Gerard went up to the showroom shyly, with a subdued manner, and his uncle followed. The girls looked down and reddened uncomfortably, feeling, poor lassies, all the awkwardness of their position, and unable to keep back their tears. “Mrs. Angmering,” said Lord Clanfield, taking her hand, as she rose to greet him, and looking kindly into her face, “I’m afraid you’ve had a very hard time of trouble and distress of mind to go through, and I’m heartily sorry I didn’t know earlier what I feel sure of now. You must come back with me at once, with me and Gerard.” Audrey, grateful, tearful, pressed his hand warmly, but shook her head:-- “You’re very, very kind. But I think I’d rather--now--take these girls with me somewhere, and arrange for their seeing their mother, who’s longing to have them with her again,” said she. Lord Clanfield beamed upon the two poor lassies, and held out his hand to Pamela. “Let them come with us too,” he said. “And write to their mother and tell them where they are. We shall be delighted to see her whenever she can come.” “And we’ll come down with you too, to help to entertain the ladies,” suddenly cried Geoffrey from the rear. The violently startled manner in which Lord Clanfield turned on hearing his son’s voice behind him made them all smile, and afforded a welcome relief to the tension of feeling from which they were suffering. Five minutes later they were all trooping downstairs and out of the house on their way to the station; and at the same time a couple of police-officers came quietly up to take possession of the premises. CHAPTER XXVI Before the day was over, Gerard and Audrey learned fuller details of the confederacy into whose net both of them had so cleverly been drawn. From the first moment when, a month previously, the police had got upon the traces of Mr. Candover as the actual forger of the cheques by means of which Sir Richmond Hornthwaite had been robbed, they had been working silently, and with the knowledge of Lord Clanfield and Mr. Masson, to bring the arch-scoundrel to justice. The irony of fate, however, prevented his being made to suffer the legal penalty for the crime which he had contrived to lay upon the shoulders of the unfortunate Gerard Angmering. His artfulness was so well known, that at first there was a strong suspicion that his illness was in part at least assumed. But on examination at the hospital, he was found to be dying, and, although he lingered through the night and part of the following day, he died within forty-eight hours from the moment of his attempted arrest, from extensive injuries to the brain and spine, the result of the two attacks which had been made upon him, the first by Geoffrey Angmering, and the second by his own associate, Tom Gossett.