“Rocada?”
“Yes. In the first place I shall offer it to Mademoiselle Laure, who is, after all, the real head of it. I am a mere puppet, and only for show.”
“Without admitting that, I think your idea is a good one,” said Mr. Candover. “Laure might take it, if you were not too hard in your terms. And I don’t suppose you would be.”
“Oh, no.”
“Well then, you have taken a very sensible resolution, from your point of view. From mine, it seems a pity to give up a business which promised to work up into a first-rate one. In the meantime, I will see you safely as far as Mrs. Webster’s flat—Oh, I insist upon it. Even if you are anxious to throw all the blame for what has gone wrong upon my poor shoulders, as I think you are, you must not cut me off altogether, when I am still only too anxious to be of use to you in any possible way.”
Her protests were in vain. And poor Audrey began to feel, with a terrible sinking of the heart, that the words of the stranger were coming true, and that, try as she might to get out of range of Mr. Candover’s uncanny and mysterious influence, she would be drawn back, invisibly but surely, every time.
This impression was increased when they reached Mrs. Webster’s flat, for that good lady received them both with a broad smile of welcome, which was even more expansive for Mr. Candover than for his companion. Indeed it was evident that his gentle voice and insinuating manners had fascinated the widow, and Audrey soon perceived that it would be hopeless, as well as rash, to confide in her as to his suspected misdeeds.
And when she learned that Mr. Candover had called upon Mrs. Webster once or twice of late, Audrey felt another pang of the terrible fear that the net was tightly woven about her own feet. Every acquaintance, every friend she had seemed to have come, in one way or another, within his baleful influence.
She was, therefore, obliged to say nothing about the visit of the mysterious stranger, and she glossed over the treatment she had received from Lord Clanfield as much as she could. But again she noted uneasily that Mrs. Webster seemed to have been infected with the idea that Gerard had really been guilty of the forgery; and finding so little sympathy with her deepest feelings, Audrey toned down her discoveries at “The Briars” as much as she could, and dwelt more on the gambling than on the disputes which had resulted from it.
On the following morning Audrey went to the showrooms, with reluctance indeed but with a dogged resolution to go through the unpleasant business of bargaining with Mademoiselle Laure with spirit and keenness, not for her own sake only, but for that of Gerard.
If only this business had been unconnected with Mr. Candover and Marie Laure, and the adventure with the white lady, poor Audrey felt how gladly she would have had it to fall back upon, how proud she would have been to be able, by her own exertions and her own money, to do something towards making a home for Gerard and herself. As it was, she had sunk so much of her small capital in this business that, if she were to get nothing from it, she would have very little left, and no means of providing some sort of home in which to nurse her husband back to health and strength again.
So that it was with many a tremor that she re-entered the handsomely furnished rooms, where she found Marie Laure already returned from Paris, busily engaged in unpacking the new models which she had brought over, and affecting as much care and secrecy over them as if they had been royal robes.
Marie Laure received her effusively, though with the suspicious dryness under all her compliments which made Audrey mistrust them.
She refused to talk about business that morning, and insisted on enlisting Audrey’s services in the matter of the rearrangement of the rooms, and in sundry other matters which occupied them both until well into the afternoon, when, to Audrey’s annoyance, there streamed into the rooms, in twos and threes, but at very short intervals, quite a little crowd of the men who had been habitués at “The Briars” during her tenancy of the house.
The firstcomers made a pretence of making purchases of bonnets and laces, which Laure brought forward for Audrey to offer. But it was soon evident to the unlucky nominal head of the firm that her customers had other objects in view than these. There was a sort of freemasonry among them which irritated and alarmed her; and she caught an interchange of glances between them which sent the hot blood to her cheeks.
While preserving towards her that outward decorum which had always been carefully respected at “The Briars,” Audrey felt certain that she was connected by them all with the scenes which had taken place there, and that they believed her to be fully cognisant of what went on in the billiard-room when the guests were supposed to have gone away.
She understood again that Mr. Candover’s prediction had come true, and that they looked upon her departure from “The Briars” as caused by the disturbance of two nights before.
Probably, she thought fiercely, it was he himself who had put the idea into their heads.
She had answered a great many questions as to her hurried departure from Epsom, and requests that she would not be long in finding another house, when Mr. Candover himself, and a well-known baronet of sporting tastes, entered together.
Audrey’s patience was at an end. Her spirit was roused to the point of recklessness, she felt that she hated Mr. Candover, and that she must, no matter what the risk, make one bold effort to defy and denounce him.
When, therefore, Sir Barnaby Joyce began to rally her on her sudden loss of “pluck,” and to express the fear that it was the noise they had made two nights before which had frightened her away, Audrey, sombre, outwardly calm and dignified, but inwardly on fire with a sort of reckless indignation and despair, turned upon him fiercely.
“What noise do you mean, Sir Barnaby?” she asked, with subdued ferocity that made Mr. Candover move uneasily as he watched her.
“Oh, I think you know! There was some sort of disturbance, wasn’t there? Some one accused somebody else of not playing fairly, I believe,” said Sir Barnaby, evidently surprised by her fierce tone.
Audrey fixed upon him a pair of blazing eyes.
“Yes, somebody did,” she replied firmly and steadily. “Somebody accused somebody else of cheating, and—in all probability he was right, quite right.” There was a movement, a stir among the men, who were standing in idle attitudes about the room, and they turned to look and to listen as she went on in the same clear, resolute tones: “But I don’t pity any of you; I feel no more sympathy for those who are cheated than for those who cheat.” The sensation of amazement deepened among her hearers, and Mr. Candover grew deadly white. She went on, with rising warmth: “Ought you not all to expect underhand ways, when you meet to play in an underhand manner? Whom can you blame but yourselves when, meeting by stealth to play games which can only be played by stealth, you find yourselves the easy prey of——” And she stared defiantly at Mr. Candover—“a gang of swindlers!”
Therewas a silence of amazement, of doubt, of consternation; and the men who thronged the showroom looked at each other, and then at the daring woman who had brought this accusation, as it seemed, against the well-known, the irreproachable, the wealthy Mr. Candover.
Perhaps the most shocked of all the listeners to this unexpected tirade was Sir Harry Archdale, who, himself a victim of the unfair play carried on at “The Briars,” had been only too willing to look upon the intrusion of a black sheep there as an unhappy accident, and upon Audrey as a victim like himself of that intrusion.
But, wishing as he did to take her part, he had been considerably perturbed by the opposite views of her which were commonly held among the habitués of “The Briars,” and now that she had the audacity and the bad taste to fling a direct accusation into the face of one of the most prominent men of his own set, Sir Harry at once took fire, and mindful of the fact that the man whom she accused was the father of the lovely Pamela, he stepped forward boldly, and was the very first to put a question to the angry lady.
