“Oh, that is saying very little!” sneered Mademoiselle Laure, who seemed to have lost all sense of self-control, and to be crazy with rage at the girls’ opposition to her wishes. Audrey grew anxious to put an end to the painful scene. “Well,” she said, “you can’t start off for Paris without any preparation, that’s certain. Let these girls go back to Windsor with Miss Willett----” “They shall not go back. They have been long enough with Miss Willett, and they are too old for school. They shall go to an hotel with me----” But Audrey, remembering the suggestion that the girls should go to “The Briars” with their aunt, would not suffer this. “No,” she said firmly, “they shall not go away from here with you, Mademoiselle Laure, they shall not go without me; since they have come to me I mean to take care of them.” “You! You! What are you? A convict’s wife! A wretched tool, a keeper of a gaming-house!” shrieked Mademoiselle Laure, beside herself with impotent rage, as she saw the girls shrinking back from her and clinging to Audrey. Pamela protested indignantly. “Don’t listen to her, Mrs. Angmering, don’t listen,” she said passionately. “The woman is mad, and wicked too. I wouldn’t go with her or let Babs go if she were the only person belonging to us in all the world!” Suddenly Mademoiselle Laure changed her tone. She seemed to realise that she was harming her own cause by every word she spoke, and that she must use very different methods if she wished to attain her ends. Subsiding into outward calmness with great abruptness, she turned away for a moment as if to consider some point, and then, addressing Pamela, said:-- “You will have to go with me, if your father tells you to!” Pamela turned pale, and hesitated. “I don’t want to----” she began. But Mademoiselle Laure cut her short. “It is not a question of what you want, but of what you must do,” she said sharply. “You admit your father is your proper guardian, and that you are bound to go where he chooses?” “Ye-es, but----” The woman turned haughtily to Audrey. “You can retire, Madame,” she said; “hide yourself in any corner you please, with your husband and your friends. I am going to take these dear girls to their father.” Babs clung to Audrey. “She shall go with us then,” cried she. For one moment Mademoiselle Laure, her face dark with suppressed rage, hesitated. Then, saying sharply:-- “Wait here then, for me--and for him,” she disappeared into the room at the back which was called hers, and reappeared in a few seconds, with Mr. Candover himself leaning on her arm. All were shocked at his appearance. His head was bound up, and his dull eyes seemed to show that he had scarcely yet fully recovered consciousness after the blow he had received from Geoffrey’s poker and the fall which had resulted from the blow. As if still more than half-dazed, he tottered forward, leaning on his sister’s arm, and stared about him and at the three ladies as if unaware who they were.