you will be a witness to the fact that I took the proper steps at once.”
“Certainly. I hope you will let me persuade you, however, to take a sleeping draught to-night. Or at least to consult your own medical man about your health. You seem, if I may say so, to be in a highly nervous condition, and I feel sure that both rest and careful diet are imperatively necessary for you.”
“Thank you,” said Audrey shortly. There was his fee to be paid, and she added as he turned with a bow to the door: “Your address, Dr. Fendall, please, and I will write to you in the morning.”
He waved his hand.
“Oh, no, no, I have done nothing, and I am only sorry I could not be of use.”
The next moment he was gone, and Audrey, after in vain trying to summon courage enough to make another examination of the fitting-room, which would, she felt sure, have revealed some trace of the recent presence of the unhappy woman in the white dress, hastily bade Mademoiselle Laure good-night without further conversation with that reticent and astute-looking person, and went home to her rooms in Earl Street, Oxford Street.
What should she do? Whom should she consult?
Never before had she realised so fully how desperately lonely was her position in the world. Never before had she understood how the unhappy situation of her unfortunate husband had cut her off from every old friend, from the sympathy as well as the support even of her own relations.
From the first the aunt, with whom she had been living at Lytham, had opposed her marriage. It was during a short visit to some friends in London that Audrey had met Gerard, who fell in love with her straightway, followed her on her return to the north, and never rested till he had won her for his wife.
Miss Hester Claughton, Audrey’s maiden aunt, had disapproved of him from the first, as frivolous and worldly, and now that this terrible charge had been brought against the young man, and had resulted in the sentence which condemned him in the eyes of the world, Miss Hester did not hesitate to write long letters to her unhappy niece, professedly to express her sympathy, but really containing nothing but variations of the old theme, “I told you so”.
Audrey’s two brothers were settled, the one in Canada and the other in Hong-Kong, so that rapid communication with them, even if it had been advisable, was out of the question.
The solicitor whom they had employed in the forgery case had earned Audrey’s ferocious enmity and disapproval by allowing it to be seen that, while doing his best for his client, he had little doubt as to his guilt.
The only other person whom she could think of whose advice and help might be of assistance was Mr. Candover. And although he was very kind now, Audrey had not yet forgiven him for what she considered his neglect of Gerard during his trial. Besides, carefully courteous and chivalrous as Mr. Candover was, charmingly as he had allayed a certain vague mistrust of hers by introducing his daughters to her, Audrey was clear-sighted enough to understand that it would not do to let this handsome, attractive man of the world become, what he was apparently not unwilling to be, her only adviser and confidant.
What was she then to do? Sure as she felt of her facts as to the occurrences of the previous evening, she hesitated, when she had time to think the matter over, to court publicity of a hideous kind by calling in the police to investigate the matter.
On the other hand, she felt that she could not rest satisfied with the meagre knowledge she had at present. How could she go back to these rooms, with the remembrance of that strange and dreadful scene full in her mind, without one effort to elucidate the mystery?
If Mademoiselle Laure would speak, no doubt something would be learnt. But how to make her open her lips, in the face of her present obstinate determination to know nothing?
Against her will, poor Audrey was at last obliged to acknowledge that there was only one person to whom she could make known her difficulty, with any prospect of advice and help. In desperation she wrote a few lines to Mr. Candover, telling him that something so strange had happened at the showrooms that she did not like even to return to them without consulting some one, and asking if he would meet her at an Oxford Street confectioner’s, whose name she gave, at nine o’clock on the following morning.
She sent this note by messenger to Mr. Candover’s flat in Victoria Street, and got the answer by the morning’s post:—
“Dear Madame Rocada,“Of course I will be there. I hope it is nothing serious which is troubling you so much.“Yours always,“Reginald Candover.”
“Dear Madame Rocada,
“Of course I will be there. I hope it is nothing serious which is troubling you so much.
“Yours always,
“Reginald Candover.”
Audrey frowned when she saw the address. She had taken her rooms in the name of Madame Rocada, “Angmering” being too uncommon a name not to be recognised and commented on. Absolutely sure as she felt of her husband’s innocence of the supposed crime for which he was suffering, Audrey preferred not to be the object of the gossip which would certainly have centred round her if her identity had been known.
But she disliked the alias, as she called it, and wished that she had been allowed to take some simpler, less pretentious name than the high-sounding mock-title by which she was now known. Of course, as Mr. Candover said, nobody supposed that the title of “Countess” was anything but a trade fiction, but the whole surroundings of her new calling, combining unlimited show with narrow capital, were distasteful to Audrey.
At nine o’clock punctually Mr. Candover met her, and she at once, having ordered coffee and a roll as an excuse for her presence in the shop, told him the whole story of the events of the previous evening.
He thrust aside as absurd the suggestion of the Frenchwoman and the doctor that Audrey had been misled by her imagination.
“You saw a woman, a stranger, undoubtedly,” said he. “People don’t imagine such things. And no doubt you saw her dragged away, and saw her lying in the fitting-room. The only thing I doubt is that she can have been dead.”
“Don’t you think Mademoiselle Laure may have found the dead body and, in her anxiety to hush things up, have removed it?”
“No doubt she could. The old Frenchwoman is artful enough for anything, and clever enough too—but to do such a thing, and to remove all traces of such a tragedy, requires time. Now, by your account, she had no time. You say you were only left alone about twenty minutes or half an hour, and that in that time she had fetched a doctor?”
“Ye-es, but——”
“Well, she might very well have removed the body, but it’s impossible, absolutely impossible, that she could have removed all traces, so as to deceive even the doctor!”
“Well, who do you think the woman could have been? She was not English. What could she want with me to be so angry as she was?”
“Impossible to say. Most likely it was not you but old Laure she was angry with—some business rival perhaps, who had wanted the post of forewoman for herself.”
“Oh, I never thought of that! But then the man who drew her back, and then locked her in the room, and ran away?”
“Are yousureit was a man?”
“Yes. I just saw enough of his figure to be sure of that. And I saw his hand drawing the curtain. Besides, she called him ‘Eugène,’ pronouncing the name in the French fashion ‘Eugène’. Can you find out who this Eugène was?”
