It was the first time that Audrey had ever heard her speak any language but French, but after the revelations she had heard, she was surprised at nothing.
The girls, meanwhile, were evidently uneasy and disturbed. They remained close to Audrey, Babs in particular showing open dislike of her aunt, who turned to the elder girl and said:—
“I’m very glad you’ve come. But how did you know I was here?”
“We didn’t know it,” answered both girls together. “We came to see Mrs. Angmering,” added Pamela.
Mademoiselle Laure raised her eyebrows.
“Well,” she said, “it’s of no consequence, since you are here. I’ve changed my plans since I saw you yesterday, and now I’m going to take you to Paris with me, instead of settling down here. You will like that, won’t you?”
But the girls instinctively drew closer together, and Pamela said:—
“We would rather not go away, out of England. All our friends are here, you know.”
Audrey gave them a look which encouraged the girls, while it evidently angered Mademoiselle Laure. She laughed harshly.
“What friends have you? None. You can’t count your school-friends. You want to go into the world, to make new friends, new acquaintances. And in Paris, with me, you will enjoy yourselves. You will have what you call ‘a good time’. Don’t look at Madame Rocada. Answer me.”
Pamela did answer, very boldly.
“We don’t want to go away. We won’t go away. We want to see our mother first.”
At these words their aunt, intensely astonished, seemed to lose all self-control, and breaking out into a tempest of passion, cried:—
“Your mother! What do you know about your mother? Your mother is mad, has been shut up in a lunatic asylum for years. She is no fit companion for you. Your father would never allow you to see her. If Madame Rocada has been encouraging you to ask to see her, she has done wrong, very wrong.”
And Mademoiselle Laure turned angrily to Audrey.
“You are always making mischief, always,” she said.
But the girls took the part of their friend.
“No, she hasn’t made mischief,” cried Babs. “She’s quite right, and whatever she says we’ll listen to. Mrs. Angmering, do you think we ought to go away to Paris with our aunt, without knowing where she is going to take us to?”
But at these words the storm of Mademoiselle’s rage grew so violent that, whatever they might have thought of her as a guardian of youth before, all doubts on the subject melted away as she clenched her fists, and gnashed her teeth, and stamping her foot declared that they must and should go away with her, that their father wished it, and that they had no choice.
“You are under age, both of you,” she said, “and until you are twenty-one, you are not able to choose for yourself. It is for your father to choose what is best for you.”
“Well, then, let us see papa, and ask him to say whether we are unreasonable,” said Pamela, who was as daring as she was pretty. “He knows that it’s natural we should want to see our own mother, and even if he and she didn’t get on well together——”
“Who has been telling you that?” snapped their aunt. “Madame Rocada, I suppose!”
Pamela went on:—
“Even if, as I say, they quarrelled, and haven’t seen each other for years, that’s no reason why we shouldn’t see her, now we know she’s alive, and know too that she is as sane as we are!”
“Oh, that is saying very little!” sneered Mademoiselle Laure, who seemed to have lost all sense of self-control, and to be crazy with rage at the girls’ opposition to her wishes.
Audrey grew anxious to put an end to the painful scene.
“Well,” she said, “you can’t start off for Paris without any preparation, that’s certain. Let these girls go back to Windsor with Miss Willett——”
“They shall not go back. They have been long enough with Miss Willett, and they are too old for school. They shall go to an hotel with me——”
But Audrey, remembering the suggestion that the girls should go to “The Briars” with their aunt, would not suffer this.
“No,” she said firmly, “they shall not go away from here with you, Mademoiselle Laure, they shall not go without me; since they have come to me I mean to take care of them.”
“You! You! What are you? A convict’s wife! A wretched tool, a keeper of a gaming-house!” shrieked Mademoiselle Laure, beside herself with impotent rage, as she saw the girls shrinking back from her and clinging to Audrey.
Pamela protested indignantly.
“Don’t listen to her, Mrs. Angmering, don’t listen,” she said passionately. “The woman is mad, and wicked too. I wouldn’t go with her or let Babs go if she were the only person belonging to us in all the world!”
Suddenly Mademoiselle Laure changed her tone. She seemed to realise that she was harming her own cause by every word she spoke, and that she must use very different methods if she wished to attain her ends.