“Madame Rocada,” said he, deferentially as far as manner went, but in an offended tone, “you will, I’m sure, think it only right, when you say a thing which affects all, or almost all of us, to be more explicit. Whom do you accuse of cheating? Who are the members of the gang of swindlers you refer to?”
Audrey, already trembling from the effects of her own boldness, turned to him and answered in a broken but determined voice:—
“One of them you know. His name—or the name he goes by—is Durley Diggs. He was Mr. Candover’s secretary.”
“Was, not is,” retorted Mr. Candover, speaking for the first time, and as coolly as if the accusation just brought were no concern of his, though his face was very pale and his eyes wore a strange and almost glassy look. “When I heard that complaints had been made about his play I discharged him at once from my employment—as you must remember, Madame Rocada.”
“Yes, Madame, you told me so yourself,” said Sir Harry.
But Audrey was not to be cowed, not to be forced into retracting a word, now that she had once strung herself up to the point of open accusation. Clasping her hands tightly together, and conscious, with a fierce feeling of resentment and despair, that all these men were as fools and children in the hands of this clever scoundrel who had made a tool of herself, she made no reply to this, but, after a moment’s pause, went on doggedly:—
“Then there is a man who calls himself Johnson. There have been complaints of him.”
“When?” asked Mr. Candover sharply.
“Only two nights ago.”
“And will you tell us where these accusations were made, and by whom?” he went on with the same provocative calmness.
“They were made—the disturbance arose—about four o’clock in the morning, when cards were being played in the billiard-room at ‘The Briars,’ and they were made by more than one man.”
“Were you present, Madame?”
“Not in the room. But I overheard the disturbance, and I challenge any of you who were there, you, Sir Barnaby, were one, and one of the young Angmerings was another—to deny that there was a disturbance, and that Johnson was accused of cheating.”
There was a moment’s silence. Then Sir Barnaby said, in a tone of veiled insolence that cut her to the quick:—
“I am greatly distressed at having to speak to a woman—a lady—upon such a matter. I had admired your tact, Madame Rocada, in keeping out of all discussions and scenes of this sort. We have all understood and admired the way in which you conducted the premises and managed the business, unseen, but making your presence felt, and keeping up a high standard of decorum. I cannot but think you are very unwise to have forced us, as you are doing, into speaking out upon a subject which could very well have been disposed of without the painful necessity of dragging a lady into it.”
Every word burned into Audrey’s brain. Careful as he was to speak with outward respect, Sir Barnaby was, as Audrey felt, absolutely convinced that she was the keeper of a gaming-house of a shady sort, and that she had known all about the play which was carried on in the billiard-room until the small hours of the morning. How, indeed, could she wonder at this being the case? Was not the strangest fact in connection with this business that she had been in ignorance of so much for so long? Even as she listened, she felt how impossible it would have been for her to believe in such a story as her own, in such a blind confidence as she had shown, in the possibility of a grown woman, perfectly innocent, allowing herself to be used as a puppet in such a scandalous affair.
This terrible consciousness began to oppress her, to paralyse her tongue, to blanch her cheeks, until she felt within her the dreadful certainty that not one of all the men who watched her, some furtively, some openly, doubted the truth of what Sir Barnaby was saying.
When he paused there was a sort of murmur, and some of the men moved towards the door, anxious to escape the rest of a painful scene. But Mr. Candover, foreseeing their intention, quietly interposed his person between them and the door, anxious concerning the impression they might carry away with them.
“I—I have had nothing to do with it. I—I have always disapproved of the play—I have protested against it. And I—I knew nothing about the billiard-room until two nights ago.”
These last words were too much for any one’s credulity. There was again a sort of murmur, and Sir Harry Archdale openly smiled.
Audrey, conscious that the feeling was against her, turned her head away from them all without another word.
But the movement, her evident distress combined with her youth and beauty, turned the current of feeling suddenly in her favour again. Mr. Candover perceived this tendency, and spoke:—
“We are quite ready, Madame Rocada,” said he, in a tone of exaggerated deference which hurt her more than open insolence would have done, “to believe what you say, that you disapprove of cards, that you have protested against play at ‘The Briars,’ and that you knew nothing whatever about the late hours in the billiard-room, although you knew all about the disturbance two nights ago.”
Audrey turned fiercely towards him, but a certain consciousness that these last words had turned the tide of feeling once more against her, kept her dumb. He went on:—
“But you must understand that when you say you harboured a gang of swindlers under your roof——”
“I didn’t say that!” cried she aghast.
Mr. Candover turned to the rest of the men with uplifted eyebrows.
“Then I’m afraid we’ve misunderstood you,” he went on suavely. “Certainly I understood, for my part, that you said we were all either swindlers or swindled, and that you had no more sympathy for the one lot than for the other. Did we misunderstand you in thinking you said that?”
“I did say that,” sobbed out Audrey, who was not crying, but who could not speak except in spasmodic jerks.
“I thought so. Well, then, is it too much to ask that you should be a little more explicit, that you should tell us, in short, who are the swindlers and who the swindled?”
There was another dead silence. Painful, pitiful as it was to see this young and lovely woman brought thus to bay, the matter was too exciting for any one to feel inclined to let the affair rest there. It almost seemed—Mr. Candover took care to let it seem—that they all rested under some sort of imputation until she could be made to speak out.
Audrey felt, however, that she would get no sympathy, no belief, if she were to tell the truth. And in despair she said so.
“What is the use of asking me,” she said bitterly, “to say any more? Not one of you would believe me, if I did. No. All I say is this: the play at ‘The Briars’ was not fair play, at least it was not always fair. I have proved it to you in two instances. Well, that ought to be enough for you. For me to accuse anybody whose cheating has not been found out would be useless, even if it were possible. All I do, all I have done, is to warn you that the men who have done the unfair work were acting together, and, I believe, acting under orders. And as for the rest—as for discovering under whose orders they acted, they cheated, why, surely that is your business, the business of those who have lost money—not mine!”
“No, but it’s not enough. You ought to tell us who it is. It’s not fair to bring an accusation and then to draw back,” protested Sir Harry, who felt all the more strongly because he had been inclined to look upon this lovely woman as a victim, and who now felt that he had been befooled.
Mr. Candover’s voice broke in suavely after the young man’s hot-tempered outburst.
“As far as one could judge,” he said very calmly, but with an air which suggested a certain amused contempt under his quiet manner, “Madame Rocada appeared to accusemeof being the ringleader in the offences of which she spoke. Wasn’t that your impression, Sir Barnaby?” he went on, turning to the baronet, who appeared disconcerted by the direct question, and who looked, as indeed he felt, reluctant to take further part in this unpleasant scene, in which a young, beautiful and unhappy woman was forced, as it were, to stand at bay against six or eight men.
