f a scrape.
She felt very young and callow among these three women, and the mere
presence of Madame Piriac, of whom years ago she had created for herself a
wondrous image, put her into a considerable flutter. On the whole she was
ready to believe that the actual Madame Piriac was quite equal to the image
of her founded on photographs and letters. She set her teeth, and decided
that Madame Piriac should not learn her identity--yet! There was little
risk of her discovering it for herself, for no photograph of Audrey had
gone to Paris for a dozen years, and Miss Ingate's loyalty was absolute.

As Audrey sat down again, the illustrious Rosamund took a chair near her,
and it could not be doubted that the woman had the mien and the carriage of
a leader.

"You are very rich, are you not?" asked Rosamund, in a tone at once
deferential and intimate, and she smiled very attractively in the gloom.
Impossible not to reckon with that smile, as startling as it was seductive!

Evidently Nick had been communicative.

"I suppose I am," murmured Audrey, like a child, and feeling like a child.
Yet at the same time she was asking herself with fierce curiosity: "What
has Madame Piriac got to do with this woman?"

"I hear you have eight or ten thousand a year and can do what you like with
it. And you cannot be more than twenty-three.... What a responsibility it
must be for you! You are a friend of Miss Ingate's and therefore on our
side. Indeed, if a woman such as you were not on our side, I wonder whom
we _could_ count on. Miss Ingate is, of course, a subscriber to the
Union--"

"Only a very little one," cried Miss Ingate.

Audrey had never felt so abashed since an ex-parlourmaid at Flank Hall, who
had left everything to join the Salvation Army, had asked her once in the
streets of Colchester whether she had found salvation. She knew that she,
if any one, ought to subscribe to the Suffragette Union, and to subscribe
largely. For she was a convinced suffragette by faith, because Miss Ingate
was a convinced suffragette. If Miss Ingate had been a Mormon, Audrey also
would have been a Mormon. And, although she hated to subscribe, she knew
also that if Rosamund demanded from her any subscription, however
large--even a thousand pounds--she would not know how to refuse. She felt
before Rosamund as hundreds of women, and not a few men, had felt.

"I may be leaving for Germany to-morrow," Rosamund proceeded. "I may not
see you again--at any