Title: Lady Audley's Secret
Author: Mary Elizabeth Braddon




CHAPTER I.

LUCY.


It lay down in a hollow, rich with fine old timber and luxuriant
pastures; and you came upon it through an avenue of limes, bordered on
either side by meadows, over the high hedges of which the cattle looked
inquisitively at you as you passed, wondering, perhaps, what you wanted;
for there was no thorough-fare, and unless you were going to the Court
you had no business there at all.

At the end of this avenue there was an old arch and a clock tower, with
a stupid, bewildering clock, which had only one hand--and which jumped
straight from one hour to the next--and was therefore always in
extremes. Through this arch you walked straight into the gardens of
Audley Court.

A smooth lawn lay before you, dotted with groups of rhododendrons, which
grew in more perfection here than anywhere else in the county. To the
right there were the kitchen gardens, the fish-pond, and an orchard
bordered by a dry moat, and a broken ruin of a wall, in some places
thicker than it was high, and everywhere overgrown with trailing ivy,
yellow stonecrop, and dark moss. To the left there was a broad graveled
walk, down which, years ago, when the place had been a convent, the
quiet nuns had walked hand in hand; a wall bordered with espaliers, and
shadowed on one side by goodly oaks, which shut out the flat landscape,
and circled in the house and gardens with a darkening shelter.

The house faced the arch, and occupied three sides of a quadrangle. It
was very old, and very irregular and rambling. The windows were uneven;
some small, some large, some with heavy stone mullions and rich stained
glass; others with frail lattices that rattled in every breeze; others
so modern that they might have been added only yesterday. Great piles of
chimneys rose up here and there behind the pointed gables, and seemed as
if they were so broken down by age and long service that they must have
fallen but for the straggling ivy which, crawling up the walls and
trailing even over the roof, wound itself about them and supported them.
The principal door was squeezed into a corner of a turret at one angle
of the building, as if it were in hiding from dangerous visitors, and
wished to keep itself a secret--a noble door for all that--old oak, and
studded with great square-headed iron nails, and so thick that the sharp
iron knocker struck upon it with a muffled sound, and the visitor rung a
clanging bell that dangled in a corner among the ivy, lest the noise of
the knocking should never penetrate the stronghold.

A glorious old place. A place that visitors fell in raptures with;
feeling a yearning wish to have done with life, and to stay there
forever, staring into the cool fish-ponds and counting the bubbles as
the roach and carp rose to the surface of the water. A spot in which
peace seemed to have taken up her abode, setting her soothing hand on
every tree and flower, on the still ponds and quiet alleys, the shady
corners of the old-fashioned rooms, the deep window-seats behind the
painted glass, the low meadows and the stately avenues--ay, even upon
the stagnant well, which, cool and sheltered as all else in the old
place, hid itself away in a shrubbery behind the gardens, with an idle
handle that was never turned and a lazy rope so rotten that the pail had
broken away from it, and had fallen into the water.

A noble place; inside as well as out, a noble place--a house in which
you incontinently lost yourself if ever you were so rash as to attempt
to penetrate its mysteries alone; a house in which no one room had any
sympathy with another, every chamber running off at a tangent into an
inner chamber, and through that down some narrow staircase leading to a
door which, in its turn, led back into that very part of the house from
which you thought yourself the furthest; a house that could never have
been planned by any mortal architect, but must have been the handiwork
of that good old builder, Time, who, adding a room one year, and
knocking down a room another year, toppling down a chimney coeval with
the Plantagenets, and setting up one in the style of the Tudors; shaking
down a bit of Saxon wall, allowing a Norman arch to stand here; throwing
in a row of high narrow windows in the reign of Queen Anne, and joining
on a dining-room after the fashion of the time of Hanoverian George I,
to a refectory that had been standing since the Conquest, had contrived,
in some eleven centuries, to run up such a mansion as was not elsewhere
to be met with throughout the county of Essex. Of course, in such a
house there were secret chambers; the little daughter of the present
owner, Sir Michael Audley, had fallen by accident upon the discovery of
one. A board had rattled under her feet in the great nursery where she
played, and on attention being drawn to it, it was found to be loose,
and so removed, revealed a ladder, leading to a hiding-place between the
floor of the nursery and the ceiling of the room below--a hiding-place
so small that he who had hid there must have crouched on his hands and
knees or lain at full length, and yet large enough to contain a quaint
old carved oak chest, half filled with priests' vestments, which had
been hidden away, no doubt, in those cruel days when the life of a man
was in danger if he was discovered to have harbored a Roman Catholic
priest, or to have mass said in his house.

The broad outer moat was dry and grass-grown, and the laden trees of the
orchard hung over it with gnarled, straggling branches that drew
fantastical shadows upon the green slope. Within this moat there was, as
I have said, the fish-pond--a sheet of water that extended the whole
length of the garden and bordering which there was an avenue called the
lime-tree walk; an avenue so shaded from the sun and sky, so screened
from observation by the thick shelter of the over-arching trees that it
seemed a chosen place for secret meetings or for stolen interviews; a
place in which a conspiracy might have been planned, or a lover's vow
registered with equal safety; and yet it was scarcely twenty paces from
the house.

At the end of this dark arcade there was the shrubbery, where, half
buried among the tangled branches and the neglected weeds, stood the
rusty wheel of that old well of which I have spoken. It had been of good
service in its time, no doubt; and busy nuns have perhaps drawn the cool
water with their own fair hands; but it had fallen into disuse now, and
scarcely any one at Audley Court knew whether the spring had dried up or
not. But sheltered as was the solitude of this lime-tree walk, I doubt
very much if it was ever put to any romantic uses. Often in the cool of
the evening Sir Michael Audley would stroll up and down smoking his
cigar, with his dogs at his heels, and his pretty young wife dawdling by
his side; but in about ten minutes the baronet and his companion would
grow tired of the rustling limes and the still water, hidden under the
spreading leaves of the water-lilies, and the long green vista with the
broken well at the end, and would stroll back to the drawing-room, where
my lady played dreamy melodies by Beethoven and Mendelssohn till her
husband fell asleep in his easy-chair.

Sir Michael Audley was fifty-six years of age, and he had married a
second wife three months after his fifty-fifth birthday. He was a big
man, tall and stout, with a deep, sonorous voice, handsome black eyes,
and a white beard--a white beard which made him look venerable against
his will, for he was as active as a boy, and one of the hardest riders
in the country. For seventeen years he had been a widower with an only
child, a daughter, Alicia Audley, now eighteen, and by no means too well
pleased at having a step-mother brought home to the Court; for Miss
Alicia had reigned supreme in her father's house since her earliest
childhood, and had carried the keys, and jingled them in the pockets of
her silk aprons, and lost them in the shrubbery, and dropped them into
the pond, and given all manner of trouble about them from the hour in
which she entered her teens, and had, on that account, deluded herself
into the sincere belief, that for the whole of that period, she had been
keeping the house.

But Miss Alicia's day was over; and now, when she asked anything of the
housekeeper, the housekeeper would tell her that she would speak to my
lady, or she would consult my lady, and if my lady pleased it should be
done. So the baronet's daughter, who was an excellent horsewoman and a
very clever artist, spent most of her time out of doors, riding about
the green lanes, and sketching the cottage children, and the plow-boys,
and the cattle, and all manner of animal life that came in her way. She
set her face with a sulky determination against any intimacy between
herself and the baronet's young wife; and amiable as that lady was, she
found it quite impossible to overcome Miss Alicia's prejudices and
dislike; or to convince the spoilt girl that she had not done her a
cruel injury by marrying Sir Michael Audley. The truth was that Lady
Audley had, in becoming the wife of Sir Michael, made one of those
apparently advantageous matches which are apt to draw upon a woman the
envy and hatred of her sex. She had come into the neighborhood as a
governess in the family of a surgeon in the village near Audley Court.
No one knew anything of her, except that she came in answer to an
advertisement which Mr. Dawson, the surgeon, had inserted in The
_Times_. She came from London; and the only reference she gave was to a
lady at a school at Brompton, where she had once been a teacher. But
this reference was so satisfactory that none other was needed, and Miss
Lucy Graham was received by the surgeon as the instructress of his
daughters. Her accomplishments were so brilliant and numerous, that it
seemed strange that she should have answered an advertisement offering
such very moderate terms of remuneration as those named by Mr. Dawson;
but Miss Graham seemed perfectly well satisfied with her situation, and
she taught the girls to play sonatas by Beethoven, and to paint from
nature after Creswick, and walked through a dull, out-of-the-way village
to the humble little church, three times every Sunday, as contentedly as
if she had no higher aspiration in the world than to do so all the rest
of her life.

