“What do you mean?”
“Why, that this woman who says she’s his wife, the woman who is in the park now, and who says she will see you or see him before she goes away, is the very woman whose house you’ve forbidden us to go to, the keeper of a gambling-room—Madame Rocada!”
The shock was so great that Lord Clanfield fell back, scarcely able to speak, breathless, bewildered, horror-struck.
“Are—are you sure?”
“I’m sure that the woman who calls herself Madame Rocada is outside the house at this moment, that she says she came in answer to a letter from you about us——”
“Yes, I did write to her.”
“—and that she declares she saw Gerard—you see she knows his name—in a chair in the grounds, with a nurse. And she complains that she had not even heard that he was ill, and she seems as genuinely upset as ever I saw a woman in my life! And I believe she is his wife, I do on my honour!”
The viscount made up his mind quickly.
“Get rid of her,” said he. “Drive her away at all costs, I don’t mean roughly, of course. But you must find some means of getting her outside the grounds before Gerard hears of her being here.”
“Not so easy! One can deal with a mad dog more easily than with a determined woman!” retorted Edgar.