For a long, long time Audrey remained in the little back-room, feeling so utterly miserable, so degraded in her own eyes by the ordeal through which she had passed and the malignant comments to which she knew she was being subjected, that she could not do anything but hold her aching head between her hands, and whisper in an agonised voice: “Oh, Gerard, Gerard!” It was not until dusk had come, and she had long since heard the visitors go down the stairs and out by the side-door into the street, that at last she roused herself, bathed her red eyes, which, however, had shed but few tears, and summoning her spirit, made up her mind to go through the fateful interview with Mademoiselle Laure. Her situation, poor creature, was so desperate, the humiliation to which she had been subjected was so great, that from very excess of misery there came a calmness over her spirits; a sort of desperate courage came to her aid, and told her that, as she had now experienced the worst, had defied Mr. Candover and made him her enemy, and had cut herself off, with his assistance, from all these acquaintances for whom she did not greatly care, she was at least independent, and in a position to snap her fingers at fate. There were only two things left to dread: the death of her darling Gerard, which Lord Clanfield had almost told her to expect, and which she told herself she would not long survive; or her husband’s discovery of her desperate situation. Deeply as he loved her, Audrey felt, with a sort of calm despair, that even his love would not be proof against the skill with which Mr. Candover would build up a case against her. And that this diabolically clever and cunning man, whom she had been simple enough to take for a friend, would add that last drop to the cup of her misery she felt convinced. Gerard would learn enough of the truth about her and her life while he was away to believe what Lord Clanfield believed, what his cousins believed. And she remembered with a shudder that one of the Angmerings had been present on the night of the disturbance in the billiard-room, had been one of the loudest in denouncing Johnson as a cheat. Well, there was no help for it. Life--such as it was--had still to be lived, and it was with a new doggedness, a determination that at any rate they should not rob her of the business she had bought with her own money, that Audrey came out of the room, and returned to the showrooms, where she found Mademoiselle Laure busy with a customer. The Frenchwoman gave her a glance, enigmatic, unfathomable. And Audrey, who had not remembered until this moment how deftly Laure had closed the showroom doors and thus, as it were, kept Audrey and her visitors and their discussion confined within four walls and out of earshot of others, wondered how much the woman knew.