Subsiding into outward calmness with great abruptness, she turned away for a moment as if to consider some point, and then, addressing Pamela, said:—
“You will have to go with me, if your father tells you to!”
Pamela turned pale, and hesitated.
“I don’t want to——” she began.
But Mademoiselle Laure cut her short.
“It is not a question of what you want, but of what you must do,” she said sharply. “You admit your father is your proper guardian, and that you are bound to go where he chooses?”
“Ye-es, but——”
The woman turned haughtily to Audrey.
“You can retire, Madame,” she said; “hide yourself in any corner you please, with your husband and your friends. I am going to take these dear girls to their father.”
Babs clung to Audrey.
“She shall go with us then,” cried she.
For one moment Mademoiselle Laure, her face dark with suppressed rage, hesitated. Then, saying sharply:—
“Wait here then, for me—and for him,” she disappeared into the room at the back which was called hers, and reappeared in a few seconds, with Mr. Candover himself leaning on her arm.
All were shocked at his appearance. His head was bound up, and his dull eyes seemed to show that he had scarcely yet fully recovered consciousness after the blow he had received from Geoffrey’s poker and the fall which had resulted from the blow.
As if still more than half-dazed, he tottered forward, leaning on his sister’s arm, and stared about him and at the three ladies as if unaware who they were.
Pamela cried out, in an awestruck voice:—
“Papa, papa! Don’t you know us, papa?”
And Babs ran forward to kiss him.
The touch of the warm young lips made him look round and say almost mechanically:—
“Babs! Hallo, Babs!”
Then his sister spoke.
“The girls don’t want to go away with me. Will you tell them what is your wish?”
“My wish is that you should come away with her—with us,” said he, after a moment’s pause, as if to collect his thoughts. And then he seemed to recover himself a little, and went on: “Yes, and we must make haste. There is no time to be lost. We will all go together and at once.”
“But, papa, we’re not ready. We didn’t come prepared for a journey!” protested Pamela in great distress and alarm.
His sister whispered to him, and Mr. Candover said quickly:—
“No matter. Paris is not at the other end of the earth. Your things can be sent on after you. Call a hansom—No, a hansom won’t hold us. Go to the window and hail a four-wheeler, or get the porter to whistle for one, and let us start at once. Pamela, you go with your aunt. Babs, come with me.”
And before the frightened and almost weeping Audrey could do more than try to intervene with faint words of entreaty, of protest, Mr. Candover and his sister had carried the girls off before her very eyes, and led them downstairs and out of her sight.
Audrey made a rapid step towards the door, when a loud and piercing cry reached her ears.
Nowthere was upon the face of Mademoiselle Laure, as she followed Mr. Candover and Babs downstairs, with Pamela struggling to get free from the firm grasp of her lean fingers, an expression which betrayed the fact that she feared mischief.
And her alarm was well founded.
Scarcely had Mr. Candover reached the last stair, when a man rushed out from behind the door, where he had evidently been waiting, and barred his passage.
Babs uttered a shrill scream, and her father told her fiercely to hold her tongue.
“Where are you off to, Mr. Candover?” asked the man roughly.
Shaken as he was by the fall from the effects of which he was still suffering, Mr. Candover had been considerably startled by the unexpected appearance of this man; but after a pause of a few seconds he recovered himself, laughed, and leaning back against the wall, said:—
“Gossett! What are you doing here?”
The young man, frowning sullenly, looked for a moment somewhat confused by the question, which was put quite quietly and without apparent discomposure.
“Well, I—I want to have a talk with you. We all do,” he said sullenly, as Pamela, who had pressed forward behind her sister, recognised the man as one of the “friends” who had been waiting at her father’s flat in Victoria Street that morning.
“Certainly. But not here. Didn’t I tell you to be at my flat this morning?”
“Yes. You said twelve o’clock, and we’ve been waiting there ever so long, all of us,” returned Gossett, who appeared to have been drinking. “And then these young ladies came, and they waited. And when they came off after you, we thought we might as well follow them and see where they were coming to. And we’ve run you to earth right enough!”
“Run me to earth!” repeated Mr. Candover, in a tone of extreme astonishment. “What do you mean?”
