“Madame Rocada,” said he, in the coldest, sternest of voices, “I have come to request you to do me the favour of forbidding my two sons to enter your house.”
A chill seized Audrey. The next moment a sense of resentment rose in her mind and sent a flush to her cheeks.
She looked not only handsome, but stately, as she drew up her tall figure and stood erect in the sunlight, which played upon her golden hair, and sparkled upon the pearl paillettes which studded the dress of cream silk muslin, with a billowy train, which she was wearing.
“Upon what grounds do you make such a singular request, and in such a singular manner?” asked she, subduing her voice to a level and quiet tone.
For one moment he hesitated. Great beauty in a woman compels a sort of respect from any man. And Audrey had never looked lovelier than she did at that moment.
“I regret to have to put it so plainly. I had hoped that you would have spared me the necessity. But since I must be plain, it is because I have just learnt that you, Madame Rocada, are the lady known abroad as the White Countess, the keeper of the Paris gaming-house in which the son of one of my friends, young Hugh Grey, committed suicide two years ago.”
CHAPTER VII
Audrey was struck dumb.
As if by a flash of lightning, she found her whole mind illuminated, and saw at once the meaning of the visit paid to her showrooms by the lady in white.
The pale, thin woman was, she felt sure, the real Madame Rocada, and it was the discovery that another woman was setting up in business under her name which brought the vengeful stranger on the visit which had turned out so fatally for herself.