“If he was a Frenchman I should hazard the guess that he also was a friend—perhaps a relation, of Marie Laure’s. My advice is that you should not worry yourself about this unpleasant incident, should try to forget it in fact——”
“How can I? It’s the sort of thing it’s impossible to forget!”
“Well, well, don’t think about it more than you can help. Keep your thoughts on your business, and on the good beginning you’ve made. Now all that remains is for you to keep it up, and you’ll soon make your fortune. Did you have many people at the rooms yesterday?”
“They were crammed all the afternoon. But oh, I didn’t like it! I don’t like these ‘smart’ and would-be smart people at all. The women are loud-voiced, aggressive, horrid. And the men—well, they’re worse. City men buying dresses and hats for actresses, not real actresses, you know, but chorus-girls or what they call ‘show’ girls, who can’t even sing in a chorus.”
“Hush. You mustn’t criticise your clients. All you have to do is to see they pay well for what they buy.”
“Ah, but my poor Gerard wouldn’t like it. I know how furious he would be if he knew!”
“Gerard would like you to make money, for both your sakes. You needn’t tell him any more than you like about these people. You can tell him about the duchesses, and say nothing about the chorus-girls. And by-the-bye, the Duchess de Vicenza is going abroad; that’s the woman who stood bail for your husband, you know.”
“Who is she? I’ve never seen her.”
“She’s a dear, kind creature, and very rich. But she’s very old, and doesn’t go about at all. She wants to let her place ‘The Briars’. Now you want a change, and it would be good for your business to have a place near town where you could invite your more important clients.”
“Oh, no, no. I——”
“Listen. If Madame de Vicenza would let this place for a song, as I think she would, you must take my advice, and rent it for the summer. I have an idea that by-and-by you might turn your business into a company—when you’ve worked it up a bit, you know, and make something out of the sale. You must just let them know, therefore, that you’re at ‘The Briars,’ and I bet you anything you like you’ll have a circle of some sort round you in no time, out of which you shall form your company.”
But poor Audrey shrank in alarm from these glowing enterprises, which Mr. Candover appeared to evolve so easily, and to realise so quickly.
For a long time it was in vain he talked to her, pointed out how right he had been about her taking the business world by storm with her showrooms, insisted on the duty which devolved upon her of making money for Gerard’s sake.
But it was inevitable that, alone as she was but for his help and advice, she should yield at last to his representations; and when he had ascertained for her that the rent she would have to pay for “The Briars” was a mere nominal one, provided she would consent to take on the duchess’s servants, Audrey reluctantly consented to take the pretty house at Epsom from the first week in August, when the London season ended and her showrooms were practically shut up, to the first week in October, which was, so Mademoiselle Laure assured her, early enough to begin the autumn fashion campaign.
Young and inexperienced as she was, Audrey could not help thinking, when she found herself in possession at “The Briars,” which was a charming house, roomy and tastefully furnished, without any appearance of ostentatious luxury, that she had found everything wonderfully easy so far in her new career.
Mademoiselle Laure was disagreeable, it was true, but she was undoubtedly something of a genius, and she had taken all the real work off her employer’s hands. Nothing transpired to clear up the mystery of the lady in white, but not the most minute search on Audrey’s part revealed any trace of the tragedy she believed herself to have discovered, nor did anything appear in the daily papers, which she scanned closely for the next week, to throw light upon the affair.
And scarcely was Audrey settled in the house at Epsom, when callers began to arrive in sufficient numbers to justify Mr. Candover’s prediction that she would soon have a circle of her own.
Audrey did not care for many of her visitors. Most of them were gentlemen, which she thought strange. But to the pointed inquiries she made to some of them they invariably replied that their wives, daughters and sisters were all away at the seaside or on the continent, which was, she reflected, natural enough in the month of August.
Those ladies who called upon her were of the ultra-smart and aggressive type which Audrey thought more desirable as customers than as friends.
There was Lady Lavering, with the mahogany-coloured hair, whose husband, Sir Richard Lavering, looked old enough to be her great-grandfather. And there was the Hon. Mrs. Lydd, who looked old enough to be her husband’s grandmother.
But Audrey, bewildered by her new circumstances, and anxious to profit by the advice given her, was civil to them all, and was such a pathetically attractive figure, in the black she generally wore, with her girlish face and modest manners, that whatever she might think of the style of her new acquaintances, she could not complain of lack of attention, even of enthusiasm, on their part towards her.
She returned the calls of the ladies who lived within calling distance, and within a very short time she had the suggestion made that she should be at home to some of her new acquaintances in the evening. Old Mrs. Lydd and young Lady Lavering both came to the very first of these, and so did Mr. Candover, with his alert young American secretary with the green and gold teeth, and so did quite a dozen gentlemen.
While poor Audrey, not at all pleased to find herself coerced into entertaining against her will, sat with the two ladies in the verandah, enjoying the cool evening air after the hot August day, sounds of the shuffling of tables and the rattling of dice reached her ears, and rising from her chair and peeping into the long drawing-room, she saw that card tables had been produced and opened, and that while poker was being played at the table nearest to where she stood, baccarat was engaging the attention of another group.
She turned, frowning, to her companions.
“I wish they wouldn’t play cards,” she said. “I have a horror of them.”
Instead of expressing agreement or making any comment on her words, Mrs. Lydd and Lady Lavering exchanged a demure look of amusement, which irritated and puzzled her. Presently Lady Lavering indeed joined the baccarat group, and Audrey was left with old Mrs. Lydd, who appeared rather troubled by the enthusiasm which her young husband showed over poker, and vainly tried—being somewhat deaf—to catch the chances of the game from where she sat.
When the old lady got up and went indoors to hear better, Audrey found herself swiftly joined by one of the gentlemen, who paid her such fervent compliments about her beauty, and gazed at her with so much bold admiration that Audrey, with a few chilling words, got up and followed the other ladies into the drawing-room.
By this time the players at the different tables were far too much excited to take any notice of her, and it was with horror that she made the discovery that they were playing for high stakes.
Unable to obtain any attention to her evident displeasure, she looked round for Mr. Candover, whom she found in a corner by himself, an unlighted cigarette between his fingers, pensive and apparently melancholy.