“Well, we mean we want to speak to you—all by ourselves. We will come up.”
“No, you won’t,” answered Mr. Candover quietly, “You’ll meet me at my flat in an hour. I’m going to take these ladies to Charing Cross station to see them off first.”
At that moment Mademoiselle Laure, who had run past them into the street, reappeared, panting, and pointed to a four-wheeled cab which she had brought from the cab-rank which was not many yards away.
“Come, my dears,” said Mr. Candover to his daughters, who were hanging back, and looking up at Audrey, who, with her husband and the young Angmerings, all of whom had run out on hearing the girl’s cry, stood in a group at the head of the staircase, not liking to interfere, but uneasy and anxious.
“Hadn’t we better wait, papa, and come afterwards?” said Pamela. “We’re not ready to go yet.”
But for answer he seized his daughters, one with each hand, and forced them to accompany him as far as the door, where they suddenly found themselves free, and glancing round, saw that that was the result of the appearance, just outside, of two more men, one of whom was Johnson, while the other they recognised as their father’s secretary, Durley Diggs.
Both men looked angry and threatening, and it was undoubtedly the sight of them that made Mr. Candover relax his grasp of his daughters’ arms, and make a dash for the cab-door, which Mademoiselle Laure was holding open.
But just as he reached the step, Gossett, rushing out from the doorway where he had been lingering, caught Mr. Candover’s up-raised foot with his own, and tripping him up, flung him heavily backwards on the pavement.
Even before the usual crowd had gathered round the scene of this outrage, Mademoiselle Laure, with real alarm and concern in her face, was on her knees on the pavement beside her brother, while the two poor girls, shocked and distressed by this attack on their father, hung about him, and did their best to help their aunt to raise him from the ground, which was wet and slippery from recent rain.
While this was taking place, a cab which had been waiting a little way up the street came quickly up, and two gentlemen stepped out of it; while at the same moment three or four policemen in plain clothes ran out of the nearest shops, and arrested not only Gossett but Johnson and Diggs, all of whom appeared more indignant than surprised by this occurrence.
Gossett, indeed, was the only man who made any observation above his breath.
“Game’s up, eh?” he said, with an air of recklessness as the man who had him in charge ended his struggles by clapping a pair of handcuffs on his wrists.
The other two men suffered themselves to be arrested quietly, Diggs in particular laughing, and telling his captor that he had got the wrong man.
“That’s the fellow you should be looking after!” he added, pointing to Mr. Candover who, rendered completely unconscious by this second fall coming so soon after the first, was being placed inside the cab which he had been attempting to enter.
Mademoiselle Laure, speaking English as fluently as any of them, laid a strong hand upon the policeman who was peering into her brother’s face:—
“What are you doing? You can’t touch him,” she said fiercely. “If he’s not dead, he is dying, as you must see.”
“We’ll take him to the hospital, ma’am,” said the policeman. “You can come too.”
A cry from Pamela, faint, miserable, made them both look round:—
“Papa!”
It revealed a world of shocked discovery, an agony of distress, and every man who heard it felt a lump in his throat.
As for Babs, the younger girl, she stood clinging to her sister, white, trembling, without even uttering a cry. But in her eyes there was a look which showed that, if anything, she understood the situation even better than did her elder sister.
Mademoiselle Laure waved her hand rapidly to the girls, and forcing a smile, told them he would be well soon, and that they must go back to Miss Willett and wait for her to write to them. But they did not answer. They stood close together, half inside the doorway they had just left, and looked disconsolately at the cab as it drove away to the hospital, while the policemen made the three men whom they had arrested enter the cab which had just been left vacant by the two strange gentlemen.
These two gentlemen now came across the road, looking sympathetically at the two forlorn young girls.
“Come in, Pamela,” whispered Babs, “come up to Mrs. Angmering. She’ll be kind to us.”
And they withdrew hurriedly through the doorway, and hurrying upstairs, fell upon Audrey, who was holding out her arms to them, and who led them with her, whispering soothing words of comfort, into the deserted showroom.
It was Babs who spoke first of the dreadful thing they had seen.
