Before Johnson could answer, Audrey heard Mr. Candover’s voice
behind her, and turning, she received his answer for the strangely
perturbed secretary.
“Mr. Johnson,” said he, “is only Dr. Fendall’s half-brother; that’s
why they don’t bear the same surname.”
“I see.”
In that short interruption Johnson had found time to escape, not by
the front-door, but back to the card-room, and Mr. Candover, who
looked more excited than he usually allowed himself to appear, asked
Audrey why she looked so cross.
She was strung up, agitated, eager for the contest with this man whose
subtle advice always led her into such difficult places.
“Do I?” she said, putting strong constraint upon herself, and forcing
herself to speak calmly, though her eyes blazed and her lips trembled.
“Well, I think I am cross. At any rate I’m disgusted, and I’m sure, if
you can’t guess all the reasons why I am so, you know some of them at
least.”
“Let us come in here, where we can talk,” said he, as he opened the
door of the conservatory, near which they were standing. He arranged
for her one of the cane-seated lounge chairs which stood about among
the flowers, and invited her, with a winning smile, to seat herself in
the pile of cushions which he collected from the other seats round
him. But she would not sit down. She felt at greater advantage when
she could move about, and meet his eyes on the same level as her own.
He was determined to help her in his own way, and he was, she knew,
prepared to do battle with her over her fixed resolve to abandon the
career he had mapped out for her. And weak though she always felt in
the presence of this man with the various arts which he knew so well
how to use, the crisis had come, and she felt that she would, she must
be strong enough to resist his will.
“Now,” said he, leaning back against the glass wall that shut them in,
and looking at her with his usual placid and amiable smile, “what is
the matter?”
“I’m going away from this place,” said Audrey bluntly. “I don’t like
the people who come here, and I don’t like the scenes I am exposed to.
And I’m sure you know why.”
He had changed his attitude, and his handsome face expressed great
astonishment and perplexity.
“But we have talked that out, and I thought you had seen the necessity
of taking the rough with the smooth,” objected he. “What are you going
to do if you give this up?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care,” said Audrey angrily. “But I won’t
have noisy men like the Angmerings here, and I won’t be exposed to the
insults of their father any longer.”
“Insults! What insults?”
Audrey looked at him askance. She had a very shrewd suspicion that he
must have heard all about it already, but she said:--
“Lord Clanfield came here the day before yesterday, and accused me of
being a woman called the ‘White Countess,’ who was concerned in the
death of a man. She was the keeper of a Paris gaming-house. But of
course you knew. And I want to learn how, knowing her as you must have
done, you dared to advise me to call myself by the name of such a
woman!”
Horribly frightened by her own boldness, Audrey poured out this tirade
at a rapid rate, trying by firmness and clearness of tone to deceive
herself into thinking that she was not horribly alarmed.
Mr. Candover took it very quietly, and after a short pause laughed.
“I see, I see. I was afraid those young cubs would frighten you!”
“Lord Clanfield,” interrupted Audrey sharply, “requested me not to
admit them into my house.”
“I should imagine you were not very anxious to admit them,” said Mr.
Candover. “Nobody else is. As for Lord Clanfield, he’s an old crank;
won’t allow bagatelle on Sundays--if anybody ever wants to play that
innocent game on that or any other day! And as for the young cubs,
they wouldn’t come to much harm here or anywhere else, for there’s
very little they don’t know! I’m very angry that you should have been
annoyed by the old fool, but he’s an annoyance to everybody. You
didn’t let him know you were his nephew’s wife?”
“No--o--o, though I rather wish I had!” sighed Audrey. “But I told him
I was not Madame Rocada, and what I want to know is why you, who must
have known all about there being a real woman of that name, the keeper
of a gaming-house, should have advised me to call myself by it!”
Her tone was fierce and angry, and Mr. Candover grew earnest as he
answered.
“Believe me I never heard of this woman, and I don’t believe she ever
existed. It was Marie Laure who suggested the name Rocada to me, as
being new and striking. And I am sure that this old Clanfield, who is
as muddle-headed as one of his own sheep, has got hold of the wrong
name. Surely you don’t suppose I should have chosen you a name with
ugly associations attached to it?”
“I shouldn’t have suspected you of such a thing,” retorted Audrey,
“until I had proof of it.”
