But poor Audrey shrank in alarm from these glowing enterprises, which Mr. Candover appeared to evolve so easily, and to realise so quickly. For a long time it was in vain he talked to her, pointed out how right he had been about her taking the business world by storm with her showrooms, insisted on the duty which devolved upon her of making money for Gerard’s sake. But it was inevitable that, alone as she was but for his help and advice, she should yield at last to his representations; and when he had ascertained for her that the rent she would have to pay for “The Briars” was a mere nominal one, provided she would consent to take on the duchess’s servants, Audrey reluctantly consented to take the pretty house at Epsom from the first week in August, when the London season ended and her showrooms were practically shut up, to the first week in October, which was, so Mademoiselle Laure assured her, early enough to begin the autumn fashion campaign. Young and inexperienced as she was, Audrey could not help thinking, when she found herself in possession at “The Briars,” which was a charming house, roomy and tastefully furnished, without any appearance of ostentatious luxury, that she had found everything wonderfully easy so far in her new career. Mademoiselle Laure was disagreeable, it was true, but she was undoubtedly something of a genius, and she had taken all the real work off her employer’s hands. Nothing transpired to clear up the mystery of the lady in white, but not the most minute search on Audrey’s part revealed any trace of the tragedy she believed herself to have discovered, nor did anything appear in the daily papers, which she scanned closely for the next week, to throw light upon the affair. And scarcely was Audrey settled in the house at Epsom, when callers began to arrive in sufficient numbers to justify Mr. Candover’s prediction that she would soon have a circle of her own. Audrey did not care for many of her visitors. Most of them were gentlemen, which she thought strange. But to the pointed inquiries she made to some of them they invariably replied that their wives, daughters and sisters were all away at the seaside or on the continent, which was, she reflected, natural enough in the month of August. Those ladies who called upon her were of the ultra-smart and aggressive type which Audrey thought more desirable as customers than as friends. There was Lady Lavering, with the mahogany-coloured hair, whose husband, Sir Richard Lavering, looked old enough to be her great-grandfather. And there was the Hon. Mrs. Lydd, who looked old enough to be her husband’s grandmother.