“Mr. Candover,” said she, “this is your fault. I think you, who always profess to know so much better than I do what is the right thing, ought to have known better than to expose your friend’s wife to this!”
He sprang to his feet, with a look of tender reproach, not wholly unmixed with confusion, in his eyes.
“What—what have I done?” stammered he.
She repeated his words impatiently.
“What have you done? You have brought to my house—or rather you have suggested my bringing there—men whom Gerard would never have allowed me to meet.”
“Madame, you astonish me! These men are all of them either very well born or very rich. They are all in the best society, they all belong to the Army and Navy, the Carlton, or——”
“Yes, yes, I daresay. But that’s not what I mean. Men without their wives don’t count as society at all.”
“Sir Richard Lavering and Mr. Lydd, Lord Barre’s son, have brought their wives.”
Audrey frowned. She did not quite like to say what she thought about either of those ladies.
“It’s very difficult to get ladies at all at this time of year.”
“Then I don’t want their husbands without them,” said Audrey sharply.
“You are difficult to please, Madame, to-night. Supposing that the poor fellows are in my own sad plight, and have no wives to bring?”
“Then I should like them to stay away,” retorted Audrey. “At any rate I won’t have my house used as if it were a gambling club.”
“But you used to play poker yourself with Gerard and me and my friends!” objected Mr. Candover rather piteously.
Her face quivered.
“That was very different. Between what I did when Gerard was with me and what I do now, there is, or there ought to be, a wide gulf. I can’t understand how a clever man like you can fail to see that.”
He looked down at her with an expression of infinite solicitude.
“Perhaps I do see it. Perhaps, seeing it clearly, I yet feel that the course I have proposed to you, the course of conciliating the people who may be of use to you, the making to yourself friends of the Mammon of Unrighteousness in fact, is the best course.”
“But I don’t like them!” pleaded Audrey. “I don’t like the way they behave to me. They think, because I am engaged in business, trade in fact, that they can use my house as they please, and treat me as they please.”
“Scarcely that, Madame. You know nobody would dare to treat you in any but the right way in my presence,” said Mr. Candover, growing more earnest as he bent to speak low in her ear.
Audrey frowned, finding a difficulty in defining her grievance.
“Of course, they’re not openly insulting, I don’t mean that. But—there’s a subtle difference. Oh, you’re a man, why do you pretend not to know between the civility with which a man of this sort treats the women of his own set, and the manner he uses to women whom he looks upon as—as not belonging to his world?”
“Look here, Madame, you must lay aside some of these fine feelings, or you must lay aside the hope of getting on in business. If you like, instead of the men of the Carlton, the Beefsteak and the Jockey Club, I’ll bring down next time the members of the Athenæum, including the whole bench of bishops. They won’t play cards, they won’t pay compliments, but they’ll all be too deaf to answer what you say to them, and they won’t buy so much as a bonnet,” retorted Mr. Candover, impatiently.
“Very well,” said Audrey, with spirit, “please bring the bishops next Wednesday.”
But when next Wednesday came the bishops did not appear, and the same set as before dropped in one by one. With this difference, that one or two more ladies came.
Audrey, however, liked the members of her own sex still less than she did those of the other who were her guests, and told Mr. Candover so.
But one of the ladies had a beautiful voice, and her husband accompanied her on the piano. Audrey herself played well, and to her great relief the card-tables did not, on this occasion, make their appearance in the drawing-room, where songs from the musical comedies, piquantly rendered, formed the evening’s entertainment.
But there was a fine smoking-room with a vaulted ceiling at the other end of the house, where most of the gentlemen spent the evening.
And when, on the following morning, Audrey entered that apartment before the servants did, she found open card-tables, packs of cards and dice, in sufficient numbers to let her know how the majority of her guests had spent, not only the evening, but great part of the night.
Whatwas she to do? If Mr. Candover had not been her most active if not her only friend, if his manners had not been so tactful, and his delicacy so great that he never came to see her except at her request, she would have left “The Briars,” where she felt that she was only nominally mistress of a house which resembled rather a public place of entertainment than a private dwelling, and would have taken refuge in solitary lodgings at the seaside.
But she did not like, she did not dare, to offend such a powerful friend and ally; and besides, painful as in many respects her position was, the truth remained that she had no friends in all the world to whom she could go.
Mrs. Webster, who was in the secret of her troubles about Gerard, was travelling in Scotland, or she would have written to her and suggested that they should stay somewhere together. Her husband’s nearest relation, Lord Clanfield, had been offended by the marriage of his nephew with a girl who did not belong to his “set”; and Gerard, who was high-spirited and indignant that his beautiful wife should not be welcomed with the honour she deserved, had retorted by cutting off all communication with his uncle, who, perfectly indifferent to the fact, had never even attempted to make his handsome niece’s acquaintance.
In this extremity, feeling the dire need of the companionship of some one to whom she could pour out at least some of the sentiments of her poor little aching heart, Audrey suddenly thought of Mr. Candover’s two young daughters, and at once wrote to Pamela, the elder, asking her to request permission to come over to spend an afternoon at “The Briars”.
This letter Audrey sent direct to the school at Windsor where the girls were staying.
The next morning came a telegram from Pamela, accepting the invitation jubilantly, in these words:—
“Delighted. Trains awful, will drive from Staines, expect us at one.—Pamela.”
“Delighted. Trains awful, will drive from Staines, expect us at one.—Pamela.”
And at one o’clock a fly brought to the gates two smiling, happy girls, overflowing with high spirits, and rejoicing in their holiday.
Audrey felt as if she had come suddenly out of the darkness of a vault into the bright sunshine, so delighted was she, after the distasteful acquaintances and unsympathetic companions of the past few weeks, to find herself once more with these bright, amiable, natural girls, full of the joy of living, and crazily excited over the pleasure of their visit.
“How is it you are able to come so quickly?” asked Audrey, as she led the beaming lassies into the house. “I was afraid it would be a matter of red tape, and that the head of the school would have to write and ask Mr. Candover’s permission for you to come, and all that.”
Pamela laughed gaily.
“To tell you the truth,” she said, “we had a struggle for it. But our lives are so terribly dull, passing not only the terms but the holidays at school as we do, that when we got your invitation, refusal would have led to open revolt. Miss Willett made the usual fuss, of course, and said she ‘must ask Mr. Candover’. But when we pointed out that papa had already brought us to see you once already, and when we showed that we were determined to come, she gave way.”