Mr. Candover protested, growing more and more earnest, reproachful,
tender, until they were interrupted by an altercation going on in the
hall, and a moment later they saw the two young sons of Lord Clanfield
emerging victorious from a sort of polite tussle with the footman, who
had informed them clearly and distinctly that Madame Rocada was not at
home.
“All right, old chap,” said the younger, Geoffrey, a little fellow
five feet two inches high, who cultivated the appearance and manners
of a stableman so well that even in evening clothes he looked more
like his ideal than the son of a man of rank.
The elder brother laughed loudly, but did not join in the discussion.
He was very tall and sloping of shoulder, good-looking in a vacuous
and brainless fashion, and good-natured to excess.
The two young men evidently looked upon the professed attempt to keep
them out as the merest pretence, and when Audrey hurried out of the
conservatory and stood in their way, they both bowed to her with the
most impudent of half-concealed smiles on their faces.
“I am exceedingly sorry that this should have happened,” said she in a
low voice, as soon as she had dismissed the footman by a look. “I gave
orders that you were to be told, Mr. Angmering, that I was not at
home, and gentlemen usually understand what that means.”
The elder of the two had the sense to perceive that the lady was in
earnest, but the younger, who was as usual in rather an elated
condition, laughed as he said:--
“Well, we didn’t take it seriously, you know. We looked upon it as a
good joke, for we know how hospitable you are, Madame Rocada, and we
enjoyed ourselves so awfully the other night----”
“Lord Clanfield,” interrupted Audrey icily, “desires that you should
not come here, and I desire it also.”
Both the young men began to smile.
“Oh, that’s it, is it?” said the younger. “I give you my word you
needn’t worry your head about Lord Clanfield. We certainly shan’t tell
him we’ve been here, you know.”
The elder of the two young men had by this time seen that they had
made some mistake, and he was exceedingly anxious to silence his more
obtuse brother. In the meantime he made apologies, sincere and not
ungraceful, for their behaviour.
“There’s some mistake. We certainly never wished to intrude, Madame,”
said he. “Of course, if you wish, we’ll go away at once.”
The younger, however, was indignant at what he considered his
brother’s stupidity.
“I should have thought, Madame,” he said stiffly and aggressively,
“that Lord Clanfield’s sons were good enough for the rest of your
company. I suppose the fact is you’ve found out that there’s a convict
in the family, and----”
Audrey, caught unawares, uttered a low but piercing cry. To hear her
darling husband thus spoken of, in this brutal and callous manner, was
too much for her overwrought nerves. To the consternation of the two
young men, who beat a hasty retreat from the house, perplexed and
abashed, she staggered and fell back against the door of the
conservatory.
She would have fallen backwards, as the door gave way, but for the
supporting arm of Mr. Candover, who had been an unseen witness of this
scene from his post of observation among the palms and the flowers.
“Audrey, my darling, my darling,” whispered he in tones that froze her
blood. He was holding her tightly in his arms, his fiery eyes glowing
close to her face.
With all her suspicions justified, her doubts, her fears, the unhappy
woman struggled, at first weakly, then with sudden vigour, to release
herself from the grasp of the man whom she now feared and almost
loathed, recognising in him, as she did, in one sudden flash of
illumination, her evil genius if not that of her husband also.
“Let me go, Mr. Candover, let me go.”
They were within the conservatory doors, which he had contrived to
close without releasing her. Still holding her fast, he looked with
passionate eyes into her face and whispered:--
“Let you go? Let you go? No, Audrey, no. I’ve loved you, waited for a
kind word from you, patiently, humbly. But one can’t be humble and
patient for ever. Audrey, you’ve never been loved before, you don’t
know what it is to hold a man’s heart in your hand, as you hold mine!”
Audrey listened in dumb terror. Loathing the very touch of this man in
his new aspect, panting to get free from him, she yet felt the
horrible power he possessed, and dreaded its effect upon her.
Waiting for her opportunity, she suddenly tore herself away, and
facing him with fierce eyes, cried:--
“You can speak so to me, _you_. The friend of my husband, the man who
professed so much for my poor Gerard!”
But Mr. Candover had either forgotten his prudence, or felt that he
needed it no longer. Coming closer to her, and trying once more to
clasp her in his arms, he cried in a tone of the utmost scorn:--
“Gerard! Gerard! Why do you pretend to care about him? Why keep up the
farce of believing him to be what you know he is not? Why not snap
your fingers at the memory of the wretch, when you know, and I know,
and everybody knows, that his punishment was a just one, that he was a
forger and a thief!”