Geoffrey stared at her with the same impudent look of incredulity and defiance as he had used on the night when she refused admission to her house to him and his brother.
“I think it would have been wiser of you, Madame, to have taken no notice of his letter,” he said, with unmistakable mockery in his tone. “He won’t believe what you say, if you persist in seeing him, any more than he did before. If I were you, I should go quietly back home again, and if you like I’ll drive you to the station in my dog-cart.”
The frank impertinence of his manner and of his suggestion almost frightened Audrey. It seemed to betray the fact that he looked upon her as unworthy of much trouble, and as wholly incapable of producing any effect upon his father.
He seemed to say in effect: “If you like to see my father you can, but you may just as well save yourself the trouble.”
She hesitated what to reply. To tell the whole truth to him, to say that she was Gerard’s wife, was, of course, out of the question. He would certainly receive such a statement with blank incredulity and probably with insult. Luckily, at that moment, when she was uncertain what to do and Geoffrey was growing more and more impertinent in his manner, the elder son of Lord Clanfield, who, if still less endowed with brains, was not quite such an ill-mannered young rascal as his brother, came in sight. He was sauntering out from the house with half a dozen dogs, of various breeds, running and barking round him.
One of these, a bull terrier, spying a stranger in Audrey, rushed at her, and seizing her skirt, began to worry it tearing the light material to ribbons.
“Down, sir, down!” cried Edgar, hastening his steps a little, as he came up to his brother and the lady. “I’m awfully sorry——” he went on, raising his hat as he spoke. When suddenly he recognised her in his turn, and said, in breathless amazement: “Madame Rocada!”
He took her presence in the park in a different way from his brother’s, and seemed not only surprised, but rather alarmed by it. “Why, I—what—unexpected——” stammered he, as she bowed gravely and said nothing.
There was a moment’s dead silence. Then she, perceiving that this young man was at least much more likely to listen quietly than his brother, said steadily and firmly:—
“My name is not Madame Rocada. It never has been that. I am not a countess, and I have never wished to pretend to be one.”