“I daresay, Mrs. Angmering,” put in Babs, “she wasn’t sorry to get rid of us for a few hours, for she can’t even go away for a change now, while the holidays are on, because of us.”
Audrey looked surprised.
“Why,” she said, “I should have thought your father would have been only too glad of the chance of having you with him. He is so fond of you.”
“Ye-es, I suppose he is fond of us—when he remembers our existence,” said Pamela the ready, with a little shrug.
“Oh, hush, hush, you naughty girl!”
“Well, you must let us be naughty to-day, for we have to be so very, very good all the year round. Oh, what a darling pony!”
She had caught sight, in the paddock beyond the rose-garden, of a little rough-coated animal which Audrey had found in the stables when she took “The Briars”. And nothing would satisfy the girls but seizing the pony by the mane, and indulging in impromptu gallops over the field. They were in a state of joyous excitement during luncheon, and afterwards they took Audrey between them, twined their arms round her and walked with her in the pretty shady grounds, bubbling over with happiness at their unexpected holiday, and determined to take advantage of Audrey’s offer to have them with her again on the first opportunity.
The delight of the girls at this very simple pleasure was a revelation to Audrey, who had taken it for granted that Mr. Candover, who was so rich and so generous, would have treated his daughters with more consideration for youthful impulses.
Having already made Audrey’s acquaintance, the girls now looked upon her as an old friend, and they confided to her the utter loneliness of their lives, and the uncertainty they were in as to their future.
“You know I’m eighteen, and I want to ‘come out,’ ” said Pamela. “And Miss Willett herself thinks it is time I should. But when she writes about it to papa, he doesn’t answer, and although he’s always kind, he has a way of putting aside any question he doesn’t care to answer, so that I’ve never been able to talk it out with him myself.”
“Shall I speak to him for you?” asked Audrey.
“Oh, you darling, I wish you would! It’s quite true that I’m dying to leave school now, and to—to—well, I don’t exactly know what it is I want to do, except that it isn’t lessons!” cried Pamela, whose brilliant beauty and lively manners indeed showed her to be ready to take her first plunge out of the school seclusion into the waters of life.
“And am I to be left all alone?” cried poor Babs plaintively. “It’s bad enough with you, Pam, but it will be worse if I’m left with Miss Willett all through the holidays alone, while I know you are enjoying yourself with Mrs. Angmering!”
Audrey caressed her pretty head.
“Supposing,” she said, in a voice almost as full of suppressed excitement as that of the girls themselves, “I were to ask Mr. Candover to let you both go away with me somewhere for the Christmas holidays! How would you like that?”
Their answer was such a tumultuous outburst of gratitude and delight that she was, as it were, taken off her feet by it, and the three sat down on a garden seat under a knot of trees, and discussed the idea with noisy and merry comments and peals of laughter which made them all deaf to the sound of approaching footsteps over the gravel paths and the lawn behind them.
They were suddenly startled by the voice of Mr. Candover; and turning quickly with little cries, they were amazed to find themselves face to face, not with the smiling, indulgent father, the chivalrous and kind friend, but with a man whose face was dark with passion, and in whose black eyes there was a look of anger and alarm which struck them dumb, and filled Audrey at least with sudden and strange misgiving.
Mr. Candover looked from her to his daughters, who made no attempt to greet him, so much surprised were they.
“When did I give permission for you to leave your school? What is Miss Willett thinking about to let you come out without it?” asked he sharply.
“Oh, papa,” said Pamela, who was the only one who seemed ready to “stand up to” him, “we thought that, in the case of Mrs. Angmering——”
“Hold your tongue. I know nothing of any Mrs. Angmering. You are in the house of Madame Rocada——” Audrey broke into a protest of horror, but he went on, “and you have no business to come out even to see your nearest relations, without my permission. I’m surprised at Miss Willett. Put on your hats, and I will put you in a fly, and you can drive back at once.”
Indignant protests on the part of Pamela, tears from Babs, alarm and stupefaction on the face of Audrey, availed nothing.
Within ten minutes the poor girls were driving away, but not before Pamela, with a look of sullen anger and resentment in her lively black eyes, which were so like her father’s, had whispered into Audrey’s ear:—
“I shall come again, if you’ll let me. I’m not a child and I’m not going to be treated as one much longer!”
Poor Audrey did not know what to say, but “Hush, dear, hush!” as she kissed the bright-eyed girl, and waved them both a farewell which was almost tearful.
As soon as they were gone Mr. Candover recovered his usual gentle, kindly manner.
“I hope I didn’t hurt your feelings, my dear Madame Rocada, by my bluntness,” said he. “But the fact is the girls are both of very difficult character to manage, and it is my particular wish that they should live the quietest of lives, without any dangerous excitements, for a few years longer.”
Audrey summoned enough courage for a mild protest.
“Surely it’s not a very dangerous excitement to spend the afternoon with me!” she said.
“Of course not. But you forget that you have friends coming——”
Audrey interrupted sharply:—
“Friends! These horrible, noisy, fast men and faster women with their card-playing and their racing jargon are not my friends. Clients, customers, if you like, they may be. But never my friends!”
“Well, they are useful people to know, at least,” he persisted, more gently than ever.
Audrey turned away without reply, and the announcement he wished to make to her concerning some of the guests of the evening he had to leave unmade.
It came upon her, therefore, with a shock of surprise when, Mr. Candover having been forced to leave the house, as she gave him no invitation to remain to dine with her, he returned about nine o’clock in the company of half a dozen of the men whom she had had to accept as habitués of the house, and with two young men, both of unmistakably dissipated appearance, who were introduced to her as “Mr. Edgar Angmering” and “Mr. Geoffrey Angmering”.
It was with the greatest difficulty that Audrey could keep her countenance. For they were, she knew, the sons of Lord Clanfield, and first cousins of her own husband.
Neither had ever seen her, and she had little difficulty in guessing that they had no idea of the identity of “Madame Rocada”.
Whether as a result of the presence of these two noisy young men it is impossible to say, but the evening was an unusually noisy one, and the play was higher than ever.