People who observed this, accounted for it by saying that it was a part
of her amiable and gentle nature always to be light-hearted, happy and
contented under any circumstances.

Wherever she went she seemed to take joy and brightness with her. In the
cottages of the poor her fair face shone like a sunbeam. She would sit
for a quarter of an hour talking to some old woman, and apparently as
pleased with the admiration of a toothless crone as if she had been
listening to the compliments of a marquis; and when she tripped away,
leaving nothing behind her (for her poor salary gave no scope to her
benevolence), the old woman would burst out into senile raptures with
her grace, beauty, and her kindliness, such as she never bestowed upon
the vicar's wife, who half fed and clothed her. For you see, Miss Lucy
Graham was blessed with that magic power of fascination, by which a
woman can charm with a word or intoxicate with a smile. Every one loved,
admired, and praised her. The boy who opened the five-barred gate that
stood in her pathway, ran home to his mother to tell of her pretty
looks, and the sweet voice in which she thanked him for the little
service. The verger at the church, who ushered her into the surgeon's
pew; the vicar, who saw the soft blue eyes uplifted to his face as he
preached his simple sermon; the porter from the railway station, who
brought her sometimes a letter or a parcel, and who never looked for
reward from her; her employer; his visitors; her pupils; the servants;
everybody, high and low, united in declaring that Lucy Graham was the
sweetest girl that ever lived.

Perhaps it was the rumor of this which penetrated into the quiet chamber
of Audley Court; or, perhaps, it was the sight of her pretty face,
looking over the surgeon's high pew every Sunday morning; however it
was, it was certain that Sir Michael Audley suddenly experienced a
strong desire to be better acquainted with Mr. Dawson's governess.

He had only to hint his wish to the worthy doctor for a little party to
be got up, to which the vicar and his wife, and the baronet and his
daughter, were invited.

That one quiet evening sealed Sir Michael's fate. He could no more
resist the tender fascination of those soft and melting blue eyes; the
graceful beauty of that slender throat and drooping head, with its
wealth of showering flaxen curls; the low music of that gentle voice;
the perfect harmony which pervaded every charm, and made all doubly
charming in this woman; than he could resist his destiny! Destiny! Why,
she was his destiny! He had never loved before. What had been his
marriage with Alicia's mother but a dull, jog-trot bargain made to keep
some estate in the family that would have been just as well out of it?
What had been his love for his first wife but a poor, pitiful,
smoldering spark, too dull to be extinguished, too feeble to burn? But
_this_ was love--this fever, this longing, this restless, uncertain,
miserable hesitation; these cruel fears that his age was an
insurmountable barrier to his happiness; this sick hatred of his white
beard; this frenzied wish to be young again, with glistening raven hair,
and a slim waist, such as he had twenty years before; these, wakeful
nights and melancholy days, so gloriously brightened if he chanced to
catch a glimpse of her sweet face behind the window curtains, as he
drove past the surgeon's house; all these signs gave token of the truth,
and told only too plainly that, at the sober age of fifty-five, Sir
Michael Audley had fallen ill of the terrible fever called love.

I do not think that, throughout his courtship, the baronet once
calculated upon his wealth or his position as reasons for his success.
If he ever remembered these things, he dismissed the thought of them
with a shudder. It pained him too much to believe for a moment that any
one so lovely and innocent could value herself against a splendid house
or a good old title. No; his hope was that, as her life had been most
likely one of toil and dependence, and as she was very young nobody
exactly knew her age, but she looked little more than twenty, she might
never have formed any attachment, and that he, being the first to woo
her, might, by tender attentions, by generous watchfulness, by a love
which should recall to her the father she had lost, and by a protecting
care that should make him necessary to her, win her young heart, and
obtain from her fresh and earliest love, the promise or her hand. It was
a very romantic day-dream, no doubt; but, for all that, it seemed in a
very fair way to be realized. Lucy Graham appeared by no means to
dislike the baronet's attentions. There was nothing whatever in her
manner that betrayed the shallow artifices employed by a woman who
wishes to captivate a rich man. She was so accustomed to admiration from
every one, high and low, that Sir Michael's conduct made very little
impression upon her. Again, he had been so many years a widower that
people had given up the idea of his ever marrying again. At last,
however, Mrs. Dawson spoke to the governess on the subject. The
surgeon's wife was sitting in the school-room busy at work, while Lucy
was putting the finishing touches on some water-color sketches done by
her pupils.

"Do you know, my dear Miss Graham," said Mrs. Dawson, "I think you ought
to consider yourself a remarkably lucky girl?"

The governess lifted her head from its stooping attitude, and stared
wonderingly at her employer, shaking back a shower of curls. They were
the most wonderful curls in the world--soft and feathery, always
floating away from her face, and making a pale halo round her head when
the sunlight shone through them.

"What do you mean, my dear Mrs. Dawson?" she asked, dipping her
camel's-hair brush into the wet aquamarine upon the palette, and poising
it carefully before putting in the delicate streak of purple which was
to brighten the horizon in her pupil's sketch.

"Why, I mean, my dear, that it only rests with yourself to become Lady
Audley, and the mistress of Audley Court."

Lucy Graham dropped the brush upon the picture, and flushed scarlet to
the roots of her fair hair; and then grew pale again, far paler than
Mrs. Dawson had ever seen her before.

"My dear, don't agitate yourself," said the surgeon's wife, soothingly;
"you know that nobody asks you to marry Sir Michael unless you wish. Of
course it would be a magnificent match; he has a splendid income, and is
one of the most generous of men. Your position would be very high, and
you would be enabled to do a great deal of good; but, as I said before,
you must be entirely guided by your own feelings. Only one thing I must
say, and that is that if Sir Michael's attentions are not agreeable to
you, it is really scarcely honorable to encourage him."

"His attentions--encourage him!" muttered Lucy, as if the words
bewildered her. "Pray, pray don't talk to me, Mrs. Dawson. I had no idea
of this. It is the last thing that would have occurred to me." She
leaned her elbows on the drawing-board before her, and clasping her
hands over her face, seemed for some minutes to be thinking deeply. She
wore a narrow black ribbon round her neck, with a locket, or a cross, or
a miniature, perhaps, attached to it; but whatever the trinket was, she
always kept it hidden under her dress. Once or twice, while she sat
silently thinking, she removed one of her hands from before her face,
and fidgeted nervously with the ribbon, clutching at it with a
half-angry gesture, and twisting it backward and forward between her
fingers.

"I think some people are born to be unlucky, Mrs. Dawson," she said,
by-and-by; "it would be a great deal too much good fortune for me to
become Lady Audley."

She said this with so much bitterness in her tone, that the surgeon's
wife looked up at her with surprise.

"You unlucky, my dear!" she exclaimed. "I think you are the last person
who ought to talk like that--you, such a bright, happy creature, that it
does every one good to see you. I'm sure I don't know what we shall do
if Sir Michael robs us of you."

After this conversation they often spoke upon the subject, and Lucy
never again showed any emotion whatever when the baronet's admiration
for her was canvassed. It was a tacitly understood thing in the
surgeon's family that whenever Sir Michael proposed, the governess would
quietly accept him; and, indeed, the simple Dawsons would have thought
it something more than madness in a penniless girl to reject such an
offer.

So, one misty August evening, Sir Michael, sitting opposite to Lucy
Graham, at a window in the surgeon's little drawing-room, took an
opportunity while the family happened by some accident to be absent from
the room, of speaking upon the subject nearest to his heart. He made the
governess, in a few but solemn words, an offer of his hand. There was
something almost touching in the manner and tone in which he spoke to
her--half in deprecation, knowing that he could hardly expect to be the
choice of a beautiful young girl, and praying rather that she would
reject him, even though she broke his heart by doing so, than that she
should accept his offer if she did not love him.

"I scarcely think there is a greater sin, Lucy," he said, solemnly,
"than that of a woman who marries a man she does not love. You are so
precious to me, my beloved, that deeply as my heart is set on this, and
bitter as the mere thought of disappointment is to me, I would not have
you commit such a sin for any happiness of mine. If my happiness could
be achieved by such an act, which it could not--which it never could,"
he repeated, earnestly--"nothing but misery can result from a marriage
dictated by any motive but truth and love."

Lucy Graham was not looking at Sir Michael, but straight out into the
misty twilight and dim landscape far away beyond the little garden. The
baronet tried to see her face, but her profile was turned to him, and he
could not discover the expression of her eyes. If he could have done so,
he would have seen a yearning gaze which seemed as if it would have
pierced the far obscurity and looked away--away into another world.

"Lucy, you heard me?"

"Yes," she said, gravely; not coldly, or in any way as if she were
offended at his words.

"And your answer?"

