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——”