Moreover, Audrey could not but be aware of the fact that the elder of the two young men had had more champagne than was good for him even before he arrived, and she expressed her indignation and disgust to Mr. Candover in no measured terms.
He was much concerned at her displeasure, and said that they must take care that it did not occur again; this was a rather vague assurance, which had no other result than the reappearance of the two young men a few nights later, in much the same condition as before.
On the following day Audrey wrote an angry letter to Mr. Candover, telling him that she intended to leave “The Briars” without delay, as she would not tolerate any more scenes such as that of the previous night, either in the hope of retaining valuable clients or for any other reason.
She had scarcely finished the letter when a servant came in, and announced: “Lord Clanfield.”
Audrey pressed her hand to her heart, which throbbed with frantic excitement. Did he know her? Was he come to make late amends for his neglect of poor Gerard?
She rose from her seat as there entered a dignified man of the middle height, strikingly like Gerard, who indeed resembled him much more closely than did either of his own sons.
Audrey bowed without speaking. She could not, indeed, trust herself to utter a word, even if she had known what to say.
A second glance at his open, honest face showed her that it was with no friendly intention he had come. His first words showed her that it was not to his nephew’s wife that his unexpected visit was paid.
“Madame Rocada,” said he, in the coldest, sternest of voices, “I have come to request you to do me the favour of forbidding my two sons to enter your house.”
A chill seized Audrey. The next moment a sense of resentment rose in her mind and sent a flush to her cheeks.
She looked not only handsome, but stately, as she drew up her tall figure and stood erect in the sunlight, which played upon her golden hair, and sparkled upon the pearl paillettes which studded the dress of cream silk muslin, with a billowy train, which she was wearing.
“Upon what grounds do you make such a singular request, and in such a singular manner?” asked she, subduing her voice to a level and quiet tone.
For one moment he hesitated. Great beauty in a woman compels a sort of respect from any man. And Audrey had never looked lovelier than she did at that moment.
“I regret to have to put it so plainly. I had hoped that you would have spared me the necessity. But since I must be plain, it is because I have just learnt that you, Madame Rocada, are the lady known abroad as the White Countess, the keeper of the Paris gaming-house in which the son of one of my friends, young Hugh Grey, committed suicide two years ago.”
Audreywas struck dumb.
As if by a flash of lightning, she found her whole mind illuminated, and saw at once the meaning of the visit paid to her showrooms by the lady in white.
The pale, thin woman was, she felt sure, the real Madame Rocada, and it was the discovery that another woman was setting up in business under her name which brought the vengeful stranger on the visit which had turned out so fatally for herself.
The sudden understanding of the strange events in which she had been forced to take so active a part not only paralysed Audrey, but made her feel as if this direct attack were quite a secondary matter.
For there was the question of the disappearance of the White Countess to be met. And though indeed she had heard nothing of the matter since the evening when she had seen the white-clad lady lying, as she believed, dead in the fitting-room, there was suddenly borne in upon her in all its dreadful force the conviction that this was not the end, that she would be forced to hear more about the tragedy by-and-by.
Instead, therefore, of indignantly meeting the charge thus unexpectedly brought against her by the viscount, she drew a long breath, tried to speak, faltered, and seeming to lose her physical strength and her courage at the same time, put out her hand for the support of the writing-table from which she had just risen, and leaned upon it, swaying slightly, and looking, as she felt, the picture of utter distress and dismay.
Absolutely as he believed in her guilt, Lord Clanfield, a chivalrous gentleman, to whom this duty of rescuing his sons from the clutches of the keeper of a gaming-house was utterly distasteful, was extremely distressed by her behaviour.
He was far too simple-minded and unsophisticated, being rather a quiet country gentleman than a man of the world, to have recognised at once, what a shrewder man would have done, the improbability that this fresh-looking young woman could be the same person as the notorious Madame Rocada, whose wiles had brought about the death of the son of his friend.
At the same time, the effect of her extraordinary beauty and of the straightforward dignity of her manner was such that he felt exceedingly uncomfortable, and almost wished that he had not insisted upon taking this matter into his own hands, instead of leaving it to be managed by his solicitors.
After what seemed to both a very long pause, he said, with a change of tone:—
“I regret exceedingly to be forced to this course, Madame Rocada. I have, however, no choice. My sons are, unfortunately, extravagant and difficult to control, and I have therefore thought it best to come straight to you, to ask you to help me in this matter.”
Now this speech, uttered in a much less severe tone than his previous words, showed a distinct advance in the direction of friendliness.
Whether or not there was already some doubt in the viscount’s mind, he seemed to wish to qualify his blunt accusation.
To Audrey, however, this was a matter of no moment. The statement remained uncontradicted, the awful accusation of her having been a party to, or in some way concerned in, the death of a man.
With this in her mind, she did not appear to hear or understand this second speech, but, as soon as she had recovered herself a little, went straight back to the first.
“What you say of me is wholly untrue,” she said in a low, breathless voice. “My name——” Suddenly a flood of blushes suffused her pale face. How could she tell him what her name was? How introduce to the already indignant and reproachful visitor the knowledge that she was the wife of the nephew whom he no doubt believed to be a forger and a swindler? After a short pause she went on, while he waited quietly for her without interruption: “I have nev——”
She stopped again.
“Do you mean to say you have never been to Paris?” asked the viscount, less harshly, but still with evident incredulity.
Audrey raised her head in desperation.
“No. I did not mean that. I have been in Paris. I was there last winter.”
Her voice faltered, for she remembered the joy of that merry time. She and Gerard had spent part of their honeymoon there.
After another pause she went on:—
“But I have never kept a gaming-house, I do not keep one now. I have never heard of your friend Grey. I have never had a hand in anybody’s death. Your accusation is absurd. As for your sons, I do not want them here. They were brought here, without any invitation from me, by one of my acquaintances. They shall never come here again. And my name is not Madame Rocada. That is merely a trade name, and is not even of my own choosing.”
Lord Clanfield looked at her keenly. He was interested, in spite of himself, in this woman, whose manners and appearance were, he felt sure, quite different from those of the ordinary adventuress he had believed her to be. He hesitated, and then said, looking at her with a scrutinising gaze as he spoke:—
“And may I ask what your name really is?”
