“I should have thought, Madame,” he said stiffly and aggressively, “that Lord Clanfield’s sons were good enough for the rest of your company. I suppose the fact is you’ve found out that there’s a convict in the family, and----” Audrey, caught unawares, uttered a low but piercing cry. To hear her darling husband thus spoken of, in this brutal and callous manner, was too much for her overwrought nerves. To the consternation of the two young men, who beat a hasty retreat from the house, perplexed and abashed, she staggered and fell back against the door of the conservatory. She would have fallen backwards, as the door gave way, but for the supporting arm of Mr. Candover, who had been an unseen witness of this scene from his post of observation among the palms and the flowers. “Audrey, my darling, my darling,” whispered he in tones that froze her blood. He was holding her tightly in his arms, his fiery eyes glowing close to her face. With all her suspicions justified, her doubts, her fears, the unhappy woman struggled, at first weakly, then with sudden vigour, to release herself from the grasp of the man whom she now feared and almost loathed, recognising in him, as she did, in one sudden flash of illumination, her evil genius if not that of her husband also. “Let me go, Mr. Candover, let me go.” They were within the conservatory doors, which he had contrived to close without releasing her. Still holding her fast, he looked with passionate eyes into her face and whispered:-- “Let you go? Let you go? No, Audrey, no. I’ve loved you, waited for a kind word from you, patiently, humbly. But one can’t be humble and patient for ever. Audrey, you’ve never been loved before, you don’t know what it is to hold a man’s heart in your hand, as you hold mine!” Audrey listened in dumb terror. Loathing the very touch of this man in his new aspect, panting to get free from him, she yet felt the horrible power he possessed, and dreaded its effect upon her. Waiting for her opportunity, she suddenly tore herself away, and facing him with fierce eyes, cried:-- “You can speak so to me, _you_. The friend of my husband, the man who professed so much for my poor Gerard!” But Mr. Candover had either forgotten his prudence, or felt that he needed it no longer. Coming closer to her, and trying once more to clasp her in his arms, he cried in a tone of the utmost scorn:-- “Gerard! Gerard! Why do you pretend to care about him? Why keep up the farce of believing him to be what you know he is not? Why not snap your fingers at the memory of the wretch, when you know, and I know, and everybody knows, that his punishment was a just one, that he was a forger and a thief!” CHAPTER IX If the skies had fallen, poor Audrey could not have been more utterly bewildered, dismayed and shocked than she was by this frank and deliberate statement of Mr. Candover’s that he believed Gerard to be guilty of the crime for which he was suffering.