She did not remove her gaze from the darkening country side, but for
some moments was quite silent; then turning to him, with a sudden
passion in her manner, that lighted up her face with a new and wonderful
beauty which the baronet perceived even in the growing twilight, she
fell on her knees at his feet.

"No, Lucy; no, no!" he cried, vehemently, "not here, not here!"

"Yes, here, here," she said, the strange passion which agitated her
making her voice sound shrill and piercing--not loud, but
preternaturally distinct; "here and nowhere else. How good you are--how
noble and how generous! Love you! Why, there are women a hundred times
my superiors in beauty and in goodness who might love you dearly; but
you ask too much of me! Remember what my life has been; only remember
that! From my very babyhood I have never seen anything but poverty. My
father was a gentleman: clever, accomplished, handsome--but poor--and
what a pitiful wretch poverty made of him! My mother--But do not let me
speak of her. Poverty--poverty, trials, vexations, humiliations,
deprivations. You cannot tell; you, who are among those for whom life is
so smooth and easy, you can never guess what is endured by such as we.
Do not ask too much of me, then. I cannot be disinterested; I cannot be
blind to the advantages of such an alliance. I cannot, I cannot!"

Beyond her agitation and her passionate vehemence, there is an undefined
something in her manner which fills the baronet with a vague alarm. She
is still on the ground at his feet, crouching rather than kneeling, her
thin white dress clinging about her, her pale hair streaming over her
shoulders, her great blue eyes glittering in the dusk, and her hands
clutching at the black ribbon about her throat, as if it had been
strangling her. "Don't ask too much of me," she kept repeating; "I have
been selfish from my babyhood."

"Lucy--Lucy, speak plainly. Do you dislike me?"

"Dislike you? No--no!"

"But is there any one else whom you love?"

She laughed aloud at his question. "I do not love any one in the world,"
she answered.

He was glad of her reply; and yet that and the strange laugh jarred upon
his feelings. He was silent for some moments, and then said, with a kind
of effort:

"Well, Lucy, I will not ask too much of you. I dare say I am a romantic
old fool; but if you do not dislike me, and if you do not love any one
else, I see no reason why we should not make a very happy couple. Is it
a bargain, Lucy?"

"Yes."

The baronet lifted her in his arms and kissed her once upon the
forehead, then quietly bidding her good-night, he walked straight out of
the house.

He walked straight out of the house, this foolish old man, because there
was some strong emotion at work in his breast--neither joy nor triumph,
but something almost akin to disappointment--some stifled and
unsatisfied longing which lay heavy and dull at his heart, as if he had
carried a corpse in his bosom. He carried the corpse of that hope which
had died at the sound of Lucy's words. All the doubts and fears and
timid aspirations were ended now. He must be contented, like other men
of his age, to be married for his fortune and his position.

Lucy Graham went slowly up the stairs to her little room at the top of
the house. She placed her dim candle on the chest of drawers, and seated
herself on the edge of the white bed, still and white as the draperies
hanging around her.

"No more dependence, no more drudgery, no more humiliations," she said;
"every trace of the old life melted away--every clew to identity buried
and forgotten--except these, except these."

She had never taken her left hand from the black ribbon at her throat.
She drew it from her bosom, as she spoke, and looked at the object
attached to it.

It was neither a locket, a miniature, nor a cross; it was a ring wrapped
in an oblong piece of paper--the paper partly written, partly printed,
yellow with age, and crumpled with much folding.




CHAPTER II.

ON BOARD THE ARGUS.


He threw the end of his cigar into the water, and leaning his elbows
upon the bulwarks, stared meditatively at the waves.

"How wearisome they are," he said; "blue and green, and opal; opal, and
blue, and green; all very well in their way, of course, but three months
of them are rather too much, especially--"

He did not attempt to finish his sentence; his thoughts seemed to wander
in the very midst of it, and carry him a thousand miles or so away.

"Poor little girl, how pleased she'll be!" he muttered, opening his
cigar-case, lazily surveying its contents; "how pleased and how
surprised? Poor little girl. After three years and a half, too; she
_will_ be surprised."

He was a young man of about five-and-twenty, with dark face bronzed by
exposure to the sun; he had handsome brown eyes, with a lazy smile in
them that sparkled through the black lashes, and a bushy beard and
mustache that covered the whole lower part of his face. He was tall and
powerfully built; he wore a loose gray suit and a felt hat, thrown
carelessly upon his black hair. His name was George Talboys, and he was
aft-cabin passenger on board the good ship _Argus_, laden with
Australian wool and sailing from Sydney to Liverpool.

There were very few passengers in the aft-cabin of the _Argus_. An
elderly wool-stapler returning to his native country with his wife and
daughters, after having made a fortune in the colonies; a governess of
three-and-thirty years of age, going home to marry a man to whom she had
been engaged fifteen years; the sentimental daughter of a wealthy
Australian wine-merchant, invoiced to England to finish her education,
and George Talboys, were the only first-class passengers on board.

This George Talboys was the life and soul of the vessel; nobody knew who
or what he was, or where he came from, but everybody liked him. He sat
at the bottom of the dinner-table, and assisted the captain in doing the
honors of the friendly meal. He opened the champagne bottles, and took
wine with every one present; be told funny stories, and led the life
himself with such a joyous peal that the man must have been a churl who
could not have laughed for pure sympathy. He was a capital hand at
speculation and vingt-et-un, and all the merry games, which kept the
little circle round the cabin-lamp so deep in innocent amusement, that a
hurricane might have howled overhead without their hearing it; but he
freely owned that he had no talent for whist, and that he didn't know a
knight from a castle upon the chess-board.

Indeed, Mr. Talboys was by no means too learned a gentleman. The pale
governess had tried to talk to him about fashionable literature, but
George had only pulled his beard and stared very hard at her, saying
occasionally, "Ah, yes, by Jove!" and "To be sure, ah!"

The sentimental young lady, going home to finish her education, had
tried him with Shelby and Byron, and he had fairly laughed in her face,
as if poetry where a joke. The woolstapler sounded him on politics, but
he did not seem very deeply versed in them; so they let him go his own
way, smoke his cigars and talk to the sailors, lounge over the bulwarks
and stare at the water, and make himself agreeable to everybody in his
own fashion. But when the _Argus_ came to be within about a fortnight's
sail of England everybody noticed a change in George Talboys. He grew
restless and fidgety; sometimes so merry that the cabin rung with his
laughter; sometimes moody and thoughtful. Favorite as he was among the
sailors, they were tired at last of answering his perpetual questions
about the probable time of touching land. Would it be in ten days, in
eleven, in twelve, in thirteen? Was the wind favorable? How many knots
an hour was the vessel doing? Then a sudden passion would sieze him, and
he would stamp upon the deck, crying out that she was a rickety old
craft, and that her owners were swindlers to advertise her as the
fast-sailing _Argus_. She was not fit for passenger traffic; she was not
fit to carry impatient living creatures, with hearts and souls; she was
fit for nothing but to be laden with bales of stupid wool, that might
rot on the sea and be none the worse for it.

The sun was drooping down behind the waves as George Talboys lighted his
cigar upon this August evening. Only ten days more, the sailors had told
him that afternoon, and they would see the English coast. "I will go
ashore in the first boat that hails us," he cried; "I will go ashore in
a cockle-shell. By Jove, if it comes to that, I will swim to land."

His friends in the aft-cabin, with the exception of the pale governess,
laughed at his impatience; she sighed as she watched the young man,
chafing at the slow hours, pushing away his untasted wine, flinging
himself restlessly about upon the cabin sofa, rushing up and down the
companion ladder, and staring at the waves.

As the red rim of the sun dropped into the water, the governess ascended
the cabin stairs for a stroll on deck, while the passengers sat over
their wine below. She stopped when she came up to George, and, standing
by his side, watched the fading crimson in the western sky.

The lady was very quiet and reserved, seldom sharing in the after-cabin
amusements, never laughing, and speaking very little; but she and George
Talboys had been excellent friends throughout the passage.

"Does my cigar annoy you, Miss Morley?" he said, taking it out of his
mouth.

"Not at all; pray do not leave off smoking. I only came up to look at
the sunset. What a lovely evening!"

"Yes, yes, I dare say," he answered, impatiently; "yet so long, so long!
Ten more interminable days and ten more weary nights before we land."

"Yes," said Miss Morley, sighing. "Do you wish the time shorter?"

"Do I?" cried George. "Indeed I do. Don't you?"

"Scarcely."

"But is there no one you love in England? Is there no one you love
looking out for your arrival?"