“Oh, really I don’t know. I heard nobody in particular accused, except Johnson and Diggs,” answered Sir Barnaby. “Haven’t we had enough of it? It’s confoundedly awkward!” he added in a lower voice to Candover, trying to hook him by the arm and lead him away.
“I think,” said Sir Harry, who felt the implied imputation upon Mr. Candover the more keenly that he was a great admirer of that gentleman’s pretty daughter, “that Madame Rocada ought to do one thing or the other. Either to let us know who are the other members of what she calls the ‘gang,’ or else—to withdraw the imputations she has certainly made.”
Sir Barnaby caught at the suggestion.
“Oh, certainly, certainly. I’m sure Madame will be ready to do that. We all allow—we can’t deny that there were two black sheep, and that we were very dull not to have found them out before. I feel sure Madame said a little more than she meant to do, and that she is just as anxious to put an end to this as any of us. Aren’t you, Madame Rocada?”
And he turned to Audrey, with real concern in his eyes, genuinely anxious to make it easy for her to retreat from the daring and dangerous position she had taken up.
But Audrey would not retract. On the other hand, as it was useless for her to try to maintain her position by words which, she felt, would only be looked upon as wild and malignant accusations, she merely said, looking at Sir Barnaby, and speaking in a low and unsteady voice:—
“I have nothing more to say—nothing.”
“No, of course not. And you retract all accusations, or supposed accusations, don’t you?” persisted the baronet, putting his good-natured red face persuasively near to hers, and smiling into her eyes in a coaxing manner which met with no response.
“I don’t retract,” she said simply. “There is nothing I can retract. And some day—sooner or later—you will all find out that what I’ve said is true.”
Then she sailed away through the room to the door, and the men instinctively made way for her, while Sir Harry, who was the nearest to the door, opened it for her to pass out.
But before she could do so, while therefore she was still within hearing, there sounded suddenly through the room these words, spoken by Mr. Candover in a voice which was carefully subdued as if to escape her ears, but which was, in reality, so pitched that, while it was scarcely more than a whisper, every word reached her ears distinctly:—
“And that woman—who dares to talk to us all in that strain, to bring accusations, to talk of gangs of swindlers—is the wife of a convict!”
The words came like a bombshell into the group, and the very men who had felt compunction for their share in the scene, the very men who had been all but convinced by her spirit and her proud yet innocent bearing were on the instant filled with amazement and indignation, while the suspicions which had begun to melt away became at once as strong as ever.
For Audrey certainly heard the words uttered by Mr. Candover, since they caused a shiver to pass through her. Every eye was turned upon her as she wheeled round in the doorway, and said, in a low voice, with biting emphasis:—
“Gentlemen, I have done my best to protect you—from yourselves. I thank you—for your chivalrous return.”
Then she tottered through the doorway, rejecting with a cold gesture Sir Barnaby’s proffered help, and shutting herself into the little room at the back where she used to leave her walking dress when she came to and from the showrooms every day, she locked herself in, sat down on the nearest chair, and remained like a woman struck with paralysis, unable to think, unable to do anything but feel that last terrible wound inflicted by Mr. Candover.
The wife of a convict! The wife of a convict! This was the weapon he had held in reserve all this time, knowing that he could rely upon it to quench every feeling of pity or respect which might be felt towards the poor victim of his craft!
Audrey understood now better than ever how closely the net was drawn about her feet, how strong were the meshes which bound her.
The wife of a convict! And she had not been able to say one word in refutation of the taunt. She was the wife of a man who had been convicted, and that, in the eyes of the world, was enough to place both her and her husband beyond the pale of sympathy. Yet, why should it be so? Why should they take it for granted that she was worthless, just because they took it for granted that her husband, having been convicted, must be a criminal? Why were they so blind as to suppose that she, who denounced the cheating that had gone on at “The Briars,” was in league with the cheats?
She could not understand it. She could not realise how subtilly Mr. Candover had been at work, representing her as a miracle of artful prudence, whose airs of innocence hid the most careful and cautious system of self-preservation.
While she wondered why they could not read guilt in his pale face, in his burning, angry eyes, the rest of the men were listening to Mr. Candover’s comments on her behaviour, on her cleverness in being blind to everything until there was a “row,” and in then running away and assuming airs of virtuous indignation over an occurrence which to her must have been an everyday affair.
For a long, long time Audrey remained in the little back-room, feeling so utterly miserable, so degraded in her own eyes by the ordeal through which she had passed and the malignant comments to which she knew she was being subjected, that she could not do anything but hold her aching head between her hands, and whisper in an agonised voice: “Oh, Gerard, Gerard!”
It was not until dusk had come, and she had long since heard the visitors go down the stairs and out by the side-door into the street, that at last she roused herself, bathed her red eyes, which, however, had shed but few tears, and summoning her spirit, made up her mind to go through the fateful interview with Mademoiselle Laure.
Her situation, poor creature, was so desperate, the humiliation to which she had been subjected was so great, that from very excess of misery there came a calmness over her spirits; a sort of desperate courage came to her aid, and told her that, as she had now experienced the worst, had defied Mr. Candover and made him her enemy, and had cut herself off, with his assistance, from all these acquaintances for whom she did not greatly care, she was at least independent, and in a position to snap her fingers at fate.
There were only two things left to dread: the death of her darling Gerard, which Lord Clanfield had almost told her to expect, and which she told herself she would not long survive; or her husband’s discovery of her desperate situation.
Deeply as he loved her, Audrey felt, with a sort of calm despair, that even his love would not be proof against the skill with which Mr. Candover would build up a case against her. And that this diabolically clever and cunning man, whom she had been simple enough to take for a friend, would add that last drop to the cup of her misery she felt convinced.
Gerard would learn enough of the truth about her and her life while he was away to believe what Lord Clanfield believed, what his cousins believed. And she remembered with a shudder that one of the Angmerings had been present on the night of the disturbance in the billiard-room, had been one of the loudest in denouncing Johnson as a cheat.
Well, there was no help for it. Life—such as it was—had still to be lived, and it was with a new doggedness, a determination that at any rate they should not rob her of the business she had bought with her own money, that Audrey came out of the room, and returned to the showrooms, where she found Mademoiselle Laure busy with a customer.
The Frenchwoman gave her a glance, enigmatic, unfathomable. And Audrey, who had not remembered until this moment how deftly Laure had closed the showroom doors and thus, as it were, kept Audrey and her visitors and their discussion confined within four walls and out of earshot of others, wondered how much the woman knew.
While she wondered, and put this question to herself, and glanced at the hard, dry, leathern face wreathed at the moment in perfunctory smiles, there came to Audrey suddenly a knowledge of the truth.
For in the Frenchwoman’s cold eyes, straight mouth and well-shaped nose, and even more in the quick glance she threw, penetrating, intelligent, malignant, at her nominal chief, Audrey recognised that hitherto unsuspected likeness to Mr. Candover which confirmed part of the story told by her mysterious black-robed visitor.
