“Very well,” said Audrey, with spirit, “please bring the bishops next Wednesday.” But when next Wednesday came the bishops did not appear, and the same set as before dropped in one by one. With this difference, that one or two more ladies came. Audrey, however, liked the members of her own sex still less than she did those of the other who were her guests, and told Mr. Candover so. But one of the ladies had a beautiful voice, and her husband accompanied her on the piano. Audrey herself played well, and to her great relief the card-tables did not, on this occasion, make their appearance in the drawing-room, where songs from the musical comedies, piquantly rendered, formed the evening’s entertainment. But there was a fine smoking-room with a vaulted ceiling at the other end of the house, where most of the gentlemen spent the evening. And when, on the following morning, Audrey entered that apartment before the servants did, she found open card-tables, packs of cards and dice, in sufficient numbers to let her know how the majority of her guests had spent, not only the evening, but great part of the night. CHAPTER VI What was she to do? If Mr. Candover had not been her most active if not her only friend, if his manners had not been so tactful, and his delicacy so great that he never came to see her except at her request, she would have left “The Briars,” where she felt that she was only nominally mistress of a house which resembled rather a public place of entertainment than a private dwelling, and would have taken refuge in solitary lodgings at the seaside. But she did not like, she did not dare, to offend such a powerful friend and ally; and besides, painful as in many respects her position was, the truth remained that she had no friends in all the world to whom she could go. Mrs. Webster, who was in the secret of her troubles about Gerard, was travelling in Scotland, or she would have written to her and suggested that they should stay somewhere together. Her husband’s nearest relation, Lord Clanfield, had been offended by the marriage of his nephew with a girl who did not belong to his “set”; and Gerard, who was high-spirited and indignant that his beautiful wife should not be welcomed with the honour she deserved, had retorted by cutting off all communication with his uncle, who, perfectly indifferent to the fact, had never even attempted to make his handsome niece’s acquaintance. In this extremity, feeling the dire need of the companionship of some one to whom she could pour out at least some of the sentiments of her poor little aching heart, Audrey suddenly thought of Mr. Candover’s two young daughters, and at once wrote to Pamela, the elder, asking her to request permission to come over to spend an afternoon at “The Briars”. This letter Audrey sent direct to the school at Windsor where the girls were staying. The next morning came a telegram from Pamela, accepting the invitation jubilantly, in these words:--