"I hope so," she said gravely. They were silent for some time, he
smoking his cigar with a furious impatience, as if he could hasten the
course of the vessel by his own restlessness; she looking out at the
waning light with melancholy blue eyes--eyes that seemed to have faded
with poring over closely-printed books and difficult needlework; eyes
that had faded a little, perhaps, by reason of tears secretly shed in
the lonely night.

"See!" said George, suddenly, pointing in another direction from that
toward which Miss Morley was looking, "there's the new moon!"

She looked up at the pale crescent, her own face almost as pale and wan.

"This is the first time we have seen it."

"We must wish!" said George. "I know what I wish."

"What?"

"That we may get home quickly."

"My wish is that we may find no disappointment when we get there," said
the governess, sadly.

"Disappointment!"

He started as if he had been struck, and asked what she meant by talking
of disappointment.

"I mean this," she said, speaking rapidly, and with a restless motion of
her thin hands; "I mean that as the end of the voyage draws near, hope
sinks in my heart; and a sick fear comes over me that at the last all
may not be well. The person I go to meet may be changed in his feelings
toward me; or he may retain all the old feeling until the moment of
seeing me, and then lose it in a breath at sight of my poor wan face,
for I was called a pretty girl, Mr. Talboys, when I sailed for Sydney,
fifteen years ago; or he may be so changed by the world as to have grown
selfish and mercenary, and he may welcome me for the sake of my fifteen
years' savings. Again, he may be dead. He may have been well, perhaps,
up to within a week of our landing, and in that last week may have taken
a fever, and died an hour before our vessel anchors in the Mersey. I
think of all these things, Mr. Talboys, and act the scenes over in my
mind, and feel the anguish of them twenty times a day. Twenty times a
day," she repeated; "why I do it a thousand times a day."

George Talboys had stood motionless, with his cigar in his hand,
listening to her so intently that, as she said the last words, his hold
relaxed, and the cigar dropped in the water.

"I wonder," she continued, more to herself than to him, "I wonder,
looking back, to think how hopeful I was when the vessel sailed; I never
thought then of disappointment, but I pictured the joy of meeting,
imagining the very words that would be said, the very tones, the very
looks; but for this last month of the voyage, day by day, and hour by
hour my heart sinks and my hopeful fancies fade away, and I dread the
end as much as if I knew that I was going to England to attend a
funeral."

The young man suddenly changed his attitude, and turned his face full
upon his companion, with a look of alarm. She saw in the pale light that
the color had faded from his cheek.

"What a fool!" he cried, striking his clinched fist upon the side of the
vessel, "what a fool I am to be frightened at this? Why do you come and
say these things to me? Why do you come and terrify me out of my senses,
when I am going straight home to the woman I love; to a girl whose heart
is as true as the light of Heaven; and in whom I no more expect to find
any change than I do to see another sun rise in to-morrow's sky? Why do
you come and try to put such fancies in my head when I am going home to
my darling wife?"

"Your wife," she said; "that is different. There is no reason that my
terrors should terrify you. I am going to England to rejoin a man to
whom I was engaged to be married fifteen years ago. He was too poor to
marry then, and when I was offered a situation as governess in a rich
Australian family, I persuaded him to let me accept it, so that I might
leave him free and unfettered to win his way in the world, while I saved
a little money to help us when we began life together. I never meant to
stay away so long, but things have gone badly with him in England. That
is my story, and you can understand my fears. They need not influence
you. Mine is an exceptional case."

"So is mine," said George, impatiently. "I tell you that mine is an
exceptional case: although I swear to you that until this moment, I have
never known a fear as to the result of my voyage home. But you are
right; your terrors have nothing to do with me. You have been away
fifteen years; all kinds of things may happen in fifteen years. Now it
is only three years and a half this very month since I left England.
What can have happened in such a short time as that?"

Miss Morley looked at him with a mournful smile, but did not speak. His
feverish ardor, the freshness and impatience of his nature were so
strange and new to her, that she looked at him half in admiration, half
in pity.

"My pretty little wife! My gentle, innocent, loving little wife! Do you
know, Miss Morley," he said, with all his old hopefulness of manner,
"that I left my little girl asleep, with her baby in her arms, and with
nothing but a few blotted lines to tell her why her faithful husband had
deserted her?"

"Deserted her!" exclaimed the governess.

"Yes. I was an ensign in a cavalry regiment when I first met my little
darling. We were quartered at a stupid seaport town, where my pet lived
with her shabby old father, a half-pay naval officer; a regular old
humbug, as poor as Job, and with an eye for nothing but the main chance.
I saw through all his shallow tricks to catch one of us for his pretty
daughter. I saw all the pitiable, contemptible, palpable traps he set
for us big dragoons to walk into. I saw through his shabby-genteel
dinners and public-house port; his fine talk of the grandeur of his
family; his sham pride and independence, and the sham tears of his
bleared old eyes when he talked of his only child. He was a drunken old
hypocrite, and he was ready to sell my poor, little girl to the highest
bidder. Luckily for me, I happened just then to be the highest bidder;
for my father, is a rich man, Miss Morley, and as it was love at first
sight on both sides, my darling and I made a match of it. No sooner,
however, did my father hear that I had married a penniless little girl,
the daughter of a tipsy old half-pay lieutenant, than he wrote me a
furious letter, telling me he would never again hold any communication
with me, and that my yearly allowance would stop from my wedding-day.

"As there was no remaining in such a regiment as mine, with nothing but
my pay to live on, and my pretty little wife to keep, I sold out,
thinking that before the money was exhausted, I should be sure to drop
into something. I took my darling to Italy, and we lived there in
splendid style as long as my two thousand pounds lasted; but when that
began to dwindle down to a couple of hundred or so, we came back to
England, and as my darling had a fancy for being near that tiresome old
father of hers, we settled at the watering-place where he lived. Well,
as soon as the old man heard that I had a couple of hundred pounds left,
he expressed a wonderful degree of affection for us, and insisted on our
boarding in his house. We consented, still to please my darling, who had
just then a peculiar right to have every whim and fancy of her innocent
heart indulged. We did board with him, and finally he fleeced us; but
when I spoke of it to my little wife, she only shrugged her shoulders,
and said she did not like to be unkind to her 'poor papa.' So poor papa
made away with our little stock of money in no time; and as I felt that
it was now becoming necessary to look about for something, I ran up to
London, and tried to get a situation as a clerk in a merchant's office,
or as accountant, or book-keeper, or something of that kind. But I
suppose there was the stamp of a heavy dragoon about me, for do what I
would I couldn't get anybody to believe in my capacity; and tired out,
and down-hearted, I returned to my darling, to find her nursing a son
and heir to his father's poverty. Poor little girl, she was very
low-spirited; and when I told her that my London expedition had failed,
she fairly broke down, and burst in to a storm of sobs and lamentations,
telling me that I ought not to have married her if I could give her
nothing but poverty and misery; and that I had done her a cruel wrong in
making her my wife. By heaven! Miss Morley, her tears and reproaches
drove me almost mad; and I flew into a rage with her, myself, her
father, the world, and everybody in it, and then rail out of the house.
I walked about the streets all that day, half out of my mind, and with a
strong inclination to throw myself into the sea, so as to leave my poor
girl free to make a better match. 'If I drown myself, her father must
support her,' I thought; 'the old hypocrite could never refuse her a
shelter; but while I live she has no claim on him.' I went down to a
rickety old wooden pier, meaning to wait there till it was dark, and
then drop quietly over the end of it into the water; but while I sat
there smoking my pipe, and staring vacantly at the sea-gulls, two men
came down, and one of them began to talk of the Australian
gold-diggings, and the great things that were to be done there. It
appeared that he was going to sail in a day or two, and he was trying to
persuade his companion to join him in the expedition.

"I listened to these men for upward of an hour, following them up and
down the pier, with my pipe in my mouth, and hearing all their talk.
After this I fell into conversation with them myself, and ascertained
that there was a vessel going to leave Liverpool in three days, by which
vessel one of the men was going out. This man gave me all the
information I required, and told me, moreover, that a stalwart young
fellow, such as I was, could hardly fail to do well in the diggings. The
thought flashed upon me so suddenly, that I grew hot and red in the
face, and trembled in every limb with excitement. This was better than
the water, at any rate. Suppose I stole away from my darling, leaving
her safe under her father's roof, and went and made a fortune in the new
world, and came back in a twelvemonth to throw it into her lap; for I
was so sanguine in those days that I counted on making my fortune in a
year or so. I thanked the man for his information, and late at night
strolled homeward. It was bitter winter weather, but I had been too full
of passion to feel cold, and I walked through the quiet streets, with
the snow drifting in my face, and a desperate hopefulness in my heart.
The old man was sitting drinking brandy-and-water in the little
dining-room; and my wife was up-stairs, sleeping peacefully, with the
baby on her breast. I sat down and wrote a few brief lines, which told
her that I never had loved her better than now, when I seemed to desert
her; that I was going to try my fortune in the new world, and that if I
succeeded I should come back to bring her plenty and happiness; but that
if I failed I should never look upon her face again. I divided the
remainder of our money--something over forty pounds--into two equal
portions, leaving one for her, and putting the other in my pocket. I
knelt down and prayed for my wife and child, with my head upon the white
counterpane that covered them. I wasn't much of a praying man at
ordinary times, but God knows _that_ was a heartfelt prayer. I kissed
her once, and the baby once, and then crept out of the room. The
dining-room door was open, and the old man was nodding over his paper.
He looked up as he heard my step in the passage, and asked me where I
was going. 'To have a smoke in the street,' I answered; and as this was
a common habit of mine he believed me. Three nights after I was out at
sea, bound for Melbourne--a steerage passenger, with a digger's tools
for my baggage, and about seven shillings in my pocket."