And Audrey knew that in Mademoiselle Marie Laure, the Frenchwoman who “couldn’t speak English,” she had to deal with the half-sister of Mr. Candover, the woman of whom she had been told that “she was as wicked and heartless as he was himself.”
Itwas inevitable that such a scene as that which had passed in Madame Rocada’s showrooms, should become matter of common gossip within a few hours.
The story reached the clubs before the afternoon was over, and on every hand it was discussed, with variations of all sorts, until poor Audrey herself would hardly have recognised either her own portrait or the details of the miserable affair.
Sir Harry Archdale, who had walked away with Mr. Candover, and who found an opportunity of expressing his admiration for Miss Pamela, even while he regretted having met her in the society of Madame Rocada, detailed his version of the occurrence to the young Angmerings, and they, after hearing various other accounts of it, went back next morning to their father’s place in Hampshire, for the very purpose of enlightening both Lord Clanfield and their cousin concerning an event which touched the family honour nearly.
Both Edgar and his brother Geoffrey had shared the general suspicions of Madame Rocada’s good faith, and had alternately chuckled and waxed indignant over the story that she was their cousin’s wife, at one moment believing it and pitying Gerard, at another laughing at it as an invention, or growing angry at the notion.
Now, however, the aspect of affairs had changed. Sir Harry had told them of what Mr. Candover had said, that Madame Rocada, the artful keeper of a shady gambling-house, was the wife of a convict. And this statement, chiming in with Audrey’s own confession that she was their cousin’s wife, made them feel the necessity of communicating with their father, who would deal with the matter as he might think fit.
It was an awful scandal to have a cousin under their roof who, whether guilty or innocent, had undoubtedly been convicted of forgery; it was a worse thing for it to become known that this cousin’s wife was a woman in whose house men were fleeced of their money.
It was luncheon-time when they arrived at the old red-brick mansion, where they found their cousin Gerard, as usual, in the garden, looking ill indeed, but a little less thin, a little less lifeless, than he had been a week before.
The sight of his wife, brief as it had been, the receipt of a letter from her, vague as were its contents, had undoubtedly done wonders towards restoring the unlucky man to that interest in life which had for the time been crushed out of him.
His cheeks were still hollow and pale; his eyes were still unnaturally large and filled with a mournful wistfulness. But in spite of his anxiety as to his wife’s whereabouts, his irritation on account of his uncle’s replies to questions about her, he had now begun to find his energy and spirits slowly returning, and it is possible that the very uncertainty and suspense he was in about Audrey rather helped than hindered his recovery, by stimulating his curiosity and increasing his desire to be able to go in search of her, as he meant to do as soon as he was able.
Edgar was the first to speak. Half shyly, looking askance at his cousin as he came up with his hands in his pockets, he asked how he was getting on. Gerard at once detected something unusual in his tone, and looked at him curiously as he answered.
“Got rid of the nurse, at all events,” said Edgar.
“Oh, yes. I’m all right now.”
“You only want a winter at Nice or Cannes to set you up again,” suggested Geoffrey, who was close behind his brother.
Gerard was surprised at this solicitude, which was most unusual. Both his cousins, while not daring to be openly insolent to him in their father’s presence, had taken no pains to hide their disgust at having to put up with the residence under the paternal roof of a man who had been in penal servitude.
“No,” he answered, “I don’t want to go abroad. I prefer to stay in England. I’m tired of doing nothing.”
“Well, what can you do? You couldn’t go back to the bank, you know!” said Geoffrey, with cruel bluntness.
Gerard’s white face flushed, and he did not answer. The rather less boorish Edgar said quickly:—
“You couldn’t work yet awhile, if you wanted to, could you? You will have to get strong first.”
“Well, but I should get all right again faster if I had something to occupy myself with. I don’t care for the life you fellows lead, loafing and getting into mischief,” retorted Gerard.
“Well, you got into worse mischief than we,” replied Geoffrey.
Gerard shook his head.
“I think you both know that isn’t true,” he said quietly. “My uncle believes me, I’m almost sure.”
“But,” urged Geoffrey, not without reason, “if you didn’t do what they sent you to prison for, your story points a very bad moral. For, while you, who worked hard and did no harm got penal servitude as a reward, we, who’ve never done anything but enjoy ourselves and who never mean to do anything else, have managed to do it without interference from anybody!”
Gerard smiled grimly.
“Well, I don’t envy your existence,” said he. “On the contrary, my sympathy is with my wife, who has evidently deeply offended my uncle by doing what I admire her for doing, and setting up in business instead of starving on a wretchedly inadequate income.”
As he uttered these words, Gerard could not help noticing that his cousins listened with a sort of demure grimness, and then that they exchanged furtive looks. Now he was himself suffering from an unsatisfied curiosity concerning his wife’s whereabouts, and this attitude of the two young men increased his uneasiness about her.
He looked from the one to the other, but did not ask any questions; indeed, they gave him little time, for on catching sight of their father in the distance, on his way from the Home Farm, where he usually spent his mornings, they both nodded hastily to their cousin and made off to meet him.
Gerard’s curiosity was roused by the unusual animation which both his cousins showed, as they caught their father before he reached the house, and both evidently began talking to him at once. Gerard was much too far off to know what they said, but it was clear that it was something of considerable importance, and after noting that they all cast more than one glance in his direction, he concluded that, since what they had to say could not concern himself, or they would have spoken openly to him, it must concern his wife.
At luncheon, a few minutes later, he noticed that a change had come over his uncle’s manner to him, which had become uneasily kind. So, when they left the room, Gerard stopped his uncle on his way to the study, and asked if he might speak to him. Lord Clanfield, instead of answering, looked round anxiously for his sons.
His nephew looked round too.
“Let them come too,” said Gerard shrewdly. “I know they have something to say which I ought to hear.”
“Oh, no. At least I think—you’d better wait a little,” said the viscount kindly. “What I have just heard from them is of such a nature that it would only give you needless pain to hear it. Wait——”
Gerard interrupted.
“Do you think I can wait,” he asked earnestly, “when I know that what they have to say concerns my wife?”
The startled silence which followed showed him how good a guess he had made, and father and sons accompanied him without more words into the study, where Lord Clanfield took up his position on the hearthrug, with his back to the fire, Gerard was given an easy-chair, and the two other young men sat on the edge of the big writing-table, and waited for their father to speak first.
“Gerard,” said the viscount, “I’m afraid, my poor boy, that your misfortunes are not over yet.”
“Well, let me know the worst of them at once,” said the young man, who was sitting upright in his chair, with a flush in his cheeks and very bright eyes.
