“I know you believe him guilty. You have said so,” she said, with fire. “But I _know_ that he is innocent. And if Lord Clanfield were to heap up insults upon me, and were to refuse ever to speak to me again, I would forgive him everything if--if only--he would save my darling Gerard’s life, and prove his innocence to the world!” “_Your_ innocence does you credit, Madame,” sneered Mr. Candover as Audrey rose and walked away. CHAPTER XIV It was one of the terrible evenings which Audrey had begun to hate, pleasant though every one tried to make them to her. The guests were lively and bright, always complimentary and sympathetic to herself, and observant of the rules of decorum in her presence, however high the play might be in the next room. They even broke up earlier now than they had done at first, and before one o’clock they were all gone. Audrey, however, was restless, ill at ease, full of vain longings for another sight of her husband’s face, and unable to sleep for the dreams in which she saw again, as she had seen that afternoon, the pitiful, white, drawn features, the sad, sunken eyes, or else the transformed, flushed countenance and brilliant, almost feverish eyes which had looked into hers and told her more plainly than he could with his lips that he had loved her and longed for her as she had for him. She walked up and down her room, in soft-soled slippers that made no noise, wrapping her dressing-gown tightly round her--for she felt chilly and the night air was cold--hoping to tire herself out, to be able to forget her misery and her anxiety for a time in sound sleep. And as she walked, she fancied that she heard, very faintly and as if muffled by distance, the sound of an altercation of some sort. She stopped, went closer to her locked door, and listened. She was sure, quite sure that she heard men’s voices, angry, excited, violently vociferous. She gently turned the key, then the handle, and peeped out. She was shocked to see that one of the men-servants, the very Barnard whom she had caught following her that day, was quietly sitting on the wide ledge, which made a fairly good seat, of the window at the extreme north end of the corridor. This corridor ran the whole length of the main building of the house, with bedrooms on one side, and a row of tall, deep-set windows on the other. These windows overlooked the courtyard, and the billiard-room, an annexe to the main building and at right angles with it, which was kept shut up by the Duchess de Vicenza’s order. In consequence of the ugliness of the outlook the lower part of all these windows was filled in with painted glass, and any eyes less sharp than those of Audrey might have failed to descry the servant in the corner, leaning back as he was against the darkened panes. Perhaps even Audrey might have failed to see him if she had not had her attention attracted by a deep-drawn breath, almost a snore, which announced that the watcher was asleep.