In this outer door there was a little grating with a sliding panel, and hearing voices and footsteps, some of which she recognised in the road outside, Audrey slid back the panel and looked out.
She could see but little, for it was only four o’clock, and the morning was dark. She, however, could distinguish the figure of Johnson, the duchess’s secretary, and that of one of the young Angmerings.
By what she heard in the confused talk of half a dozen men, all of whose voices she had heard before and who were, therefore, as she knew, habitués of the house, she gathered that there had been a quarrel, a dispute something indeed very much of the nature of a “row,” that Johnson was the person who had been accused of unfair practices, and that his accuser was Edgar Angmering.
Where did they all come from?
They passed from right to left, quickly, not talking loudly, though they were all much excited, alike in accusation and in denial.
In a very few moments they had all passed out of hearing, and Audrey, cold, shivering more with horror than from the chill morning air, crept softly upstairs, saw that the man Barnard had disappeared, and, locking herself in her own room, understood fully for the first time for what sort of organisation she had been entrapped into playing hostess.
Durley Diggs accused, and now Johnson. Whether or not this latest disturbance were only the result of some gambler’s quarrel in which Johnson himself was not more to blame than the rest, Audrey could not help being struck by the coincidence that the accusation should be brought against the representative of the duchess.
Who was this duchess? Was she a lady of rank? Or was she only the bearer of a fancy title, such as that which had been forced upon Audrey herself?
Was she, in short, the proprietor of a gaming-house, of which the management had ostensibly passed out of her hands and into those of Audrey herself?
The poor young wife was overwhelmed by these suspicions, which involved so many others that she scarcely dared to face any one of them.