“I didn’t say that!” cried she aghast.
Mr. Candover turned to the rest of the men with uplifted eyebrows.
“Then I’m afraid we’ve misunderstood you,” he went on suavely. “Certainly I understood, for my part, that you said we were all either swindlers or swindled, and that you had no more sympathy for the one lot than for the other. Did we misunderstand you in thinking you said that?”
“I did say that,” sobbed out Audrey, who was not crying, but who could not speak except in spasmodic jerks.
“I thought so. Well, then, is it too much to ask that you should be a little more explicit, that you should tell us, in short, who are the swindlers and who the swindled?”
There was another dead silence. Painful, pitiful as it was to see this young and lovely woman brought thus to bay, the matter was too exciting for any one to feel inclined to let the affair rest there. It almost seemed—Mr. Candover took care to let it seem—that they all rested under some sort of imputation until she could be made to speak out.
Audrey felt, however, that she would get no sympathy, no belief, if she were to tell the truth. And in despair she said so.
“What is the use of asking me,” she said bitterly, “to say any more? Not one of you would believe me, if I did. No. All I say is this: the play at ‘The Briars’ was not fair play, at least it was not always fair. I have proved it to you in two instances. Well, that ought to be enough for you. For me to accuse anybody whose cheating has not been found out would be useless, even if it were possible. All I do, all I have done, is to warn you that the men who have done the unfair work were acting together, and, I believe, acting under orders. And as for the rest—as for discovering under whose orders they acted, they cheated, why, surely that is your business, the business of those who have lost money—not mine!”
“No, but it’s not enough. You ought to tell us who it is. It’s not fair to bring an accusation and then to draw back,” protested Sir Harry, who felt all the more strongly because he had been inclined to look upon this lovely woman as a victim, and who now felt that he had been befooled.
Mr. Candover’s voice broke in suavely after the young man’s hot-tempered outburst.