“Why did they want to kill papa, Mrs. Angmering?” she said in a low voice, nestling close to her, and looking up through her tears. “What has he done?”
“Oh, hush,” said Pamela, the elder and wiser. “Don’t let us ask. I don’t want to know.”
But the younger girl was more inquisitive.
“Do you think,” she said, “that the police only took up the other men for attacking papa?”
“I don’t know anything about it, dear,” said Audrey, “except what you’ve told me, that your father was knocked down and taken to the hospital, and that the other men, the three who wanted to speak to him, including the one who struck him, have been taken into custody.”
But Pamela looked intently into her face.
“Yes, you do know more than that. You know a great deal more,” she said, with depressed conviction. “I noticed the way you looked at him when he came in to take us away. Oh, Mrs. Angmering, what are we going to do? We seem to have neither father nor mother now!”
“We shall have to go back to Miss Willett’s,” sobbed Babs.
Audrey drew both the girls close to her.
“You shall be well taken care of, and you shall not have to go away with your aunt, at any rate,” said she.
And in the shuddering silence with which the girls received this assurance there was evidence enough that they understood vaguely that they had escaped some great danger.
In the meantime the two gentlemen who had got out of the waiting cab in time to witness the arrest of Mr. Candover’s three friends, had followed the two girls into the house and up the stairs, and had been received by Gerard and his cousins, who, standing back for the young girls to go up with Audrey, came forward again, to greet the gentlemen with intense astonishment.
“My father! By Jove!” cried Geoffrey, as Lord Clanfield came up, looking about him uneasily, as if he expected trap-doors to fly open under his feet and secret panels to slide back on each side of him.
“And Mr. Masson!” exclaimed Gerard, as he recognised, in the gentleman who was following close at his uncle’s heels, the solicitor whom Audrey had reported as having received her narrative so coldly.
The two gentlemen had by this time reached the little landing upon which opened the small room where so many exciting interviews had taken place that morning.
Lord Clanfield looked from his nephew to his sons.
“So you’ve been mixing yourselves up in this business! What mischief will you be up to next?” he asked, addressing Edgar, and speaking in a voice which betrayed the agitation which he felt at the unpleasant affair in which he was being forced to take part.
“Well, it’s more surprising still to findyoumixed up in it!” retorted Geoffrey from behind his brother. “When there’s a scrape to be got into, you expect to see us on in that scene. And for once we’ve not been so much getting into a scrape ourselves as helping Gerard out of one.”
“Indeed! And what has been your share?” asked his father incredulously.
“Well, I knocked that Candover down when he was going to shoot Gerard,” replied Geoffrey coolly.
And he related the story of that event, while Gerard himself, having heard the news of the arrest of the confederates, stood silently by, waiting for Mr. Masson to speak.
The solicitor’s keen face wore a look which told him that he knew a good deal more than Gerard himself did about the confederacy which had just been broken up.
“I’m afraid your wife thought me very unsympathetic this morning,” said he. “But I had to guard against the chance of any betrayal of my plans. As a matter of fact, I had no sooner heard her story of last night’s pretended arrest of herself than I telephoned to Scotland Yard, and when I made her repeat the tale, she did so in the hearing of one of our cleverest detectives, whose near neighbourhood she never suspected.”
“I suppose you had known something before?” suggested Gerard.
Mr. Masson smiled.
“There’s no harm in letting you know now that a note which was part of the cash given in exchange for one of the forged cheques was traced to—Mr. Candover.”
“Then why was I not told? Or at least my wife?” asked Gerard indignantly.
“I’ll tell you. Certain facts were discovered which seemed to point to the existence of a strong criminal confederacy, and it was thought wiser to wait and mature plans for seizing the whole of the participators, than, by hastening matters, to run the risk of losing some of our birds. Do you see?”
“But it was hard upon me, upon us! You must have found out that I was innocent.”
“Well, your uncle was consulted, and the authorities decided to make your illness a pretext for giving you your liberty, reserving the whole truth till a convenient season. In the meantime the police were hard at work in various ways, but it was not till this morning that they were able to get hold of the four principals at once.”
“Who are they?”