"And you succeeded?" asked Miss Morley.

"Not till I had long despaired of success; not until poverty and I had
become such old companions and bed-fellows, that looking back at my past
life, I wondered whether that dashing, reckless, extravagant, luxurious,
champagne-drinking dragoon could have really been the same man who sat
on the damp ground gnawing a moldy crust in the wilds of the new world.
I clung to the memory of my darling, and the trust that I had in her
love and truth was the one keystone that kept the fabric of my past life
together--the one star that lit the thick black darkness of the future.
I was hail-fellow-well-met with bad men; I was in the center of riot,
drunkenness, and debauchery; but the purifying influence of my love kept
me safe from all. Thin and gaunt, the half-starved shadow of what I once
had been, I saw myself one day in a broken bit of looking-glass, and was
frightened by my own face. But I toiled on through all; through
disappointment and despair, rheumatism, fever, starvation; at the very
gates of death, I toiled on steadily to the end; and in the end I
conquered."

He was so brave in his energy and determination, in his proud triumph of
success, and in the knowledge of the difficulties he had vanquished,
that the pale governess could only look at him in wondering admiration.

"How brave you were!" she said.

"Brave!" he cried, with a joyous peal of laughter; "wasn't I working for
my darling? Through all the dreary time of that probation, her pretty
white hand seemed beckoning me onward to a happy future! Why, I have
seen her under my wretched canvas tent sitting by my side, with her boy
in her arms, as plainly as I had ever seen her in the one happy year of
our wedded life. At last, one dreary foggy morning, just three months
ago, with a drizzling rain wetting me to the skin, up to my neck in clay
and mire, half-starved, enfeebled by fever, stiff with rheumatism, a
monster nugget turned up under my spade, and I was in one minute the
richest man in Australia. I fell down on the wet clay, with my lump of
gold in the bosom of my shirt, and, for the first time in my life, cried
like a child. I traveled post-haste to Sydney, realized my price, which
was worth upward of £20,000, and a fortnight afterward took my passage
for England in this vessel; and in ten days--in ten days I shall see my
darling."

"But in all that time did you never write to your wife?"

"Never, till the night before I left Sydney. I could not write when
everything looked so black. I could not write and tell her that I was
fighting hard with despair and death. I waited for better fortune, and
when that came I wrote telling her that I should be in England almost as
soon as my letter, and giving her an address at a coffee-house in London
where she could write to me, telling me where to find her, though she is
hardly likely to have left her father's house."

He fell into a reverie after this, and puffed meditatively at his cigar.
His companion did not disturb him. The last ray of summer daylight had
died out, and the pale light of the crescent moon only remained.

Presently George Talboys flung away his cigar, and turning to the
governess, cried abruptly, "Miss Morley, if, when I get to England, I
hear that anything has happened to my wife, I shall fall down dead."

"My dear Mr. Talboys, why do you think of these things? God is very good
to us; He will not afflict us beyond our power of endurance. I see all
things, perhaps, in a melancholy light; for the long monotony of my life
has given me too much time to think over my troubles."

"And my life has been all action, privation, toil, alternate hope and
despair; I have had no time to think upon the chances of anything
happening to my darling. What a blind, reckless fool I have been! Three
years and a half and not one line--one word from her, or from any mortal
creature who knows her. Heaven above! what may not have happened?"

In the agitation of his mind he began to walk rapidly up and down the
lonely deck, the governess following, and trying to soothe him.

"I swear to you, Miss Morley," he said, "that till you spoke to me
to-night, I never felt one shadow of fear, and now I have that sick,
sinking dread at my heart which you talked of an hour ago. Let me alone,
please, to get over it my own way."

She drew silently away from him, and seated herself by the side of the
vessel, looking over into the water.

George Talboys walked backward and forward for some time, with his head
bent upon his breast, looking neither to the right nor the left, but in
about a quarter of an hour he returned to the spot where the governess
was seated.

"I have been praying," he said--"praying for my darling."

He spoke in a voice little above a whisper, and she saw his face
ineffably calm in the moonlight.




CHAPTER III

HIDDEN RELICS.


The same August sun which had gone down behind the waste of waters
glimmered redly upon the broad face of the old clock over that
ivy-covered archway which leads into the gardens of Audley Court.

A fierce and crimson sunset. The mullioned windows and twinkling
lattices are all ablaze with the red glory; the fading light flickers
upon the leaves of the limes in the long avenue, and changes the still
fish-pond into a sheet of burnished copper; even into those dim recesses
of brier and brushwood, amidst which the old well is hidden, the crimson
brightness penetrates in fitful flashes till the dank weeds and the
rusty iron wheel and broken woodwork seem as if they were flecked with
blood.

The lowing of a cow in the quiet meadows, the splash of a trout in the
fish-pond, the last notes of a tired bird, the creaking of wagon-wheels
upon the distant road, every now and then breaking the evening silence,
only made the stillness of the place seem more intense. It was almost
oppressive, this twilight stillness. The very repose of the place grew
painful from its intensity, and you felt as if a corpse must be lying
somewhere within that gray and ivy-covered pile of building--so
deathlike was the tranquillity of all around.

As the clock over the archway struck eight, a door at the back of the
house was softly opened, and a girl came out into the gardens.

But even the presence of a human being scarcely broke the silence; for
the girl crept slowly over the thick grass, and gliding into the avenue
by the side of the fish-pond, disappeared in the rich shelter of the
limes.

She was not, perhaps, positively a pretty girl; but her appearance was
of that order which is commonly called interesting. Interesting, it may
be, because in the pale face and the light gray eyes, the small features
and compressed lips, there was something which hinted at a power of
repression and self-control not common in a woman of nineteen or twenty.
She might have been pretty, I think, but for the one fault in her small
oval face. This fault was an absence of color. Not one tinge of crimson
flushed the waxen whiteness of her cheeks; not one shadow of brown
redeemed the pale insipidity of her eyebrows and eyelashes; not one
glimmer of gold or auburn relieved the dull flaxen of her hair. Even her
dress was spoiled by this same deficiency. The pale lavender muslin
faded into a sickly gray, and the ribbon knotted round her throat melted
into the same neutral hue.

Her figure was slim and fragile, and in spite of her humble dress, she
had something of the grace and carriage of a gentlewoman, but she was
only a simple country girl, called Phoebe Marks, who had been nursemaid
in Mr. Dawson's family, and whom Lady Audley had chosen for her maid
after her marriage with Sir Michael.

Of course, this was a wonderful piece of good fortune for Phoebe, who
found her wages trebled and her work lightened in the well-ordered
household at the Court; and who was therefore quite as much the object
of envy among her particular friends as my lady herself to higher
circles.

A man, who was sitting on the broken wood-work of the well, started as
the lady's-maid came out of the dim shade of the limes and stood before
him among the weeds and brushwood.

I have said before that this was a neglected spot; it lay in the midst
of a low shrubbery, hidden away from the rest of the gardens, and only
visible from the garret windows at the back of the west wing.

"Why, Phoebe," said the man, shutting a clasp-knife with which he had
been stripping the bark from a blackthorn stake, "you came upon me so
still and sudden, that I thought you was an evil spirit. I've come
across through the fields, and come in here at the gate agen the moat,
and I was taking a rest before I came up to the house to ask if you was
come back."

"I can see the well from my bedroom window, Luke," Phoebe answered,
pointing to an open lattice in one of the gables. "I saw you sitting
here, and came down to have a chat; it's better talking out here than in
the house, where there's always somebody listening."

The man was a big, broad-shouldered, stupid-looking clod-hopper of about
twenty-three years of age. His dark red hair grew low upon his forehead,
and his bushy brows met over a pair of greenish gray eyes; his nose was
large and well-shaped, but the mouth was coarse in form and animal in
expression. Rosy-cheeked, red-haired, and bull-necked, he was not unlike
one of the stout oxen grazing in the meadows round about the Court.

