“Now it appears she has run away to some showrooms she has near Bond Street, where there was a scene, a most unpleasant scene, as recently as yesterday afternoon. It appears she was followed there by a number of the men who had been robbed at her house at Epsom, and there was an explanation asked for. Your wife, still passing as Madame Rocada, a name one would have thought she would have dropped on hearing the associations connected with it, turned round upon them all, told them that they had only themselves to thank if they were cheated, and said that one-half of them were swindlers, and professed only to have discovered the fact a day or two ago.”
“And may not that have been true?” asked Gerard, in the same low, hoarse voice.
Edgar answered for his father:—
“No. Impossible. I had it from Archdale, one of the best fellows going, that there was no one present but men of the highest standing—Sir Barnaby Joyce, Reginald Candover——”
Again Gerard looked up. But this time, though he frowned slightly, he said nothing.
Edgar went on: “And half a dozen other men equally well known. It seems your wife behaved like a fury, so that at last—to calm her, Candover was obliged to—to——”
“To do what?”
“To remind her that she herself was——”
“The wife of—of a convict, I suppose?” said Gerard steadily.
Lord Clanfield drew himself up indignantly.