“The chief of the gang, Reynolds or Candover, and the three men who call themselves Diggs, Johnson and Gossett. It was your recognition of Gossett last night, when he came here disguised, not expecting to meet you, and knew that you suspected him, which upset all their plans, I think. At any rate, Candover, who was of course informed of the fact, seems to have made up his mind that the case was desperate, or he would never have attempted to shoot you. And his three accomplices must have made up their minds that the game was up, for they waited for him at his flat, and then came on here, evidently with the idea that he was going to leave them in the lurch.”
Gerard was silent for a few moments. Then he said suddenly, in a hoarse voice:—
“My wife! I must tell my wife!”
And he was running up the short flight of stairs towards the showroom, when he caught sight of the three pathetic figures, Audrey sitting on a large settee, with one of the girls on each side of her.
He stopped short, and turned hesitatingly to his uncle.
“Those two poor girls!” whispered he.
“Who are they?” asked Lord Clanfield, who had seen the two pretty young creatures, but in the excitement had failed to find out who they were.
“His daughters, Candover’s daughters!”
The viscount’s kind face softened sympathetically.
“Dear, dear! Poor things, poor things!” he muttered in reply. “Something must be done for them! Something must be done!”
Gerard went up to the showroom shyly, with a subdued manner, and his uncle followed. The girls looked down and reddened uncomfortably, feeling, poor lassies, all the awkwardness of their position, and unable to keep back their tears.
“Mrs. Angmering,” said Lord Clanfield, taking her hand, as she rose to greet him, and looking kindly into her face, “I’m afraid you’ve had a very hard time of trouble and distress of mind to go through, and I’m heartily sorry I didn’t know earlier what I feel sure of now. You must come back with me at once, with me and Gerard.”
Audrey, grateful, tearful, pressed his hand warmly, but shook her head:—
“You’re very, very kind. But I think I’d rather—now—take these girls with me somewhere, and arrange for their seeing their mother, who’s longing to have them with her again,” said she.
Lord Clanfield beamed upon the two poor lassies, and held out his hand to Pamela.
“Let them come with us too,” he said. “And write to their mother and tell them where they are. We shall be delighted to see her whenever she can come.”
“And we’ll come down with you too, to help to entertain the ladies,” suddenly cried Geoffrey from the rear.
The violently startled manner in which Lord Clanfield turned on hearing his son’s voice behind him made them all smile, and afforded a welcome relief to the tension of feeling from which they were suffering.
Five minutes later they were all trooping downstairs and out of the house on their way to the station; and at the same time a couple of police-officers came quietly up to take possession of the premises.
Beforethe day was over, Gerard and Audrey learned fuller details of the confederacy into whose net both of them had so cleverly been drawn.
From the first moment when, a month previously, the police had got upon the traces of Mr. Candover as the actual forger of the cheques by means of which Sir Richmond Hornthwaite had been robbed, they had been working silently, and with the knowledge of Lord Clanfield and Mr. Masson, to bring the arch-scoundrel to justice.
The irony of fate, however, prevented his being made to suffer the legal penalty for the crime which he had contrived to lay upon the shoulders of the unfortunate Gerard Angmering.
His artfulness was so well known, that at first there was a strong suspicion that his illness was in part at least assumed. But on examination at the hospital, he was found to be dying, and, although he lingered through the night and part of the following day, he died within forty-eight hours from the moment of his attempted arrest, from extensive injuries to the brain and spine, the result of the two attacks which had been made upon him, the first by Geoffrey Angmering, and the second by his own associate, Tom Gossett.
So carefully had the police gone about their work, that not an inkling of the truth that they were on his track had reached Mr. Candover’s ears when, his daring and audacious plan for turning Audrey out of the premises for which she had paid having failed owing to Gerard’s unexpected intervention, he had been brought suddenly face to face with the fact that Gerard had recognised in one of the sham detectives the man who had procured his conviction for forgery by means of false witness against him.
Tom Gossett was so certain that Gerard had recognised him that he caused a panic amongst the confederates, and the failure of the device for frightening Audrey having struck terror among them all, Mr. Candover found himself in a dilemma, and for once lost his self-possession.
On no other grounds could his mad attempt to shoot Gerard be accounted for. It could only be surmised that he intended to let it be supposed either that Gerard had committed suicide or that he had shot him by accident in self-defence.