“Really, I scarcely like—I don’t think we had better enter upon this very painful subject until we have asked Dr. Graham’s opinion as to whether——”
“Dr. Graham be hanged!” burst out Gerard, with a momentary return of his old boyish impetuosity and spirit. “I beg your pardon, uncle, but consider that this suspense is worse than almost any knowledge could be. Tell me at once what the news was that they brought you this morning.”
“Well, to tell you the truth, it’s only the confirmation of fears which I myself entertained. For I must tell you, Gerard, that I have had grave doubts as to your wife’s prudence.”
“Well. Go on.”
“If I must speak, you must promise to listen quietly.”
“I will—without a word,” said Gerard hoarsely, clutching the sides of his chair, and keeping his head bent.
The viscount and his sons exchanged apprehensive looks; but they all felt that now there was nothing to be done but to go on with the story, and risk its effect upon the convalescent.
“Your wife, unfortunately, has got into the society of people who are undesirable in every way. She is passing under a name which is not her own. She calls herself Madame Rocada, a title which is, I regret to say, that formerly used by a well-known woman of foreign extraction, who used to keep a gaming-house in Paris.”
The viscount paused, but Gerard said nothing, and remained in the same position as before. His uncle went on:—
“It was under the name of Madame Rocada that she became known to me, in the first place, before I had the least idea she was your wife.”
Then Gerard looked up at last, eager, wondering.
“She was staying at a place at Epsom, a big place, called ‘The Briars,’ and receiving a great many visitors. In the evenings there was gambling carried on there—in fact it went on all night,” said Lord Clanfield. “I went there to see her, and she professed not to know all that occurred there.”
“She did know it though,” put in Geoffrey. “For when there was a row one night she knew all about it, knew exactly what had happened, and then cleared out for fear of being called upon to give awkward explanations.”
Gerard never said a word. He turned his head from the one speaker to the other, but forbore to interrupt by so much as an exclamation.
“Both Geoff and I got rooked there,” put in Edgar. “The first time it was by a fellow named Diggs——”
Then for the first time Gerard spoke.
“Diggs!” exclaimed he, speaking in a hoarse, low voice. “What Diggs?”
“Fellow named Durley Diggs. A Yankee and secretary to Reginald Candover, the great connoisseur.”
Gerard only nodded, and the viscount went on:—
“Now it appears she has run away to some showrooms she has near Bond Street, where there was a scene, a most unpleasant scene, as recently as yesterday afternoon. It appears she was followed there by a number of the men who had been robbed at her house at Epsom, and there was an explanation asked for. Your wife, still passing as Madame Rocada, a name one would have thought she would have dropped on hearing the associations connected with it, turned round upon them all, told them that they had only themselves to thank if they were cheated, and said that one-half of them were swindlers, and professed only to have discovered the fact a day or two ago.”
“And may not that have been true?” asked Gerard, in the same low, hoarse voice.
Edgar answered for his father:—
“No. Impossible. I had it from Archdale, one of the best fellows going, that there was no one present but men of the highest standing—Sir Barnaby Joyce, Reginald Candover——”
Again Gerard looked up. But this time, though he frowned slightly, he said nothing.
Edgar went on: “And half a dozen other men equally well known. It seems your wife behaved like a fury, so that at last—to calm her, Candover was obliged to—to——”
“To do what?”
“To remind her that she herself was——”
“The wife of—of a convict, I suppose?” said Gerard steadily.
Lord Clanfield drew himself up indignantly.
“He had no right to say that!” he cried angrily.
“No. I don’t say he had. But think of the provocation! She called them a gang of swindlers!”
“And didn’t you say some of you had been swindled?”
“Yes. But she was talking to the victims.”
Gerard bent his head again, and said nothing. He was taking the whole story with uncanny calmness, almost, thought the others, as if his brain had lost some of its reasoning power. Not a sign did he give of the burst of tempestuous indignation they had all expected. He merely let his head hang forward again, and listened, with clasped hands, while Geoffrey went on:—
“Of course, there’s no end of a row and a scandal, and some take her part and think there’s someone behind her, who does the work and makes her the figure-head. Sir Barnaby’s one of those. You know what an eye he has for a pretty face.”
Gerard moved uneasily, but said nothing.
“Well, he and one or two more are round again at her place to-day, and everybody’s awaiting interesting developments. Nobody thinksshewill come to any harm. In fact, the general opinion is that she’s confoundedly artful, and that she got up this scene to attract attention, and—to nail Sir Barnaby.”
Not even this insinuation had the effect of rousing Gerard to any open expression of indignation. He just sat as before, huddled up in his chair, staring at the fire, while the others offered different, more or less guarded, comments on the unpleasant news.
At last Edgar and Geoffrey went out and then Gerard seemed to wake up as if out of a dream, and to realise that he was alone with his uncle, who evidently wanted to get rid of him, for he fidgeted, and looked at his watch, not liking to leave the presumably disconsolate young husband by himself, yet anxious to take up the occupation upon which he was engaged.
Gerard rose quickly, stammered an incoherent apology, not with any appearance of dismay or despair, but quietly and conventionally, and then went out of the room.
The viscount was puzzled by his behaviour, but was, on the whole, thankful that these painful disclosures had passed off so quietly.
When the family reassembled at dinner, however, Gerard was absent, and inquiries elicited the fact that he had left the house almost immediately after coming out of the study.
Lord Clanfield looked uneasily at his sons.
Geoffrey nodded astutely.
“Gone to have it out with her, you bet!” he muttered to his brother.
Lord Clanfield caught the whisper.
“It’s very unfortunate. We ought to have foreseen——” he muttered uneasily.
But Geoffrey shrugged his shoulders, and said in a low voice:—
“Better that he should know all, and have done with her, sir! After all, it had to come. And it’s less disgrace to the family to break with her than for the present condition of things to become known and talked about.”
“Perhaps, but it’s confoundedly unpleasant!” said Lord Clanfield, with a frown.
Audrey, meanwhile, had been passing an uneasy time since the terrible scene at the showrooms.
When, later in the same day, she had made the important discovery that Mademoiselle Laure was really Mr. Candover’s sister, her first impulse was to challenge the woman, and to accuse her of being a party to the plot which had been laid for herself.
But that day’s experience had taught her wisdom, and she reflected in time that nothing was to be gained, while much might be risked, by a want of prudence and caution.
Had she not just found that out to her cost? For what was the result of her well-meant and bold attempt to open the eyes of the men who had been robbed of their money at “The Briars”? Mr. Candover had been artful enough to turn her accusation back upon herself, and all the men present had gone away, so she believed, thoroughly convinced that she was a particularly cunning adventuress, and that Mr. Candover was an honourable man whom she had insulted!
This latest discovery—for that Laure was the wicked sister of whom Mr. Candover’s ill-treated wife had spoken she had no doubt—had frightened Audrey more than all the rest. There was something more uncanny about the near neighbourhood of an unprincipled and unscrupulous woman than that of a man of the same class; and Audrey shivered at the thought that Laure was her enemy too.
