“Now,” she said impressively, “they--he and the woman who I am sure is his sister--this Mademoiselle Laure--want to force me to give up this place without any compensation. She pretends that it is the property of Madame Rocada, and that, as I am not Madame Rocada, it is not mine. And when I told her I would go to a solicitor, she said she would consult Mr. Candover and see what he would say.” “That part of the business is soon disposed of,” said Gerard, with decision. “They’re acting ‘on the bounce,’ and we’ve only got to go to a lawyer for them to sing small directly.” He seemed quite confident, but Audrey, who had more recent and more alarming experiences of the precious pair than Gerard, was not so easy in her mind as he. She shook her head warningly. “If you begin by thinking it will be easy to show them up,” she said solemnly, “you will do no good at all. What I’m quite sure of is that they are the cleverest and wickedest pair that ever lived. And that they have means to hand for working all kinds of villainy, means that we don’t dream of. Oh, you can’t understand the consciousness I’ve had lately, always--always--that there has been a net about my feet, drawing me tighter and tighter, so that I could not get away.” She was shivering, and Gerard tried to laugh, comforting her. “You don’t feel that now, surely, surely! Now you’ve got me back.” But she hung round his neck, and with wild eyes whispered:-- “Shall I tell you the truth? What I feel now is that they have got not me only but _you_ in the net as well. I can’t get rid of the feeling, I can’t, I can’t!” He rallied her on her cowardice in vain. But presently she noticed that he looked deadly pale and tired, that his voice had become hoarse and his eyes dull. And she jumped up from the sofa, and taking out from a cupboard a little store of provisions, put her kettle on the fire, and prepared to make him some tea. Then she looked at her watch and found that it was seven o’clock. “I must leave you in here,” she said, “and go and see whether Mademoiselle Laure has come back. If she has not, it is I who must dismiss the girls, and see that everything is safe for the night. One of us always does that. Stay here. I don’t suppose anybody has seen you, and they never come into this room. I’ll be back when they’ve all gone.” She made him lie down on the sofa, covered him with a rug, and returned to the showrooms, where the girls were waiting to be dismissed. Mademoiselle Laure had not returned, and this made Audrey uneasy. However, she attended to the duties of the evening, saw that the hats and dresses had been properly covered up and put away, and bidding the assistants good-night, waited till they had all gone down the stairs before returning to Gerard.