In the meantime the three subordinates who had had the principal share in carrying out the various swindles of which Candover had been the promoter, had conceived the idea that he meant to give them the slip and to prepare his own escape in case of a crash. When, therefore, he failed to appear at the flat at Victoria Street at the hour he had appointed for the meeting at which they were to discuss the situation, they had all decided to follow his daughters, in the well-grounded belief that by so doing they would reach him.
And when they discovered him in the act of flight, Tom Gossett’s impulse for revenge brought about the act which caused the arch-conspirator’s death.
At the trial of the three remaining prisoners, which came off within a few weeks, an astounding career of crime and fraud was disclosed, by means of which Reginald Candover, alias Eugène Reynolds, had lived in princely style upon the earnings of his subordinates in crime.
Forgery was almost the only share of the rascally business which he undertook in person. He left to lesser lights cheating at cards, perjury, and the hundred and one various forms of crime of which he had been the instigator, and the perpetrators of which he took under his august protection, passing them off, now in one capacity and now in another, as his servants, his dependants or his friends.
Wherever he went, he always took care to have one or more of these precious assistants near him; and Jim Johnson, who was one of the three, confessed to the whole story of the disappearance of the unfortunate woman who called herself Madame Rocada, and to the share he had had in that mysterious occurrence.
This woman, who had formerly been a great beauty, had fallen into a rapid consumption, so that she could no longer carry on the gaming-house in Paris, which had been one of Mr. Candover’s most prosperous speculations.
Left in Paris to die, the unfortunate creature had learnt, by some means, that it was Mr. Candover’s intention to make capital out of her reputation by starting a similar establishment in England under the old title which was to be used by another and a younger woman.
Filled with rage and the wish for revenge, the unfortunate White Countess had struggled with the disease which had laid its cruel hand upon her, and managed to reach London, fired with the intention of disturbing the new régime.
Mr. Candover had obtained intelligence of her movements, and had been on the alert, he and one or other of his confederates having been constantly about the premises held under the name “Rocada,” in the expectation of her arrival.
On the evening when her sudden appearance startled Audrey, both Mr. Candover and Johnson were on the watch, and though they had been unable to prevent her entering, they had prevented her doing more than that.
Johnson’s story was that she died a natural death from the bursting of a blood-vessel, caused by intense excitement on meeting the man who had ill-used and betrayed her, after having exploited her beauty on behalf of his gambling-house.
Johnson it was who had disguised himself as the “Dr. Fendall” whose address could not subsequently be ascertained; and he said that, immediately after Audrey had left the showrooms in search of help, he and Mr. Candover had brought a cab, had covered the dead woman with a long cloak belonging to Mademoiselle Laure, led her out between them as if she had been still alive, and carried her, under cover of the darkness, a gruesome companion, out to Willesden, where, in an empty house in a half-built street, where building was at a standstill for lack of funds, they had buried the body of the wretched woman under the flooring.
Having taken the precaution to make the driver of the cab too tipsy to take much notice of what was going on, they returned to the West End, Johnson sitting by the cabman and giving sufficient assistance with the reins for his condition to pass unnoticed by the authorities.
A search of the premises he indicated having been made, the truth of this part of Johnson’s story was established, and an inquest was held, which resulted in an open verdict, the condition of the body warranting the belief that the man’s story was substantially true.
This was not the only information which Johnson, now convinced that the truth was his best refuge, gave to the prosecution.
He confessed that, as far as he knew, no one of the name of Madame de Vicenza ever existed. The “Duchess” was a figment of Mr. Candover’s brain, and “The Briars” had been rented by him. It was also discovered that the premises which poor Audrey had believed to be rented in her name, and which had actually been paid for with her money, were really taken by Mr. Candover in the name of his sister, Mademoiselle Laure. The various documents which she had been made to sign were concoctions of his own, and the “solicitor” to whom he had introduced her had been one of his own creatures.
As for Tom Gossett, he had been chiefly employed as a tout, to discover likely victims for his employer. In his employment as a solicitor’s clerk in the city he had unhappily been able to find out all the details about Gerard Angmering’s habits and ways, which had been necessary to involve him in Candover’s net.