The girl seated herself lightly upon the wood-work at his side, and put
one of her hands, which had grown white in her new and easy service,
about his thick neck.

"Are you glad to see me, Luke?" she asked.

"Of course I'm glad, lass," he answered, boorishly, opening his knife
again, and scraping away at the hedge-stake.

They were first cousins, and had been play fellows in childhood, and
sweethearts in early youth.

"You don't seem much as if you were glad," said the girl; "you might
look at me, Luke, and tell me if you think my journey has improved me."

"It ain't put any color into your cheeks, my girl," he said, glancing up
at her from under his lowering eyebrows; "you're every bit as white as
you was when you went away."

"But they say traveling makes people genteel, Luke. I've been on the
Continent with my lady, through all manner of curious places; and you
know, when I was a child, Squire Horton's daughters taught me to speak a
little French, and I found it so nice to be able to talk to the people
abroad."

"Genteel!" cried Luke Marks, with a hoarse laugh; "who wants you to be
genteel, I wonder? Not me, for one; when you're my wife you won't have
overmuch time for gentility, my girl. French, too! Dang me, Phoebe, I
suppose when we've saved money enough between us to buy a bit of a farm,
you'll be _parleyvooing_ to the cows?"

She bit her lip as her lover spoke, and looked away. He went on cutting
and chopping at a rude handle he was fashioning to the stake, whistling
softly to himself all the while, and not once looking at his cousin.

For some time they were silent, but by-and-by she said, with her face
still turned away from her companion:

"What a fine thing it is for Miss Graham that was, to travel with her
maid and her courier, and her chariot and four, and a husband that
thinks there isn't one spot upon all the earth that's good enough for
her to set her foot upon!"

"Ay, it is a fine thing, Phoebe, to have lots of money," answered Luke,
"and I hope you'll be warned by that, my lass, to save up your wages
agin we get married."

"Why, what was she in Mr. Dawson's house only three months ago?"
continued the girl, as if she had not heard her cousin's speech. "What
was she but a servant like me? Taking wages and working for them us
hard, or harder, than I did. You should have seen her shabby clothes,
Luke--worn and patched, and darned and turned and twisted, yet always
looking nice upon her, somehow. She gives me more as lady's-maid here
than ever she got from Mr. Dawson then. Why, I've seen her come out of
the parlor with a few sovereigns and a little silver in her hand, that
master had just given her for her quarter's salary; and now look at
her!"

"Never you mind her," said Luke; "take care of yourself, Phoebe; that's
all you've got to do. What should you say to a public-house for you and
me, by-and-by, my girl? There's a deal of money to be made out of a
public-house."

The girl still sat with her face averted from her lover, her hands
hanging listlessly in her lap, and her pale gray eyes fixed upon the
last low streak of crimson dying out behind the trunks of the trees.

"You should see the inside of the house, Luke," she said; "it's a
tumbledown looking place enough outside; but you should see my lady's
rooms--all pictures and gilding, and great looking-glasses that stretch
from the ceiling to the floor. Painted ceilings, too, that cost hundreds
of pounds, the housekeeper told her, and all done for her."

"She's a lucky one," muttered Luke, with lazy indifference.

"You should have seen her while we were abroad, with a crowd of
gentlemen hanging about her; Sir Michael not jealous of them, only proud
to see her so much admired. You should have heard her laugh and talk
with them; throwing all their compliments and fine speeches back at
them, as it were, as if they had been pelting her with roses. She set
everybody mad about her, wherever she went. Her singing, her playing,
her painting, her dancing, her beautiful smile, and sunshiny ringlets!
She was always the talk of a place, as long as we stayed in it."

"Is she at home to-night?"

"No; she has gone out with Sir Michael to a dinner party at the Beeches.
They've seven or eight miles to drive, and they won't be back till after
eleven."

"Then I'll tell you what, Phoebe, if the inside of the house is so
mighty fine, I should like to have a look at it."

"You shall, then. Mrs. Barton, the housekeeper, knows you by sight, and
she can't object to my showing you some of the best rooms."

It was almost dark when the cousins left the shrubbery and walked slowly
to the house. The door by which they entered led into the servants'
hall, on one side of which was the housekeeper's room. Phoebe Marks
stopped for a moment to ask the housekeeper if she might take her cousin
through some of the rooms, and having received permission to do so,
lighted a candle at the lamp in the hall, and beckoned to Luke to follow
her into the other part of the house.

The long, black oak corridors were dim in the ghostly twilight--the
light carried by Phoebe looking only a poor speck in the broad passages
through which the girl led her cousin. Luke looked suspiciously over his
shoulder now and then, half-frightened by the creaking of his own
hob-nailed boots.

"It's a mortal dull place, Phoebe," he said, as they emerged from a
passage into the principal hall, which was not yet lighted; "I've heard
tell of a murder that was done here in old times."

"There are murders enough in these times, as to that, Luke," answered
the girl, ascending the staircase, followed by the young man.

She led the way through a great drawing-room, rich in satin and ormolu,
buhl and inlaid cabinets, bronzes, cameos, statuettes, and trinkets,
that glistened in the dusky light; then through a morning room, hung
with proof engravings of valuable pictures; through this into an
ante-chamber, where she stopped, holding the light above her head.

The young man stared about him, open-mouthed and open-eyed.

"It's a rare fine place," he said, "and must have cost a heap of money."

"Look at the pictures on the walls," said Phoebe, glancing at the panels
of the octagonal chamber, which were hung with Claudes and Poussins,
Wouvermans and Cuyps. "I've heard that those alone are worth a fortune.
This is the entrance to my lady's apartments, Miss Graham that was." She
lifted a heavy green cloth curtain which hung across a doorway, and led
the astonished countryman into a fairy-like boudoir, and thence to a
dressing-room, in which the open doors of a wardrobe and a heap of
dresses flung about a sofa showed that it still remained exactly as its
occupants had left it.

"I've got all these things to put away before my lady comes home, Luke;
you might sit down here while I do it, I shan't be long."

Her cousin looked around in gawky embarrassment, bewildered by the
splendor of the room; and after some deliberation selected the most
substantial of the chairs, on the extreme edge of which he carefully
seated himself.

"I wish I could show you the jewels, Luke," said the girl; "but I can't,
for she always keeps the keys herself; that's the case on the
dressing-table there."

"What, _that?_" cried Luke, staring at the massive walnut-wood and brass
inlaid casket. "Why, that's big enough to hold every bit of clothes
I've got!"

"And it's as full as it can be of diamonds, rubies, pearls and
emeralds," answered Phoebe, busy as she spoke in folding the rustling
silk dresses, and laying them one by one upon the shelves of the
wardrobe. As she was shaking out the flounces of the last, a jingling
sound caught her ear, and she put her hand into the pocket.

"I declare!" she exclaimed, "my lady has left her keys in her pocket for
once in a way; I can show you the jewelry, if you like, Luke."

"Well, I may as well have a look at it, my girl," he said, rising from
his chair and holding the light while his cousin unlocked the casket. He
uttered a cry of wonder when he saw the ornaments glittering on white
satin cushions. He wanted to handle the delicate jewels; to pull them
about, and find out their mercantile value. Perhaps a pang of longing
and envy shot through his heart as he thought how he would have liked to
have taken one of them.

"Why, one of those diamond things would set us up in life, Phoebe, he
said, turning a bracelet over and over in his big red hands.

"Put it down, Luke! Put it down directly!" cried the girl, with a look
of terror; "how can you speak about such things?"

He laid the bracelet in its place with a reluctant sigh, and then
continued his examination of the casket.

"What's this?" he asked presently, pointing to a brass knob in the
frame-work of the box.

He pushed it as he spoke, and a secret drawer, lined with purple velvet,
flew out of the casket.

"Look ye here!" cried Luke, pleased at his discovery.

Phoebe Marks threw down the dress she had been folding, and went over to
the toilette table.

"Why, I never saw this before," she said; "I wonder what there is in
it?"

There was not much in it; neither gold nor gems; only a baby's little
worsted shoe rolled up in a piece of paper, and a tiny lock of pale and
silky yellow hair, evidently taken from a baby's head. Phoebe's eyes
dilated as she examined the little packet.

"So this is what my lady hides in the secret drawer," she muttered.

"It's queer rubbish to keep in such a place," said Luke, carelessly.

The girl's thin lip curved into a curious smile.

"You will bear me witness where I found this," she said, putting the
little parcel into her pocket.

"Why, Phoebe, you're not going to be such a fool as to take that," cried
the young man.