If there had been even a little kindliness, a little unbending, in his tone and manner, Audrey might perhaps have been tempted to tell him the whole truth as to her identity, and even to plead with him on behalf of that nephew whom she was sure he cruelly misjudged.
But Lord Clanfield, though he was perplexed, was not outwardly softened. If anything, indeed, he was inclined to be indignant that the keeper of a gaming-house, as he believed her to be, should be so amply endowed by nature, so well-bred in manner, as to increase the danger of her acquaintance for susceptible young men.
So Audrey merely said:—
“My name is an honourable one, and I have done nothing to disgrace it.”
And as she spoke the thought of poor Gerard, going through the terrible humiliation and hardship of penal servitude, with his heart breaking on her account, suddenly overwhelmed her, and she turned abruptly, and walked away down the long room, afraid of an outburst of tears.
If she had given way to this impulse, if she had broken down into the open and uncontrollable grief which possessed her, it is possible that Lord Clanfield’s pity might have been excited, and that a full confession on her part might have followed.
But whether such a confession would have been to the advantage of herself and Gerard is, perhaps, open to question. And it was some inkling of the enormous difficulty of her position in this respect which acted even more powerfully than her sense of dignity in enabling Audrey to control her emotions, and to retire abruptly from the contest.
There was nothing left to Lord Clanfield but to withdraw, with such conventional words of thanks as he could muster for her promise to refuse admittance to his sons. She bowed without a word, and the painful interview came to an abrupt end.
Audrey was left in a state bordering on stupefaction.
Before her on the table lay her letter to Mr. Candover, not yet put into its envelope. She took it up mechanically, read it, and wished she had handed it to Lord Clanfield. At least he would have seen then how anxious she was to get away from this place, how angry she was at the scenes which had taken place there.
But on the other hand, the letter would have been an acknowledgment that there had been scenes of a disagreeable kind; and, though the viscount would have seen that she had influential friends, as Mr. Candover was a man well known in society, Audrey reflected, with a pang of bitterness, that the men friends of an unprotected woman, however influential they may be, are not looked upon as witnesses to character.
And, realising that her complaints to Mr. Candover, however well founded and however passionate, would in all probability be met by him with his usual soothing assurances that she was very well off, and that she ought to take the drawbacks of her position with philosophy, Audrey tore up the letter, and wrote another, not to him, but to the only woman friend who knew of at least one and the greatest of her troubles.
This was Mrs. Webster, a kindly, honest-hearted woman, of mature age, yet not too old as to have lost touch with life and society, and one upon whose goodness of heart she knew that she could rely.
This was what she said:—
“Dear Mrs. Webster,“I know you are away, so I am sending this letter to your flat to be forwarded, for I want you to come and see me as soon as you are back in town. I have taken this place for two months, one of which has now expired, I am happy to say. You don’t know that I’ve taken a business under the name of ‘Madame Rocada,’ and though I hate the name and mean to give it up, you had better direct to me by it, as it is the only one I am known by here. I am so terribly lonely, and am in a position of great difficulty for want of some one to advise me, so please, please come and see me as soon as ever you return to town.“Yours most sincerely,“Audrey.”
“Dear Mrs. Webster,
“I know you are away, so I am sending this letter to your flat to be forwarded, for I want you to come and see me as soon as you are back in town. I have taken this place for two months, one of which has now expired, I am happy to say. You don’t know that I’ve taken a business under the name of ‘Madame Rocada,’ and though I hate the name and mean to give it up, you had better direct to me by it, as it is the only one I am known by here. I am so terribly lonely, and am in a position of great difficulty for want of some one to advise me, so please, please come and see me as soon as ever you return to town.
“Yours most sincerely,
“Audrey.”
She got an answer almost by return of post, to say that Mrs. Webster was already back in town and would come to “The Briars” on the following day.
In the meantime Audrey passed her time in a state of great uncertainty as to what she would do when she left “The Briars,” as she had no doubt that Mrs. Webster would advise her to do.
On the one hand she knew that it was hopeless to expect to get, by her own unaided efforts, into another position where she would have a chance of making money, such as she undoubtedly had now.
On the other hand, as she had sunk all the capital she could spare in the flourishing business she had established, there would be very little for her to live upon if she were to throw it up and retire into obscurity in some quiet seaside place, which was the plan she had in her mind.
When Mrs. Webster arrived, as she did just before luncheon-time, Audrey’s heart beat high with pleasure and excitement. They had not seen one another since Audrey left her flat, and Mrs. Webster, who was the widow of a barrister, living in modest comfort on a small income which did not allow much margin for dress, was electrified by the magnificence of Audrey’s dress and surroundings.
“My dear child,” she exclaimed, as she looked at the pretty gown of grey silk muslin trimmed with strips of gorgeous Indian embroidery, “how smart you are! You make me ashamed of my old rags! And how splendidly you’re installed here! Good gracious, have you come into a fortune?”
And the good lady looked from Audrey to the beautiful room and the masses of flowers and palms which decorated it, with a slightly dubious uplifting of the eyebrows.
“No, of course not. Sit down, and I’ll tell you all about it. I told you I’d gone into business, didn’t I? Well, this is part of the stock-in-trade. I’ve only got this house for another month, but I don’t want to keep it even as long as that. Listen.”
And she poured into her friend’s sympathetic ear the whole history of her start in her new career, of the energetic help given her by Mr. Candover, the prosperous beginning of the business, and then the terrible scene of the coming of the lady in white, of the mystery of her disappearance, and finally she told of her renting “The Briars,” and of the card-playing that went on there in spite of her.
Mrs. Webster listened with the keenest interest, but to Audrey’s astonishment, she did not share her views as to the impossibility of her retaining her present position.
It was even apparent that she was inclined to share the opinion expressed by Dr. Fendall, that part at least of the extraordinary story she told about the white-robed lady was the result of her imagination.
“If it had all really happened, my dear, I don’t see how it is possible to account for your hearing no more of it,” she added sagely.
Audrey, though rather discouraged by this attitude on the part of her friend, went on to narrate the circumstances of her coming to “The Briars,” of the numerous acquaintances and neighbours who at once visited her, and of the high play in which they indulged under her roof.