Durley Diggs had been chiefly employed as a card-sharper, in which capacity he had used his misdirected abilities to bad purpose both in Paris and in England.
Mademoiselle Laure had been clever enough to keep out of the confederacy, as far as could be proved. But although she now posed as the victim of her half-brother’s deception, and professed to have known nothing whatever about the various crimes in which he and his subordinates had been involved, it was strongly suspected, not only that she had given him all the assistance in her power, but that the comparatively small value of the property left by him, and her speedy disappearance to the Continent as soon as the trial was over, were facts not unconnected with each other, and of an extremely suspicious nature.
All three confederates got terms of penal servitude, and though it was believed that there were other members of the gang who had not been brought to justice, there was reason for thinking that not only was the gang completely broken up, but that all the chief offenders had been dealt with.
The effect of the revelations made at the trial was enormous.
Mr. Candover’s social position had been so well established, his friends and acquaintances had been so uniformly in the best set, his fame as a connoisseur and collector had been so widespread, that the whole story of his delinquencies came as a bombshell upon society.
The result was fortunate for Gerard and his wife. For while no one could boast that he had detected the cloven hoof, no one could cast much blame upon Audrey and her husband for the ease with which they had been deceived. They became, indeed, a sort of hero and heroine in the public eye, not a little to their discomfiture.
Very gladly would they and Reginald Candover’s two daughters have hidden themselves away until the excitement of the trial had subsided. But Gerard and his wife had to give evidence against the prisoners, and they were, therefore, compelled to remain in England. And Pamela and Babs, after the first painful sting of mortification and distress was over, found some comfort in the society of Audrey, who loved them both, and in the kindness of Lord Clanfield, who insisted on keeping the whole party at his place in Hampshire until the public excitement had subsided, and they could all make up their minds as to their future.
The two girls were heartily glad of this arrangement; for although they frequently saw their mother, by the viscount’s express desire, that unfortunate lady had lived so long shut up from the world, that she was wholly unfitted for the society of young people, and even in the presence of her own daughters she was reserved and eccentric to the point of making them wonder whether long confinement had not indeed injured her brain.
It was evident that the best plan both for her and for the girls would be for her to remain with her sister, and for the young people to find some other home.
It was while this matter was still under discussion among the various persons concerned, that an unexpected visitor arrived one day at Lord Clanfield’s place, driving swiftly through the park in a smart dark green motor-car.
Pamela was walking in the park, with a couple of collies at her heels. The February air was keen and cold, and she was running, with her white muff held up to her pretty pink cheeks, while the dogs, both young things, full of life and of play, leapt and bounded round her.
One of them, however, attracted dangerously by the motor-car, ran barking towards it, and was only saved from annihilation by a dexterous movement on the part of the driver.
Pamela ran forward, calling the dog and scolding him, and the motor-car stopped.
“How-do-you-do, Miss Pamela?”
“Oh, Sir Harry!”
“Drive on,” said Sir Harry Archdale to the chauffeur, as he got out, and shook hands with the girl, whose sudden loss of colour betrayed the mingled feelings of shame and shy pleasure with which the meeting inspired her.
They had not met since the terrible discoveries of the trial, and tears of mortification sprang to Pamela’s eyes when she remembered the difference there was between her position when they had last met and her position now.
Then she had been one of the daughters of the rich, well-known, highly-respected Mr. Candover, well off, happy in some vague but yet dazzling future, full of hope and happiness.
Now she and Babs were outcasts, none the less that they had found kind friends; they were the daughters of a man whose name could not be uttered in their presence, they were poor, they were overwhelmed with doubt as to the future.
The young man seemed conscious of all this too, though the knowledge only served to deepen the kindly feeling with which he spoke, to fill his eyes with sympathy which he did not dare to express in words.
Instead of speaking on any subject of interest to either, he rambled into a confused account of his adventures with various dogs and other animals during his first attempts at driving his own car. It was disconnected enough, but Pamela laughed politely and made no attempt at conversational efforts on her own account.
And then presently he came to a dead stop. His stock of vapid anecdote had run dry, and she showed signs of being about to call her dogs and continue her walk.
Something must be done, something bold, something daring, desperate.
