“He! Who?” stammered Audrey. The woman shook her head, as if dismissing the question as childish. “Because,” she went on, “if he were to know I have come, if he were to know I’ve tried to see my girls, he would murder me, yes, murder me, with as little compunction as if I were the cat!” “Who do you mean? Who would do this?” cried Audrey, with sudden shrillness. The woman fixed the great black eyes in another lugubrious stare upon her face:-- “Who? Why, my husband--Eugène.” Eugène! It was the name by which the White Countess had called out to her assailant on the terrible evening at the showrooms! Audrey held her breath; she knew that the key to more than one mystery would, in another moment, be in her hands. CHAPTER XV “Eugène!” repeated Audrey, with faltering lips. The strange woman looked at her intently. “Ah! You don’t know him by that name perhaps!” Audrey, trembling, returned the woman’s keen look with one as penetrating. “What makes you think he is here?” she asked sharply. The visitor, thus recalled to the object of her visit, hesitated for the first time. “Since you know the girls,” she said, “I presume you know their father too.” “Yes.” “And as I find you are a very beautiful woman, my suspicion is confirmed. You are one of his victims, or his tools, as all the pretty women whom he meets become.” Audrey, with fears which she could not express tightening round her heart, signed to the weird woman to sit down. Drawing a chair close to that which her visitor took, she sat down by her, and lowering her voice, said:-- “Tell me everything, everything. I am in a maze; I am in a position in which I can’t move hand or foot without coming to some corner from which I can’t escape. If you can tell me anything to help me, I shall be grateful, more grateful than I can express. Now who is the man you mean? What is his other name? If you are his wife and those girls are your children and his, you can trust me. I am a wife myself----” “Whose?” said the woman shortly. “My husband’s name is Gerard Angmering, and he is the nephew of Lord Clanfield,” she answered simply. “Why isn’t he here with you? Why are you alone? Where is he?” She poured out the questions one after the other, so quickly that it was impossible to answer any of them until she stopped speaking. Audrey bit her lip. “Never mind that,” she said. “Let it be enough for you that he is all the world to me, and that, if you find me here alone, it is neither by his wish nor by mine.” The strange woman was peering into her face with a penetration which was uncanny. When she had finished her inspection and Audrey, irritated and perplexed, paused, the visitor laughed harshly. “I see, I see. You _are_ one of the victims! Now tell me, what are you doing here? What goes on here? Is it gambling, or----” With the blood rushing to her cheeks Audrey rose up with a cry. “Oh, how did you know?” she cried breathlessly.