“Yes, you do know more than that. You know a great deal more,” she said, with depressed conviction. “I noticed the way you looked at him when he came in to take us away. Oh, Mrs. Angmering, what are we going to do? We seem to have neither father nor mother now!” “We shall have to go back to Miss Willett’s,” sobbed Babs. Audrey drew both the girls close to her. “You shall be well taken care of, and you shall not have to go away with your aunt, at any rate,” said she. And in the shuddering silence with which the girls received this assurance there was evidence enough that they understood vaguely that they had escaped some great danger. In the meantime the two gentlemen who had got out of the waiting cab in time to witness the arrest of Mr. Candover’s three friends, had followed the two girls into the house and up the stairs, and had been received by Gerard and his cousins, who, standing back for the young girls to go up with Audrey, came forward again, to greet the gentlemen with intense astonishment. “My father! By Jove!” cried Geoffrey, as Lord Clanfield came up, looking about him uneasily, as if he expected trap-doors to fly open under his feet and secret panels to slide back on each side of him. “And Mr. Masson!” exclaimed Gerard, as he recognised, in the gentleman who was following close at his uncle’s heels, the solicitor whom Audrey had reported as having received her narrative so coldly. The two gentlemen had by this time reached the little landing upon which opened the small room where so many exciting interviews had taken place that morning. Lord Clanfield looked from his nephew to his sons. “So you’ve been mixing yourselves up in this business! What mischief will you be up to next?” he asked, addressing Edgar, and speaking in a voice which betrayed the agitation which he felt at the unpleasant affair in which he was being forced to take part. “Well, it’s more surprising still to find _you_ mixed up in it!” retorted Geoffrey from behind his brother. “When there’s a scrape to be got into, you expect to see us on in that scene. And for once we’ve not been so much getting into a scrape ourselves as helping Gerard out of one.” “Indeed! And what has been your share?” asked his father incredulously. “Well, I knocked that Candover down when he was going to shoot Gerard,” replied Geoffrey coolly. And he related the story of that event, while Gerard himself, having heard the news of the arrest of the confederates, stood silently by, waiting for Mr. Masson to speak. The solicitor’s keen face wore a look which told him that he knew a good deal more than Gerard himself did about the confederacy which had just been broken up.