Again, to her dismay, Mrs. Webster was more impressed by the rank and position of these visitors than by the gambling in which they indulged.
“Lord Gourock and Sir William Dymchurch!” she exclaimed, with manifest enjoyment of the titles. “Why, they’re quite distinguished people, my dear, and I should think you ought to be proud to have them for your friends. As for their playing cards, why, everybody does it nowadays, women as well as men, and particularly people of fashion, such as your visitors are! I cannot understand what you have to complain about.”
“Well, they are noisy, some of them,” said Audrey, beginning to fear that she had found another opponent in seeking an ally. “And just now I wanted to live so quietly! It seems dreadful to me to have all this going on under what is for the time, at any rate, my roof, when I feel, as I’ve told you, as if I should like to shut myself up in a convent and never see anybody!”
“That would never do,” said Mrs. Webster with decision. “It would be bad for you, and it wouldn’t do any good to your poor husband.”
“Well, listen to this,” said Audrey impatiently, as she went on to narrate her very latest grievance, the visit of Lord Clanfield, and his astounding accusation.
To that Mrs. Webster replied by a question:—
“Well, and what does Mr. Candover say to that?”
“I haven’t seen him since, to ask him,” she answered. “And to tell you the truth I thought it was better to consult a woman than to have to ask a man about it. I don’t want to be dependent for everything upon the advice of Mr. Candover.”
“Well, of course it’s better to have friends of your own sex too,” admitted Mrs. Webster. “But as Mr. Candover was such an intimate friend of your husband’s, there can’t be much harm in speaking to him, as he knows everything too!” she added in a discreet undertone. “And he’s such a very nice man, so handsome, so well-bred, and so nice about his daughters!”
“Ye-es,” said Audrey, who knew that a certain vague mistrust in her mind had better not be too openly insisted on as yet. “But what do you think about his having suggested to me this name Rocada? Don’t you see that it has put me into a very unpleasant position? Perhaps some others among these people who come think I am the woman who kept a gaming-house in Paris!”
This was certainly not a pleasant suggestion, and Mrs. Webster, after a little reflection, offered to stay at “The Briars” and to be present at one of the evenings which caused Audrey so much distress. The offer was accepted with gratitude, and Mrs. Webster telegraphed to her housekeeper that she would not be home until the following day, and spent not only the day but the night with her unhappy friend.
That very evening the guests arrived in numbers, as they did regularly every Wednesday and Friday. There was the usual preponderance of the male sex, but there were quite enough ladies present to make Mrs. Webster decide that Audrey was too prudish in her strictures.
Mr. Candover, who came early, expressed himself delighted to see Mrs. Webster, and at once opened a long confidential conversation with her, in which he quite won her heart by his earnest solicitude for the poor unprotected young wife, and by the bitter regret he expressed that he had not been in England at the time of poor Gerard’s trial, to give him any help which might have been in his power.
He brought tears to the good lady’s eyes, and when he told her of the difficulty he experienced in persuading Audrey to do what was best for herself and her husband, and of the obstacles she put in the way of everything that was done for her, Mrs. Webster grew quite indignant at Audrey’s stupid obstinacy, and begged him to be patient with her, and to remember the state of over-wrought nerves in which she must be after the terrible excitement and trouble of her husband’s trial.
“I do remember that indeed,” said he in a low voice. “And I think myself it accounts for some most singular delusions which she has undoubtedly suffered from of late, delusions so strange that they made me quite unhappy as to her mental balance.”
“Do you mean the story about the lady in white?” asked Mrs. Webster in a whisper.
Mr. Candover nodded.
“And the visit of Lord Clanfield, and his accusing her of being a woman called the ‘White Countess,’ who once kept a gaming-house in Paris, do you think that is a delusion too?”
He raised his eyebrows.
“I’ve heard nothing about that,” said he.
“Oh, well then, don’t say I said anything about it to you. No doubt she’ll tell you about it herself. She seemed very much upset, poor thing!”
In the meantime Audrey, who had a vague consciousness of the existence near her of some perfect organisation which worked out all its ends in an admirable way, recognised the fact that on this particular evening, when she was anxious to prove to Mrs. Webster the difficulty of her position, there was nothing whatever in the demeanour or the actions of her unwelcome visitors to give the slightest colour to her complaints.
One room was, indeed, set apart for cards, but no sounds of undue excitement came thence to the drawing-room, where music and conversation formed the entertainment of the rest of the guests.
Audrey was uneasy, excited, miserable, afraid that the sons of Lord Clanfield might insist upon defying her prohibition to the servants to admit them, and anxious yet nervous about the talk she must have with Mr. Candover.
In the meantime, while he was occupied in conversation with Mrs. Webster, Audrey had a shrewd yet vague suspicion that he was having it all his own way, and persuading the impressionable lady into taking exactly his own views.
Audrey passed through the long drawing-room and glanced into the end room at right angles with it, where the card-playing was going on.
By this time there were certain faces which she knew she might always be sure of seeing on these evenings, and she mentally made a note of them as she looked.
There was Lord Gourock, conspicuous for his perfectly bald head and the heavy white moustache which seemed to have absorbed all his powers of hair-producing. Passive as a statue, with dull yet not unobservant eyes, he sat there, apparently indifferent to whether he gained or lost, as long as he played.
There were two silly-looking youths who put on airs of blasé middle age, and who were, she knew, the sons of men who had made a great deal of money in trade. She knew that both of them always lost heavily, and she wished she could find an opportunity of pointing out to them how silly they were to go on playing in the circumstances. She supposed that they must both be very careless in play or very stupid, for the luck to be so constantly against them.
There was Durley Diggs, Mr. Candover’s secretary. He, too, generally complained of having lost, and always got into a state of great elation if he won two or three pounds. He did not care what he played at, poker, baccarat, roulette, it was all the same to him, and he went from table to table, always alert, neat, trim, bright of speech yet quiet in manner, and always perfectly equable of temper even when his fellow-players, as sometimes happened, grew peevish and ill-tempered.
They were not noisy. Except when the young Clanfields, or one or two strangers were of the party, it was remarkable how quiet they all were. Audrey even thought sometimes, when only the habitués were present, that the silence in which they all staked and won or lost was uncanny.
