“I think something in velvet with a tuft of feathers at the side and something stringy about the neck is what Lady Joyce generally wears,” said Sir Barnaby at last, desperately, when picture-hats and dreams in ermine and ostrich feathers had been paraded before him in somewhat bewildering succession, and tried on the head of one of the pretty attendants with great gravity. “Perhaps you had better bring Lady Joyce here to try on some bonnets and choose for herself,” suggested Audrey gently. At which there was a further exchange of demure looks, unseen, among the assistants. Sir Barnaby answered rather stiffly:-- “Lady Joyce is content to follow my taste. I’ll take that one.” And he pounced upon an ermine toque with an osprey at the side, and pulled out a five-pound note to pay for it. “How much is it?” asked Audrey of the assistant who held the toque in her hand. There was a smile on the face of the girl as she answered that it was four guineas. And Audrey felt that she had betrayed unseemly ignorance as she blushed and carefully counted out her customer’s change. Sir Barnaby looked up plaintively into her face as she did so. “I want to ask you,” he said in a low voice, when the attendants had retreated a little way, and were busy packing up the bargain, “whether you won’t have mercy upon your friends, and let us come and see you again sometimes. We had such a pleasant time at ‘The Briars’----” “_I_ hadn’t,” interrupted Audrey in a high-pitched voice. “I was induced to take the place under the impression that I could spend a quiet summer there. But I had nothing but annoyance and worry the whole time. I disapproved of what went on there, and I would never allow the same thing to happen again in any house I lived in.” Sir Barnaby looked puzzled. Although he knew, as every one else did, that Audrey was only the figure-head of an organisation of which gambling was the object, he had not believed her to be so entirely a puppet in the hands of others as this speech and her passionate vindication of herself two days before would have seemed to suggest. Even now he found a difficulty in believing that so much beauty was compatible with extreme innocence. Such a combination was contrary to his experience, which was large. He even felt nettled by these airs--as he considered them--of an irresponsibility which did not accord with the facts. Audrey was moving towards the door, as an intimation to the baronet that his business was over. He had given the address to which his parcel was to be sent, and she had no wish to hear any more about the recent scene or about his disinterested devotion. He lingered, however, when they had reached the outer doorway, and stood a moment holding up the portière, and turning to her with a sentimental expression on his rubicund, genial face.