“Yes.”
“And as I find you are a very beautiful woman, my suspicion is confirmed. You are one of his victims, or his tools, as all the pretty women whom he meets become.”
Audrey, with fears which she could not express tightening round her heart, signed to the weird woman to sit down. Drawing a chair close to that which her visitor took, she sat down by her, and lowering her voice, said:—
“Tell me everything, everything. I am in a maze; I am in a position in which I can’t move hand or foot without coming to some corner from which I can’t escape. If you can tell me anything to help me, I shall be grateful, more grateful than I can express. Now who is the man you mean? What is his other name? If you are his wife and those girls are your children and his, you can trust me. I am a wife myself——”
“Whose?” said the woman shortly.
“My husband’s name is Gerard Angmering, and he is the nephew of Lord Clanfield,” she answered simply.
“Why isn’t he here with you? Why are you alone? Where is he?”
She poured out the questions one after the other, so quickly that it was impossible to answer any of them until she stopped speaking.
Audrey bit her lip.
“Never mind that,” she said. “Let it be enough for you that he is all the world to me, and that, if you find me here alone, it is neither by his wish nor by mine.”