What should she do? Should she consult a solicitor? If so, to whom should she go? Not, certainly, to the cold, steely-eyed man who had persisted in believing Gerard guilty. Audrey knew of no other, and had a vague idea that lawyers were for the most part wicked people, whose one object was to get fees; besides which, she had a much better grounded feeling that her own tale was too incoherent, and her own history too chequered, for her to have a good chance of getting believed without stronger proof than she could at present bring of the doings of the gang.
She thought, however, that Mrs. Webster might be able to give her the name of a solicitor to whom she could apply, and in the meantime she decided that her best course was to behave as much as possible as if nothing had happened of an unusual nature, and to sound Mademoiselle about the purchase of her interest in the business.
When, therefore, Marie Laure had done with her customers, and had dropped the conventional smile of the tradeswoman for the severe expression she wore when there was nothing to be sold, Audrey approached the subject in her mind by saying that she was tired of the business, and wished that she could sell it.
Marie Laure listened in stony silence, with a quick little arrowlike glance at the younger woman’s face which revealed a greater knowledge of the lady’s reasons than she professed to have.
And she answered very drily that she supposed Madame would consult Mr. Candover about that.
“Oh, I have no need to consult anybody,” replied Audrey quickly, speaking in French, the only language Mademoiselle Laure professed to know. “I have made up my mind.”
“You have not been long enough at the head of the business to make it your own,” answered Mademoiselle sharply. “What have you done as yet except drive away some of the customers other people have brought you?”
This, Audrey thought, argued a very close acquaintance with what had taken place that afternoon, and a better knowledge of the English language than Laure professed to possess.
“I’ve paid fifteen hundred pounds,” answered Audrey, “for the lease and furniture, and I am entitled to get something for those.”
Laure looked grim.
“When you have worked up the business,” she said drily, “which you will do better when you have sacrificed some of your British primness and coldness, you will have a right to talk of your interest in it. At present what you have given is as nothing to what others have supplied.”
“I don’t pretend that I’ve given everything,” answered Audrey gently but with firmness, “I only said that I have a right to expect to get something for my share. Would you be inclined to buy me out? You are a much cleverer saleswoman than I should ever make.”
“Not at all. You want experience, not cleverness. We should do wonders by-and-by if you would lay aside your primness. Beauty like yours is an asset of great value in business as in everything else. If I had your face I would become a millionaire,” added Marie Laure with conviction.
But flattery was wasted upon Audrey.
“You may become one as it is,” she answered earnestly, “and without me. I want to know what you would give me for my share?”
The dry-faced woman looked at her steadily.
“I must first be convinced,” she said drily, “that it is yours to sell.”
Audrey almost gasped.
“What do you mean?” she said breathlessly. “You know it is mine; you know I bought it, paid for it, and that I am the head—not a very active or clever head, but still the head.”
The cold eyes watched her intently as the reply came:—
“The business was bought and paid for by Madame Rocada. Now you say you are not Madame Rocada. You tell everybody so.”
“Everybody has known that from the beginning,” retorted Audrey. “It is true I signed the lease as Rocada—I’m sorry I did even that—but it was with no intention of deceiving any one. It was known that it was only a trade name, and it makes no difference.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” answered Laure. “I have an idea that it does make a difference, and that your having signed the lease in a name not your own may make it invalid.”
“You think then that Mr. Candover would have allowed me to sign a contract which was no contract?” asked Audrey drily.
This was well put, and Laure’s sallow face changed colour a little.
“Why don’t you consult him about it?” she said quickly. “You have let yourself be guided by him throughout the business; you took the place on his advice; you furnished it at the shop he chose. He has all the documents concerning the sale, I believe?”
“Yes,” admitted Audrey, recalling, with a heightened colour and a faster beating heart, that she had indeed, at the time of her great distress, left the whole affair in the hands of the man who had made such strong professions of friendship and kindness to her and her husband.
“Then why not ask him how you stand? Why not suggest the sale to him, and see what he says? It will be, I think, this: that the business was bought in the name of Rocada, and that it belongs to the trading firm of that name, and not to any individual person. Certainly not to the woman who persistently injures the business by declaring that she isnotMadame Rocada!”
Audrey was puzzled. She remained a few minutes in deep thought, and it was Mademoiselle Laure who broke the silence.
“Think this over, take the night to consider it,” she said, with a coaxing change of tone. “It would be a most unwise thing to give up in a hurry a business which you are certainly the head of at present. What do you want? You are making money, and you will presently make more. Don’t be rash. Be advised, and remember that I am ready, in the future as in the past, to take the greater part of the hard work upon my own shoulders, and to leave the ornamental and easy and pleasant part to you!”
“But it’s not pleasant,” protested Audrey, “to be always at the beck and call of a class of people I don’t like!”
“Bah! All the people are lovable when their purses are long!” retorted Laure. “Think it over; sleep upon it; and we will have another talk about this in the morning.”
Audrey agreed to this, not that there was the least prospect of her changing her mind, but because she wanted time to consider the rather gruesome prospect opened by the woman’s words.
Was she really to lose all the money she had invested? Was it possible that, by cunning devices of which she was ignorant, Mr. Candover had induced her to sign mock-agreements, and that she had left herself no alternative but to remain at the head of the shady and repellant business which was, she felt sure, only a blind to the more nefarious one which had been carried on at “The Briars,” or to lose all her fifteen hundred pounds?
“Be here early in the morning,” were Mademoiselle Laure’s last words, “and I will tell you what conclusion I have arrived at, and you shall tell me if you agree with me.”
So on the following morning Audrey, who had gone back to her old rooms and found them vacant, came to the showrooms at an early hour, and found Mademoiselle Laure gracious and unusually conciliatory.
“I have considered the matter we talked about last night,” she said, as soon as they were alone together, “and I am sure that the business goes with the name. As long as you are Madame Rocada, therefore, the business is yours; but when you say you are no longer Rocada, then it is yours no longer.”
Perhaps Mademoiselle Laure exaggerated the simplicity of the woman with whom she was dealing. At any rate Audrey looked at her in open-eyed surprise.
“I don’t know much about these things,” she said bluntly. “But I think that’s very strange.”
“It’s true though. Ask Mr. Candover if it is not.”
Audrey hung her head thoughtfully, and then looked up.
“No,” she said at last, “I shall not ask him. I shall go straight to a solicitor, and see what he says.”
Mademoiselle Laure’s face changed and grew very repellent in its expression. She laughed harshly.
“What a little sceptic it is!” she said. “Look here, Madame. You will do as you please. You will see your solicitor, see a dozen solicitors. But first I will go myself to Mr. Candover, and see if he can help us out of this business. It may be he will say it is you who are right, and I who am wrong. At any rate, we will take his opinion first. And if you do not like it, you can then get another one.”