"I'd rather have this than the diamond bracelet you would have liked to
take," she answered; "you shall have the public house, Luke."




CHAPTER IV.

IN THE FIRST PAGE OF "THE TIMES."


Robert Audley was supposed to be a barrister. As a barrister was his
name inscribed in the law-list; as a barrister he had chambers in
Figtree Court, Temple; as a barrister he had eaten the allotted number
of dinners, which form the sublime ordeal through which the forensic
aspirant wades on to fame and fortune. If these things can make a man a
barrister, Robert Audley decidedly was one. But he had never either had
a brief, or tried to get a brief, or even wished to have a brief in all
those five years, during which his name had been painted upon one of the
doors in Figtree Court. He was a handsome, lazy, care-for-nothing
fellow, of about seven-and-twenty; the only son of a younger brother of
Sir Michael Audley. His father had left him £400 a year, which his
friends had advised him to increase by being called to the bar; and as
he found it, after due consideration, more trouble to oppose the wishes
of these friends than to eat so many dinners, and to take a set of
chambers in the Temple, he adopted the latter course, and unblushingly
called himself a barrister.

Sometimes, when the weather was very hot, and he had exhausted himself
with the exertion of smoking his German pipe, and reading French novels,
he would stroll into the Temple Gardens, and lying in some shady spot,
pale and cool, with his shirt collar turned down and a blue silk
handkerchief tied loosely about his neck, would tell grave benchers that
he had knocked himself up with over work.

The sly old benchers laughed at the pleasant fiction; but they all
agreed that Robert Audley was a good fellow; a generous-hearted fellow;
rather a curious fellow, too, with a fund of sly wit and quiet humor,
under his listless, dawdling, indifferent, irresolute manner. A man who
would never get on in the world; but who would not hurt a worm. Indeed,
his chambers were converted into a perfect dog-kennel, by his habit of
bringing home stray and benighted curs, who were attracted by his looks
in the street, and followed him with abject fondness.

Robert always spent the hunting season at Audley Court; not that he was
distinguished as a Nimrod, for he would quietly trot to covert upon a
mild-tempered, stout-limbed bay hack, and keep at a very respectful
distance from the hard riders; his horse knowing quite as well as he
did, that nothing was further from his thoughts than any desire to be in
at the death.

The young man was a great favorite with his uncle, and by no means
despised by his pretty, gipsy-faced, light-hearted, hoydenish cousin,
Miss Alice Audley. It might have seemed to other men, that the
partiality of a young lady who was sole heiress to a very fine estate,
was rather well worth cultivating, but it did not so occur to Robert
Audley. Alicia was a very nice girl, he said, a jolly girl, with no
nonsense about her--a girl of a thousand; but this was the highest point
to which enthusiasm could carry him. The idea of turning his cousin's
girlish liking for him to some good account never entered his idle
brain. I doubt if he even had any correct notion of the amount of his
uncle's fortune, and I am certain that he never for one moment
calculated upon the chances of any part of that fortune ultimately
coming to himself. So that when, one fine spring morning, about three
months before the time of which I am writing, the postman brought him
the wedding cards of Sir Michael and Lady Audley, together with a very
indignant letter from his cousin, setting forth how her father had just
married a wax-dollish young person, no older than Alicia herself, with
flaxen ringlets, and a perpetual giggle; for I am sorry to say that Miss
Audley's animus caused her thus to describe that pretty musical laugh
which had been so much admired in the late Miss Lucy Graham--when, I
say, these documents reached Robert Audley--they elicited neither
vexation nor astonishment in the lymphatic nature of that gentleman. He
read Alicia's angry crossed and recrossed letter without so much as
removing the amber mouth-piece of his German pipe from his mustached
lips. When he had finished the perusal of the epistle, which he read
with his dark eyebrows elevated to the center of his forehead (his only
manner of expressing surprise, by the way) he deliberately threw that
and the wedding cards into the waste-paper basket, and putting down his
pipe, prepared himself for the exertion of thinking out the subject.

"I always said the old buffer would marry," he muttered, after about
half an hour's revery. Alicia and my lady, the stepmother, will go at it
hammer and tongs. I hope they won't quarrel in the hunting season, or
say unpleasant things to each other at the dinner-table; rows always
upset a man's digestion.

At about twelve o'clock on the morning following that night upon which
the events recorded in my last chapter had taken place, the baronet's
nephew strolled out of the Temple, Blackfriarsward, on his way to the
city. He had in an evil hour obliged some necessitous friend by putting
the ancient name of Audley across a bill of accommodation, which bill
not having been provided for by the drawer, Robert was called upon to
pay. For this purpose he sauntered up Ludgate Hill, with his blue
necktie fluttering in the hot August air, and thence to a refreshingly
cool banking-house in a shady court out of St. Paul's churchyard, where
be made arrangements for selling out a couple of hundred pounds' worth
of consols.

He had transacted this business, and was loitering at the corner of the
court, waiting for a chance hansom to convey him back to the Temple,
when he was almost knocked down by a man of about his own age, who
dashed headlong into the narrow opening.

"Be so good as to look where you're going, my friend!" Robert
remonstrated, mildly, to the impetuous passenger; "you might give a man
warning before you throw him down and trample upon him."

The stranger stopped suddenly, looked very hard at the speaker, and then
gasped for breath.

"Bob!" he cried, in a tone expressive of the most intense astonishment;
"I only touched British ground after dark last night, and to think that
I should meet you this morning."

"I've seen you somewhere before, my bearded friend," said Mr. Audley,
calmly scrutinizing the animated face of the other, "but I'll be hanged
if I can remember when or where."

"What!" exclaimed the stranger, reproachfully. "You don't mean to say
that you've forgotten George Talboys?"

"_No I have not!_" said Robert, with an emphasis by no means usual to
him; and then hooking his arm into that of his friend, he led him into
the shady court, saying, with his old indifference, "and now, George
tell us all about it."

George Talboys did tell him all about it. He told that very story which
he had related ten days before to the pale governess on board the
_Argus_; and then, hot and breathless, he said that he had twenty
thousand pounds or so in his pocket, and that he wanted to bank it at
Messrs. ----, who had been his bankers many years before.

"If you'll believe me, I've only just left their counting-house," said
Robert. "I'll go back with you, and we'll settle that matter in five
minutes."

They did contrive to settle it in about a quarter of an hour; and then
Robert Audley was for starting off immediately for the Crown and
Scepter, at Greenwich, or the Castle, at Richmond, where they could have
a bit of dinner, and talk over those good old times when they were
together at Eton. But George told his friend that before he went
anywhere, before he shaved or broke his fast, or in any way refreshed
himself after a night journey from Liverpool by express train, he must
call at a certain coffee-house in Bridge street, Westminster, where he
expected to find a letter from his wife.

As they dashed through Ludgate Hill, Fleet street, and the Strand, in a
fast hansom, George Talboys poured into his friend's ear all those wild
hopes and dreams which had usurped such a dominion over his sanguine
nature.

"I shall take a villa on the banks of the Thames, Bob," he said, "for
the little wife and myself; and we'll have a yacht, Bob, old boy, and
you shall lie on the deck and smoke, while my pretty one plays her
guitar and sings songs to us. She's for all the world like one of those
what's-its-names, who got poor old Ulysses into trouble," added the
young man, whose classic lore was not very great.

The waiters at the Westminster coffee-house stared at the hollow-eyed,
unshaven stranger, with his clothes of colonial cut, and his boisterous,
excited manner; but he had been an old frequenter of the place in his
military days, and when they heard who he was they flew to do his
bidding.

He did not want much--only a bottle of soda-water, and to know if there
was a letter at the bar directed to George Talboys.

The waiter brought the soda-water before the young men had seated
themselves in a shady box near the disused fire-place. No; there was no
letter for that name.

The waiter said it with consummate indifference, while he mechanically
dusted the little mahogany table.

George's face blanched to a deadly whiteness. "Talboys," he said;
"perhaps you didn't hear the name distinctly--T, A, L, B, O, Y, S. Go
and look again, there _must_ be a letter."

The waiter shrugged his shoulders as he left the room, and returned in
three minutes to say that there was no name at all resembling Talboys in
the letter rack. There was Brown, and Sanderson, and Pinchbeck; only
three letters altogether.

The young man drank his soda-water in silence, and then, leaning his
elbows on the table, covered his face with his hands. There was
something in his manner which told Robert Audley that his
disappointment, trifling as it may appear, was in reality a very bitter
one. He seated himself opposite to his friend, but did not attempt to
address him.

By-and-by George looked up, and mechanically taking a greasy _Times_
newspaper of the day before from a heap of journals on the table, stared
vacantly at the first page.

