But her pleasure was short-lived. There was a card-playing evening in store for her, at which Diggs was, of course, not present. But two days later she received another indignant letter from Lord Clanfield, complaining of her lack of good faith, in that his two sons had been playing cards at her house the whole of the night through. Audrey was intensely indignant at this letter, and was convinced, since the young Angmerings had certainly not been among the guests on the night he mentioned, that they had themselves deceived their father, and given her address to hide their real whereabouts. She began a letter to him, at least as indignant as his own, but could not satisfy herself with the wording of it. She tried again and again, and finally made up her mind to give up the attempt and to descend upon the angry father in person, and force him to retract his accusation and to apologise for it. She was extremely angry about this annoyance, after the strong measures she had taken to insure the exclusion of the young men. Now Lord Clanfield’s place was in Hampshire, and although the actual distance as the crow flies was not so very great between “The Briars” and Angmering Court, the journey was a tedious one, with many changes of train and awkward waits at country stations. It was not, therefore, until somewhat late in the afternoon that Audrey got out at the nearest station to the viscount’s place, and having ascertained that it was only a couple of miles away, went on foot across the fields, according to the direction given her, and reached the gates of the park at about five o’clock. There was no lodge at the gate, which she opened and passed through, admiring the prospect of hillock and tree, winding road and grassy glade, with an occasional peep at the house, which was a low-built Georgian structure, homely and cosy-looking rather than stately or imposing. The day had been a glorious one and the sun was still warm and bright. Audrey, who had had little inclination to dwell on the beauty of the place or the delights of the balmy air, was seized with nervousness on finding herself so near the great man of her husband’s family, and wondered at her own daring in coming at all. Along the winding road she went, coming rather suddenly upon a charming flower-garden, divided from the park-land only by a wire fence, and offering to the eye a view of dahlias and gladioli, rich-tinted begonias, feathery pampas grass, and late roses that strewed their sweet petals on the grass. On the lawn among the flowers there was an umbrella-tent, and under it a wicker lounge-chair. Beside the chair stood a nurse in uniform, and lying full length upon it was a young man, so white, so thin, so haggard of cheek and sunken of eye that he looked more like a dead man than a live one.