“I am sorry to have disturbed you for nothing, as it appears. But you will be satisfied presently that I was justified in sending for you, and you will be a witness to the fact that I took the proper steps at once.”
“Certainly. I hope you will let me persuade you, however, to take a sleeping draught to-night. Or at least to consult your own medical man about your health. You seem, if I may say so, to be in a highly nervous condition, and I feel sure that both rest and careful diet are imperatively necessary for you.”
“Thank you,” said Audrey shortly. There was his fee to be paid, and she added as he turned with a bow to the door: “Your address, Dr. Fendall, please, and I will write to you in the morning.”
He waved his hand.
“Oh, no, no, I have done nothing, and I am only sorry I could not be of use.”
The next moment he was gone, and Audrey, after in vain trying to summon courage enough to make another examination of the fitting-room, which would, she felt sure, have revealed some trace of the recent presence of the unhappy woman in the white dress, hastily bade Mademoiselle Laure good-night without further conversation with that reticent and astute-looking person, and went home to her rooms in Earl Street, Oxford Street.
What should she do? Whom should she consult?
Never before had she realised so fully how desperately lonely was her position in the world. Never before had she understood how the unhappy situation of her unfortunate husband had cut her off from every old friend, from the sympathy as well as the support even of her own relations.
From the first the aunt, with whom she had been living at Lytham, had opposed her marriage. It was during a short visit to some friends in London that Audrey had met Gerard, who fell in love with her straightway, followed her on her return to the north, and never rested till he had won her for his wife.
Miss Hester Claughton, Audrey’s maiden aunt, had disapproved of him from the first, as frivolous and worldly, and now that this terrible charge had been brought against the young man, and had resulted in the sentence which condemned him in the eyes of the world, Miss Hester did not hesitate to write long letters to her unhappy niece, professedly to express her sympathy, but really containing nothing but variations of the old theme, “I told you so”.