There was another man whom she generally saw in the rooms, the heavy, solemn-looking Jim Johnson, Madame de Vicenza’s steward or secretary, Audrey did not exactly know which—who had accompanied her and Durley Diggs to the police court to arrange bail for Gerard.
Audrey noticed how modest this man was, how shy and awkward, how he always avoided the ordeal of greeting her or of bidding her good-bye.
He, too, was generally present, and Audrey thought that he was perhaps instructed by the duchess to frequent the place as much as possible in her absence, to see that no damage was done to the premises while they were sublet.
On this occasion Audrey, glancing round the card-room, saw Johnson’s face in profile, and was at once struck by a fact which she was surprised that she had not previously noticed, the extraordinary resemblance between him and the Dr. Fendall whom Mademoiselle Laure had called in on the eventful evening when the white lady appeared at the showrooms and disappeared from them so strangely.
The more she looked, the more certain she felt that the two men must be brothers. There was the same heavy protruding jaw, the same light blue eyes, the same slightly aquiline nose; both were of about the same height, were round-shouldered, and stooped a good deal.
The only noticeable points of difference, indeed, were the fact that while Johnson was clean-shaved, Dr. Fendall wore a greyish moustache, and that whereas the secretary used no glasses, the doctor wore gold-rimmed spectacles.
The longer Audrey looked, the more struck was she by this resemblance, and Johnson himself soon became aware of her curious gaze, grew uneasy under it, glanced at her apprehensively again and again, and finally, at the first opportunity, sprang up from the table at which he was playing and made a dash for the door at the opposite end of the room from that at which Audrey stood.
But she was determined to question him; and retreating hastily through the drawing-room she slipped out quietly into the hall, and came, as she had expected to do, face to face with Johnson, who was in the act of finding his hat from a pile on the hall table.
“Mr. Johnson,” said she, “I want to ask you something.”
He bowed without speaking, but looked very uncomfortable.
“You are a brother of Dr. Fendall, are you not?”
He burst into an awkward, self-conscious laugh.
“Why, yes, I am,” said he. “I am a brother of his. Do—do you know him?”
Audrey looked at him curiously, with a sudden suspicion.
“Then how is it,” she asked quickly, “that you haven’t the same name?”
BeforeJohnson could answer, Audrey heard Mr. Candover’s voice behind her, and turning, she received his answer for the strangely perturbed secretary.
“Mr. Johnson,” said he, “is only Dr. Fendall’s half-brother; that’s why they don’t bear the same surname.”
“I see.”
In that short interruption Johnson had found time to escape, not by the front-door, but back to the card-room, and Mr. Candover, who looked more excited than he usually allowed himself to appear, asked Audrey why she looked so cross.
She was strung up, agitated, eager for the contest with this man whose subtle advice always led her into such difficult places.
“Do I?” she said, putting strong constraint upon herself, and forcing herself to speak calmly, though her eyes blazed and her lips trembled. “Well, I think I am cross. At any rate I’m disgusted, and I’m sure, if you can’t guess all the reasons why I am so, you know some of them at least.”
“Let us come in here, where we can talk,” said he, as he opened the door of the conservatory, near which they were standing. He arranged for her one of the cane-seated lounge chairs which stood about among the flowers, and invited her, with a winning smile, to seat herself in the pile of cushions which he collected from the other seats round him. But she would not sit down. She felt at greater advantage when she could move about, and meet his eyes on the same level as her own.
He was determined to help her in his own way, and he was, she knew, prepared to do battle with her over her fixed resolve to abandon the career he had mapped out for her. And weak though she always felt in the presence of this man with the various arts which he knew so well how to use, the crisis had come, and she felt that she would, she must be strong enough to resist his will.
“Now,” said he, leaning back against the glass wall that shut them in, and looking at her with his usual placid and amiable smile, “what is the matter?”
“I’m going away from this place,” said Audrey bluntly. “I don’t like the people who come here, and I don’t like the scenes I am exposed to. And I’m sure you know why.”
He had changed his attitude, and his handsome face expressed great astonishment and perplexity.
“But we have talked that out, and I thought you had seen the necessity of taking the rough with the smooth,” objected he. “What are you going to do if you give this up?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care,” said Audrey angrily. “But I won’t have noisy men like the Angmerings here, and I won’t be exposed to the insults of their father any longer.”
“Insults! What insults?”
Audrey looked at him askance. She had a very shrewd suspicion that he must have heard all about it already, but she said:—
“Lord Clanfield came here the day before yesterday, and accused me of being a woman called the ‘White Countess,’ who was concerned in the death of a man. She was the keeper of a Paris gaming-house. But of course you knew. And I want to learn how, knowing her as you must have done, you dared to advise me to call myself by the name of such a woman!”
Horribly frightened by her own boldness, Audrey poured out this tirade at a rapid rate, trying by firmness and clearness of tone to deceive herself into thinking that she was not horribly alarmed.
Mr. Candover took it very quietly, and after a short pause laughed.
“I see, I see. I was afraid those young cubs would frighten you!”
“Lord Clanfield,” interrupted Audrey sharply, “requested me not to admit them into my house.”
“I should imagine you were not very anxious to admit them,” said Mr. Candover. “Nobody else is. As for Lord Clanfield, he’s an old crank; won’t allow bagatelle on Sundays—if anybody ever wants to play that innocent game on that or any other day! And as for the young cubs, they wouldn’t come to much harm here or anywhere else, for there’s very little they don’t know! I’m very angry that you should have been annoyed by the old fool, but he’s an annoyance to everybody. You didn’t let him know you were his nephew’s wife?”
“No—o—o, though I rather wish I had!” sighed Audrey. “But I told him I was not Madame Rocada, and what I want to know is why you, who must have known all about there being a real woman of that name, the keeper of a gaming-house, should have advised me to call myself by it!”
Her tone was fierce and angry, and Mr. Candover grew earnest as he answered.
“Believe me I never heard of this woman, and I don’t believe she ever existed. It was Marie Laure who suggested the name Rocada to me, as being new and striking. And I am sure that this old Clanfield, who is as muddle-headed as one of his own sheep, has got hold of the wrong name. Surely you don’t suppose I should have chosen you a name with ugly associations attached to it?”