“I—I knew you were staying here,” stammered he at last, suddenly losing control of the muscles of his face, and growing red and white and all sorts of colours. “But—I—I—I didn’t like to come before. Only—when somebody said you—you were g-g-going abroad, I—I—I felt I must come.”
“To say good-bye. It’s very kind of you,” panted Pamela quickly.
“No, no, no. You know I didn’t mean that. Look here. I—I want to ask you something. Isn’t it—a little awkward—to be here—even if they’re nice, and of course they are nice?” said Sir Harry, speaking more and more quickly, and wholly unable to choose appropriate and inoffensive expressions.
Pamela raised her pretty head proudly.
“Oh, of course it’s awkward, dreadfully, dreadfully awkward. But what of that? It must always be awkward—for us—everywhere—now.”
“I don’t see why it should.”
She turned upon him fiercely.
“Oh, yes, you do, you must. Everybody knows who we are, and all about us. And kind as everybody is, it’s dreadful all the same. Of course we shall get over it some day, but now—oh, don’t talk about it, don’t, don’t.”
“Young Angmering looks much better!” said Sir Harry by way of a diversion, glancing towards the garden, where Gerard was walking briskly, whip in hand, from the stables towards his wife, who was leaning out of one of the lower windows and smiling at him.
“Oh, yes. It’s hardly possible to believe that he was threatened with consumption only a few months ago. I’m so glad, for poor Audrey’s sake. After all she went through, it’s lovely to see her so happy at last!”
“Yes. I don’t quite like, myself, to approach her. I—I feel most awfully uncomfortable after—after—er—er—er.”
The unfortunate young man stopped short, remembering that it was through the misunderstanding created by Pamela’s father that he had misjudged poor Audrey.
Pamela laughed sadly.
“Oh, you can speak out,” she said. “It’s of no use for me—for Babs and me, to pretend not to know the mischiefhecaused. But I am thankful to say the last traces of it are passing away now.”
The young man twirled his moustache fiercely.
“I’m so sorry——” said he. “I—I don’t know how I could be such a donkey as to—as to——”
“Don’t call yourself names,” said she with a sort of forlorn resignation. “It can’t be helped. Every one knows it. Every one will always know, and look round at the name of Candover.”
Sir Harry was seized with an inspiration.
“Why don’t you change it?” he said abruptly. Then, before she could answer, he saw his opportunity, and hurried on: “They look round at the name Candover, you say. They wouldn’t if you were called—Archdale.”
Pamela tried to pretend she took this as a joke.
“Why do you laugh?” said he. “You’ll have to marry some day, you know! Why shouldn’t you be happy? Oh, you don’t know how soon you’d be able to forget, if you were!”
Pamela listened with her head bent, a feeling of deep gratitude and happiness stealing into her heart at the thought that this man, whom she had secretly liked so much, should come to her and generously offer to lift the great shadow off her life.
She shook her head, slowly, gently.
“There’s poor Babs!” she said softly.
“Oh, we’ll find a husband for Babs too! Babs is a dear girl!”
Pamela laughed, happily, tenderly this time.
“You seem to think,” she said meditatively, as she let him take up the end of the long white fox boa that encircled her throat, and wind it round his own hand caressingly, coming nearer as he did so, “that marriage is a panacea for all evils!”
Sir Harry glanced at Gerard and Audrey, whose figures could be seen, framed in the long bare strings of Virginia creeper and the green glossy ivy, at the mullioned window of the old redbrick mansion.
“Well, it looks like it, doesn’t it?” he said, as he got near enough to kiss her.
THE END
Florence Warden was the pseudonym of Florence Alice (Price) James.
Minor spelling inconsistencies (e.g.card-tables/card tables, overwrought/over-wrought, repellant/repellent, etc.) have been preserved.
Alterations to the text:
Add TOC.
Fix a few instances of periodsfollowingthe closing quotation marks of dialogue.
[Chapter VII]
Change “with suchconventialwords of thanks as he could muster” toconventional.
(what she would do when she left “TheBriers,”) toBriars.
[Chapter XV]
(“And what is that?”askeyAudrey.) toasked.
[Chapter XIX]
“And standing on the top. she looked down while her face quivered…” change period to comma.
[End of text]