While preserving towards her that outward decorum which had always been carefully respected at “The Briars,” Audrey felt certain that she was connected by them all with the scenes which had taken place there, and that they believed her to be fully cognisant of what went on in the billiard-room when the guests were supposed to have gone away. She understood again that Mr. Candover’s prediction had come true, and that they looked upon her departure from “The Briars” as caused by the disturbance of two nights before. Probably, she thought fiercely, it was he himself who had put the idea into their heads. She had answered a great many questions as to her hurried departure from Epsom, and requests that she would not be long in finding another house, when Mr. Candover himself, and a well-known baronet of sporting tastes, entered together. Audrey’s patience was at an end. Her spirit was roused to the point of recklessness, she felt that she hated Mr. Candover, and that she must, no matter what the risk, make one bold effort to defy and denounce him. When, therefore, Sir Barnaby Joyce began to rally her on her sudden loss of “pluck,” and to express the fear that it was the noise they had made two nights before which had frightened her away, Audrey, sombre, outwardly calm and dignified, but inwardly on fire with a sort of reckless indignation and despair, turned upon him fiercely. “What noise do you mean, Sir Barnaby?” she asked, with subdued ferocity that made Mr. Candover move uneasily as he watched her. “Oh, I think you know! There was some sort of disturbance, wasn’t there? Some one accused somebody else of not playing fairly, I believe,” said Sir Barnaby, evidently surprised by her fierce tone. Audrey fixed upon him a pair of blazing eyes. “Yes, somebody did,” she replied firmly and steadily. “Somebody accused somebody else of cheating, and--in all probability he was right, quite right.” There was a movement, a stir among the men, who were standing in idle attitudes about the room, and they turned to look and to listen as she went on in the same clear, resolute tones: “But I don’t pity any of you; I feel no more sympathy for those who are cheated than for those who cheat.” The sensation of amazement deepened among her hearers, and Mr. Candover grew deadly white. She went on, with rising warmth: “Ought you not all to expect underhand ways, when you meet to play in an underhand manner? Whom can you blame but yourselves when, meeting by stealth to play games which can only be played by stealth, you find yourselves the easy prey of----” And she stared defiantly at Mr. Candover--“a gang of swindlers!” CHAPTER XVII There was a silence of amazement, of doubt, of consternation; and the men who thronged the showroom looked at each other, and then at the daring woman who had brought this accusation, as it seemed, against the well-known, the irreproachable, the wealthy Mr. Candover.