CHAPTER XXXIII

AGUILAR’S DOUBLE LIFE

Madame Piriac came down into the saloon the next afternoon.

“Oh!  You are still hiding yourself here!” she murmured gaily to Audrey, who was alone among the cushions.

“I was just resting,” said Audrey.  “Remember what a night we had!”

It was true that the yacht had not been berthed at Lousey Hard until between two and three o’clock in the morning, and that no guest had slept until after the job was done, though more than one had tried to sleep.  It was also true that in consequence the saloon breakfast had been abrogated, that even the saloon lunch lacked vicacity, and that at least one passenger was at that moment dozing in his cabin.  But not on account of fatigue and somnolence was Audrey remaining in the saloon instead of taking the splendid summer afternoon on deck under the awning.  She felt neither tired nor sleepy.  The true secret was that she feared the crowd of village idlers, quidnuncs, tattlers and newsmongers who all day gazed from Lousey Hard at the wonder-yacht.

Examining the line of faces as well as she could through portholes, she recognised nearly every one of them, and was quite sure that every one of them would recognise her face.  To go ashore or to stay prominently on deck would, therefore, be to give away her identity and to be forced, sooner or later, to admit that she had practised a long and naughty deception.  She could conceive some of those villagers greeting her loudly from the Hard if she should appear; for Essex manners were marked by strange freedoms.  Her situation would be terrible.  It, in fact, was terrible.  Risks surrounded her like angry dogs.  Musa, for example, ought surely to have noticed that the estuary in which the yacht lay was the same estuary which he had seen not long before from the garden of the house stated by Audrey to be her own, and he ought to have commented eagerly on the marvellous coincidence.  Happily, he had not yet done so—­no doubt because he had spent most of the time in bed.  If and when he did so there would naturally be an excited outcry and a heavy rain of amazed questions which simply could not be answered.

“I am going almost at once to call on my little friend Audrey Moze, at Flank Hall,” said Madame Piriac.  “The house looks delicious from the deck.  If you will come up I will show it to you.  It is precisely like the picture post card which the dear little one sent to me last year.  Are you ready to come with me?”

“But, darling, hadn’t you better go alone?”

“But certainly not, darling!  You are not serious.  The meeting will be very agitating.  With a third person, however, it will be less so.  I count on you absolutely, as I have said already.  Nay, I insist.  I invoke your friendship.”

“She may be out.  She may be away altogether.”

“In that case we shall return,” said Madame Piriac briefly, and, not giving Audrey time to reply further, she vanished, with a firm carriage and an obstinate look in her eyes, towards the sleeping-cabins.