“Well,” she said, “you can’t start off for Paris without any preparation, that’s certain. Let these girls go back to Windsor with Miss Willett——”
“They shall not go back. They have been long enough with Miss Willett, and they are too old for school. They shall go to an hotel with me——”
But Audrey, remembering the suggestion that the girls should go to “The Briars” with their aunt, would not suffer this.
“No,” she said firmly, “they shall not go away from here with you, Mademoiselle Laure, they shall not go without me; since they have come to me I mean to take care of them.”
“You! You! What are you? A convict’s wife! A wretched tool, a keeper of a gaming-house!” shrieked Mademoiselle Laure, beside herself with impotent rage, as she saw the girls shrinking back from her and clinging to Audrey.
Pamela protested indignantly.
“Don’t listen to her, Mrs. Angmering, don’t listen,” she said passionately. “The woman is mad, and wicked too. I wouldn’t go with her or let Babs go if she were the only person belonging to us in all the world!”
Suddenly Mademoiselle Laure changed her tone. She seemed to realise that she was harming her own cause by every word she spoke, and that she must use very different methods if she wished to attain her ends.
Subsiding into outward calmness with great abruptness, she turned away for a moment as if to consider some point, and then, addressing Pamela, said:—
“You will have to go with me, if your father tells you to!”