This seemed reasonable, particularly as Audrey saw, by the Frenchwoman’s excitement, that she was anxious and agitated. In all probability, Audrey thought, the two would think it wiser to come to a fair understanding with her, so that she could get out of the disagreeable business in which she found herself involved, at some loss indeed, but without the sacrifice of the whole of her fifteen hundred pounds.
Mademoiselle Laure was in earnest, for she started at once on her errand, after giving such recommendations to Audrey and the assistants as she thought might be useful; and the poor little head of the firm was left in sole command.
She would not, however, take any part in the day’s work, but shut herself into her little back-room on the approach of a customer, determined to have nothing more to do with the business until one of two things should happen: either she would erase the name Rocada from the windows and the firm’s stationery, and free the place from Laure; or she would retire altogether after receiving such compensation as she could get from that astute and unscrupulous pair, Mr. Candover and his half-sister.
But she tried in vain to escape the annoyances which her position entailed upon her.
Mademoiselle Laure was away a long time, and Audrey went out to luncheon and returned to find her still absent. It was late in the afternoon when she heard from her room, a voice she recognised asking for Madame Rocada.
And Audrey knew that the newcomer was Sir Barnaby Joyce.
She heard one of the saleswomen tell him that Madame was out, and the voice of the jovial baronet saying in reply that he would “wait till she was in then”.
Hurriedly deciding that she had better see him, and find out if she could what opinion was held about this miserable affair, and whether it was her version or Mr. Candover’s which was the most generally received, Audrey came out of her room, and following Sir Barnaby into the first of the showrooms, bowed to him with sedate dignity and stood waiting for him to speak, in a regal attitude which suited her tall figure, and the trained dress with its sparkling trimming of jet paillettes which set off so well her fair skin and golden hair.
The baronet turned quickly to meet her, bowed low in his turn, and greeted her with the most effusive courtesy. But Audrey was in no mood to meet his advances halfway, and she allowed him to stammer out a suggestion that he wished to make his wife a present “of—of—of—in point of fact of a—a—hat or bonnet or something of that sort,” without any attempt to help him out.
She bowed again, and turning in the same queenly manner to an obsequious assistant who was waiting near at hand, told her to bring “some hats and bonnets, the prettiest you have,” to show Sir Barnaby.
As the girl went swiftly away on her errand, the baronet, who saw that he was to be given no opportunities and that he must make them for himself, hastened to say, lowering his voice and gazing at the beautiful woman before him with what he considered a killing look:—
“I can’t tell you, Madame, how deeply grieved I was to be present the other day when that young fool Archdale made himself so objectionable——”
Audrey cut him short. Raising her eyebrows haughtily, she asked:—
“Did Sir Harry make himself more objectionable than anybody else? I was not aware of it, I assure you.”
Sir Barnaby was taken aback. He began to stammer and to twist the ends of his carefully dyed and waxed moustache.
“Did he? Oh, well—er—I’m very glad if you—you didn’t think so. It seemed to me that he—he said things which I should have resented, which in fact I did resent, and which—which—In short, I was disgusted at the whole thing. Considering how charmingly we have all been entertained at your house, Madame Rocada——”
“Oh, pray don’t call me that. It is not my name. My name is Angmering, Mrs. Angmering,” interrupted Audrey. “I am the wife of an unfortunate man who was wrongfully convicted of forgery, but whose people are already hard at work to get the conviction quashed.”
Her boldness, her frankness, the simplicity with which she spoke, surprised Sir Barnaby and extorted his admiration, even while it made his position difficult. For he wanted to take up a stand as her champion and defender, and her independence and resentment of the situation into which she had been forced made him uncertain how to address her.
“Indeed you have my best wishes that they may succeed,” said he. “A woman so young and beautiful needs a protector, and I shall rejoice to hear that your husband is at your side once more. In the meantime, should you ever need a friend, a disinterested friend, I hope you will remember that I am always at your service.”
“Thank you,” said Audrey coolly, as she took from the hands of the attendant maiden a sweet thing in white felt and ostrich feathers, with engaging bunches of violets tucked in here and there about the brim: “Would this suit Lady Joyce, do you think?”
“I—I—I’m afraid it’s a little—little young-looking,” murmured Sir Barnaby, by no means pleased to find himself thus ruthlessly recalled from chivalrous sentiment to matters of sordid business.
And the “young ladies” around, who all knew that Lady Joyce, though her husband’s contemporary, had allowed herself to age at a faster rate than he, exchanged stealthy looks, and wondered at Madame’s want of tact.
“I think something in velvet with a tuft of feathers at the side and something stringy about the neck is what Lady Joyce generally wears,” said Sir Barnaby at last, desperately, when picture-hats and dreams in ermine and ostrich feathers had been paraded before him in somewhat bewildering succession, and tried on the head of one of the pretty attendants with great gravity.
“Perhaps you had better bring Lady Joyce here to try on some bonnets and choose for herself,” suggested Audrey gently.
At which there was a further exchange of demure looks, unseen, among the assistants. Sir Barnaby answered rather stiffly:—
“Lady Joyce is content to follow my taste. I’ll take that one.”
And he pounced upon an ermine toque with an osprey at the side, and pulled out a five-pound note to pay for it.
“How much is it?” asked Audrey of the assistant who held the toque in her hand.
There was a smile on the face of the girl as she answered that it was four guineas. And Audrey felt that she had betrayed unseemly ignorance as she blushed and carefully counted out her customer’s change.
Sir Barnaby looked up plaintively into her face as she did so.
“I want to ask you,” he said in a low voice, when the attendants had retreated a little way, and were busy packing up the bargain, “whether you won’t have mercy upon your friends, and let us come and see you again sometimes. We had such a pleasant time at ‘The Briars’——”
“Ihadn’t,” interrupted Audrey in a high-pitched voice. “I was induced to take the place under the impression that I could spend a quiet summer there. But I had nothing but annoyance and worry the whole time. I disapproved of what went on there, and I would never allow the same thing to happen again in any house I lived in.”
Sir Barnaby looked puzzled. Although he knew, as every one else did, that Audrey was only the figure-head of an organisation of which gambling was the object, he had not believed her to be so entirely a puppet in the hands of others as this speech and her passionate vindication of herself two days before would have seemed to suggest.
Even now he found a difficulty in believing that so much beauty was compatible with extreme innocence. Such a combination was contrary to his experience, which was large. He even felt nettled by these airs—as he considered them—of an irresponsibility which did not accord with the facts.
Audrey was moving towards the door, as an intimation to the baronet that his business was over. He had given the address to which his parcel was to be sent, and she had no wish to hear any more about the recent scene or about his disinterested devotion.
He lingered, however, when they had reached the outer doorway, and stood a moment holding up the portière, and turning to her with a sentimental expression on his rubicund, genial face.
