Was she really to lose all the money she had invested? Was it possible that, by cunning devices of which she was ignorant, Mr. Candover had induced her to sign mock-agreements, and that she had left herself no alternative but to remain at the head of the shady and repellant business which was, she felt sure, only a blind to the more nefarious one which had been carried on at “The Briars,” or to lose all her fifteen hundred pounds?
“Be here early in the morning,” were Mademoiselle Laure’s last words, “and I will tell you what conclusion I have arrived at, and you shall tell me if you agree with me.”
So on the following morning Audrey, who had gone back to her old rooms and found them vacant, came to the showrooms at an early hour, and found Mademoiselle Laure gracious and unusually conciliatory.
“I have considered the matter we talked about last night,” she said, as soon as they were alone together, “and I am sure that the business goes with the name. As long as you are Madame Rocada, therefore, the business is yours; but when you say you are no longer Rocada, then it is yours no longer.”
Perhaps Mademoiselle Laure exaggerated the simplicity of the woman with whom she was dealing. At any rate Audrey looked at her in open-eyed surprise.
“I don’t know much about these things,” she said bluntly. “But I think that’s very strange.”
“It’s true though. Ask Mr. Candover if it is not.”
Audrey hung her head thoughtfully, and then looked up.
“No,” she said at last, “I shall not ask him. I shall go straight to a solicitor, and see what he says.”
Mademoiselle Laure’s face changed and grew very repellent in its expression. She laughed harshly.