“The scoundrel!” said Gerard between his clenched teeth.
She drew closer to him.
“There’s something more to tell you about him than that!”
“I know! He encouraged you to take this house at Epsom and let people think that you kept a sort of gambling club.”
“Oh, Gerard, there’s worse to be told than that.” His grasp tightened upon her hand, and a look so piteous came into his eyes that she hurried on: “They cheated there, they cheated at cards, Gerard, and—I’m sure—I know—that Mr. Candover was concerned in it.”
This speech, in spite of all that he had feared, had guessed, came upon the young man with a great shock. That the rich, prosperous, easy-going, fascinating Mr. Candover should make love to his beautiful wife, was no surprise; it was what he had feared. But that he should be involved in such a nefarious business as card-sharping seemed too preposterous. He looked at Audrey as if he doubted her perfect sanity.
“Oh, I knew what you’d say, what you’d think,” whispered she, putting one arm round his neck, and lowering her voice still more, as if the very walls might have ears. “And I knew you wouldn’t believe. But when you hear all I have to tell you, I think you’ll say I’m right.”
Then, still in the same subdued tones, still clinging to him, she told—incoherently enough, but yet intelligibly to his sympathetic ears—the whole story of her being induced to take the business and to pay for it, and to assume the trade name of Rocada. She told the ghastly story of the lady in white, and of her mysterious disappearance without leaving even a trace for the doctor’s eye to discover. She told of her being induced to take “The Briars,” of her uneasiness there, of the episodes of Diggs and of Johnson, and then of her flight to town.
“Now,” she said impressively, “they—he and the woman who I am sure is his sister—this Mademoiselle Laure—want to force me to give up this place without any compensation. She pretends that it is the property of Madame Rocada, and that, as I am not Madame Rocada, it is not mine. And when I told her I would go to a solicitor, she said she would consult Mr. Candover and see what he would say.”
“That part of the business is soon disposed of,” said Gerard, with decision. “They’re acting ‘on the bounce,’ and we’ve only got to go to a lawyer for them to sing small directly.”