“You are very severe, Madame. But indeed you are wrong if you think that the cards were the only or even the greatest attraction for us at ‘The Briars’. We will consider that settled, if you like, that there is to be no more gambling—if that displeases you. But surely you will not let your quarrel with Candover and Archdale interfere with your arrangements. You——”
“My quarrel with them!” repeated Audrey in surprise. “I have no quarrel with Sir Harry. I am displeased with Mr. Candover, certainly, for inducing me to accept a false position.”
“Candover! Was it Candover who——”
Audrey interrupted him. Speaking earnestly and distinctly she said:—
“Mr. Candover was my husband’s most intimate friend, and it was he who induced me to take this business, to use the name of Rocada, and who introduced me to the people who had the letting of ‘The Briars’. I have acted on his advice throughout, and I cannot but think the advice was very bad.”
Sir Barnaby looked interested, incredulous.
“Candover was a friend of your husband’s, you say?”
“Yes.”
There was a moment’s pause. Audrey wished to get rid of her visitor, but Sir Barnaby was anxious to say more. Neither noticed, as they stood in the doorway, that on the staircase, which was softly carpeted and illuminated only by one jet of electric light, a young man was standing, watching them.
Sir Barnaby suddenly seized her hand and pressed it to his lips.
“Never trust a husband’s friend,” said he. “Trust me. I’ll be yours.”
But Audrey scarcely even heard him. She had caught sight of the waiting figure beyond in the obscurity on the staircase, and her eyes were straining to pierce the gloom.
“Thank you,” she said mechanically, as she drew her hand away, and Sir Barnaby, having nothing more to say, was forced to go out.
She followed him to the three or four stairs which led to the little second landing. And standing on the top, she looked down while her face quivered with excitement, Sir Barnaby ran downstairs as fast as his somewhat gouty feet allowed, and she waited until she heard him go out by the side-door.
Then, leaning forward, supporting herself on the banisters, she uttered, very faintly, almost in a wailing tone, the one word:—
“Gerard.”
And when, shaking like a leaf, he came out of the angle of the wall where he had been standing, and ran up the stairs, she just held out her arms to him, and trying to whisper something incoherent, unintelligible, she fell, scarcely conscious, into his arms.
Inthe first moment of this unexpected meeting, Audrey, still with nerves strung up by the recent interview with Sir Barnaby and the unpleasant associations called up by his words, could find nothing but relief and comfort and joy in her husband’s presence.
He, on his side, kissed her tenderly, whispered to her to hold up her head and pull herself together, and tried to make her realise how inopportune this weakness was.
She struggled to regain the self-command she had lost, and looking eagerly, pitifully into his face, whispered:—
“You’re not angry with me? I thought—I was afraid—you would be.”
“I’m angry, very angry, at being kept out on the stairs,” replied Gerard, with a touch of the old boyish humour which went to her heart like a stab.
She tried to smile, but her face quivered.
“I can’t take you in there—among all those giggling, whispering girls,” she said, under her breath. “Come in here.”
And very quietly, almost on tiptoe, she led him down to the second landing and into her own room.
There she gave way again, and throwing herself face downwards on the sofa by the small fire, she burst into a passion of tears.
It was in vain he scolded her, tried to comfort her.
“Are you sorry I’ve come?” asked he at last, as, kneeling beside her, he put his head against her shoulder and tried to look into her tear-blurred face. “Don’t you feel glad to think you’ve got me back again to take care of you, to save you from scenes like that, and from having to be civil to a lot of gouty old idiots like the one I saw hobbling downstairs?”
Audrey sprang up, and peered into his face. Then she drew a long, sobbing breath of relief.
“Oh,” she cried, “thank Heaven, thank Heaven you take it like that! That you’re not angry! I—I was so afraid you wouldn’t understand!”
Gerard, whose own eyes were moist, looked into her face.
“My poor girl,” he said, “I’ve never had a thought—since I first heard—three hours ago—of what you’ve gone through, but to thank Heaven that I can take care of you again!”
“What have you heard?” asked Audrey quickly.
“Everything, I fancy. Of the infamous way in which that rascal Candover——”
“Sh—sh!” Audrey put her hand on her husband’s mouth. And she whispered in his ear: “If you know so much, youdoknow everything! Or everything that matters! But to find you taking my part—when I was afraid—when I was dreading what you’d say, what you’d think—oh, Gerard, Gerard, I can scarcely believe it!”
She was sobbing hysterically, feeling the relief of this great and unlooked-for comfort, this joy which she had not dared to hope for. Gerard, Gerard whose passionate anger she had been dreading, had only one thought, one idea, that he could take care of her again.
Presently she grew calmer, and nestling close to him on the sofa, whispered to him to tell her exactly what he knew, and how he had found her. He told her how his two cousins had arrived at Lord Clanfield’s that morning and what they had said; how they had given their account of the scene in which she accused her gambling guests, and how Lord Clanfield had recorded his first interview with her, and how he, Gerard, had listened quietly, and simply made up his mind to go to her without delay.
“I found out this address from Geoffrey,” he went on, “without telling him I meant to come to you. And then I set out at once, not saying a word to anybody, and I caught the first train I could and came straight here. And now you have to put me up, for I don’t mean to leave you again. You dear little goose, you can’t keep out of mischief without me!”
But though he spoke as lightly as possible, and tried in every way to soothe and calm her, she saw by the frown on his face, by his uneasy glances at the door, that all the while he was no more at ease than she was. And Audrey clasped his hand tightly in hers and whispered:—
“Did you ever have any doubts about him, about Mr. Candover, Gerard?”
“Yes,” answered he in the same tone. “Often. When I was alone—such awful loneliness, Audrey, I can’t talk about it yet!—I used to wonder whether this selfish man of pleasure would really be a safe, trustworthy friend. And I used to go very nearly mad with jealousy, wondering whether he would—would—Tell me, Audrey, did he make love to you?”
She nodded, shuddering.
“The scoundrel!” said Gerard between his clenched teeth.
She drew closer to him.
“There’s something more to tell you about him than that!”
“I know! He encouraged you to take this house at Epsom and let people think that you kept a sort of gambling club.”
“Oh, Gerard, there’s worse to be told than that.” His grasp tightened upon her hand, and a look so piteous came into his eyes that she hurried on: “They cheated there, they cheated at cards, Gerard, and—I’m sure—Iknow—that Mr. Candover was concerned in it.”
This speech, in spite of all that he had feared, had guessed, came upon the young man with a great shock. That the rich, prosperous, easy-going, fascinating Mr. Candover should make love to his beautiful wife, was no surprise; it was what he had feared. But that he should be involved in such a nefarious business as card-sharping seemed too preposterous. He looked at Audrey as if he doubted her perfect sanity.