I cannot tell how long he sat blankly staring at one paragraph among the
list of deaths, before his dazed brain took in its full meaning; but
after considerable pause he pushed the newspaper over to Robert Audley,
and with a face that had changed from its dark bronze to a sickly,
chalky grayish white, and with an awful calmness in his manner, he
pointed with his finger to a line which ran thus:

"On the 24th inst., at Ventnor, Isle of Wight, Helen Talboys, aged 22."




CHAPTER V.

THE HEADSTONE AT VENTNOR.


Yes, there it was in black and white--"Helen Talboys, aged 22."

When George told the governess on board the _Argus_ that if he heard any
evil tidings of his wife he should drop down dead, he spoke in perfect
good faith; and yet, here were the worst tidings that could come to him,
and he sat rigid, white and helpless, staring stupidly at the shocked
face of his friend.

The suddenness of the blow had stunned him. In this strange and
bewildered state of mind he began to wonder what had happened, and why
it was that one line in the _Times_ newspaper could have so horrible an
effect upon him.

Then by degrees even this vague consciousness of his misfortune faded
slowly out of his mind, succeeded by a painful consciousness of external
things.

The hot August sunshine, the dusty window-panes and shabby-painted
blinds, a file of fly-blown play-bills fastened to the wall, the black
and empty fire-places, a bald-headed old man nodding over the _Morning
Advertizer_, the slip-shod waiter folding a tumbled table-cloth, and
Robert Audley's handsome face looking at him full of compassionate
alarm--he knew that all these things took gigantic proportions, and
then, one by one, melted into dark blots and swam before his eyes, He
knew that there was a great noise, as of half a dozen furious
steam-engines tearing and grinding in his ears, and he knew nothing
more--except that somebody or something fell heavily to the ground.

He opened his eyes upon the dusky evening in a cool and shaded room, the
silence only broken by the rumbling of wheels at a distance.

He looked about him wonderingly, but half indifferently. His old friend,
Robert Audley, was seated by his side smoking. George was lying on a low
iron bedstead opposite to an open window, in which there was a stand of
flowers and two or three birds in cages.

"You don't mind the pipe, do you, George?" his friend asked, quietly.

"No."

He lay for some time looking at the flowers and the birds; one canary
was singing a shrill hymn to the setting sun.

"Do the birds annoy you, George? Shall I take them out of the room?"

"No; I like to hear them sing."

Robert Audley knocked the ashes out of his pipe, laid the precious
meerschaum tenderly upon the mantelpiece, and going into the next room,
returned presently with a cup of strong tea.

"Take this, George," he said, as he placed the cup on a little table
close to George's pillow; "it will do your head good."

The young man did not answer, but looked slowly round the room, and then
at his friend's grave face.

"Bob," he said, "where are we?"

"In my chambers, dear boy, in the Temple. You have no lodgings of your
own, so you may as well stay with me while you're in town."

George passed his hand once or twice across his forehead, and then, in a
hesitating manner, said, quietly:

"That newspaper this morning, Bob; what was it?"

"Never mind just now, old boy; drink some tea."

"Yes, yes," cried George, impatiently, raising himself upon the bed, and
staring about him with hollow eyes. "I remember all about it. Helen! my
Helen! my wife, my darling, my only love! Dead, dead!"

"George," said Robert Audley, laying his hand gently upon the young
man's arm, "you must remember that the person whose name you saw in the
paper may not be your wife. There may have been some other Helen
Talboys."

"No, no!" he cried; "the age corresponds with hers, and Talboys is such
an uncommon name."

"It may be a misprint for Talbot."

"No, no, no; my wife is dead!"

He shook off Robert's restraining hand, and rising from the bed, walked
straight to the door.

"Where are you going?" exclaimed his friend.

"To Ventnor, to see her grave."

"Not to-night, George, not to-night. I will go with you myself by the
first train to-morrow."

Robert led him back to the bed, and gently forced him to lie down again.
He then gave him an opiate, which had been left for him by the medical
man whom they had called in at the coffee-house in Bridge street, when
George fainted.

So George Talboys fell into a heavy slumber, and dreamed that he went to
Ventnor, to find his wife alive and happy, but wrinkled, old, and gray,
and to find his son grown into a young man.

Early the next morning he was seated opposite to Robert Audley in the
first-class carriage of an express, whirling through the pretty open
country toward Portsmouth.

They landed at Ventnor under the burning heat of the midday sun. As the
two young men came from the steamer, the people on the pier stared at
George's white face and untrimmed beard.

"What are we to do, George?" Robert Audley asked. "We have no clew to
finding the people you want to see."

The young man looked at him with a pitiful, bewildered expression. The
big dragoon was as helpless as a baby; and Robert Audley, the most
vacillating and unenergetic of men, found himself called upon to act for
another. He rose superior to himself, and equal to the occasion.

"Had we not better ask at one of the hotels about a Mrs. Talboys,
George?" he said.

"Her father's name was Maldon," George muttered; "he could never have
sent her here to die alone."

They said nothing more; but Robert walked straight to a hotel where he
inquired for a Mr. Maldon.

Yes, they told him, there was a gentleman of that name stopping at
Ventnor, a Captain Maldon; his daughter was lately dead. The waiter
would go and inquire for the address.

The hotel was a busy place at this season; people hurrying in and out,
and a great bustle of grooms and waiters about the halls.

George Talboys leaned against the doorpost, with much the same look in
his face, as that which had frightened his friend in the Westminister
coffee-house.

The worst was confirmed now. His wife, Captain Maldon's daughter was
dead.

The waiter returned in about five minutes to say that Captain Maldon was
lodging at Lansdowne Cottage, No. 4.

They easily found the house, a shabby, low-windowed cottage, looking
toward the water.

Was Captain Maldon at home? No, the landlady said; he had gone out on
the beach with his little grandson. Would the gentleman walk in and sit
down a bit?

George mechanically followed his friend into the little front
parlor--dusty, shabbily furnished, and disorderly, with a child's broken
toys scattered on the floor, and the scent of stale tobacco hanging
about the muslin window-curtains.

"Look!" said George, pointing to a picture over the mantelpiece.

It was his own portrait, painted in the old dragooning days. A pretty
good likeness, representing him in uniform, with his charger in the
background.

Perhaps the most animated of men would have been scarcely so wise a
comforter as Robert Audley. He did not utter a word to the stricken
widower, but quietly seated himself with his back to George, looking out
of the open window.

For some time the young man wandered restlessly about the room, looking
at and sometimes touching the nick-nacks lying here and there.

Her workbox, with an unfinished piece of work; her album full of
extracts from Byron and Moore, written in his own scrawling hand; some
books which he had given her, and a bunch of withered flowers in a vase
they had bought in Italy.

"Her portrait used to hang by the side of mine," he muttered; "I wonder
what they have done with it."

By-and-by he said, after about an hour's silence:

"I should like to see the woman of the house; I should like to ask her
about--"

He broke down, and buried his face in his hands.

Robert summoned the landlady. She was a good-natured garrulous creature,
accustomed to sickness and death, for many of her lodgers came to her to
die.

She told all the particulars of Mrs. Talboys' last hours; how she had
come to Ventnor only ten days before her death, in the last stage of
decline; and how, day by day, she had gradually, but surely, sunk under
the fatal malady. Was the gentleman any relative? she asked of Robert
Audley, as George sobbed aloud.

"Yes, he is the lady's husband."

"What!" the woman cried; "him as deserted her so cruel, and left her
with her pretty boy upon her poor old father's hands, which Captain
Maldon has told me often, with the tears in his poor eyes?"

"I did not desert her," George cried out; and then he told the history
of his three years' struggle.

"Did she speak of me?" he asked; "did she speak of me--at--at the last?"

"No, she went off as quiet as a lamb. She said very little from the
first; but the last day she knew nobody, not even her little boy, nor
her poor old father, who took on awful. Once she went off wild-like,
talking about her mother, and about the cruel shame it was to leave her
to die in a strange place, till it was quite pitiful to hear her."

"Her mother died when she was quite a child," said George. "To think
that she should remember her and speak of her, but never once of me."

The woman took him into the little bedroom in which his wife had died.
He knelt down by the bed and kissed the pillow tenderly, the landlady
crying as he did so.

While he was kneeling, praying, perhaps, with his face buried in this
humble, snow-white pillow, the woman took something from a drawer. She
gave it to him when he rose from his knees; it was a long tress of hair
wrapped in silver paper.

"I cut this off when she lay in her coffin," she said, "poor dear?"

He pressed the soft lock to his lips. "Yes," he murmured; "this is the
dear hair that I have kissed so often when her head lay upon my
shoulder. But it always had a rippling wave in it then, and now it seems
smooth and straight."

"It changes in illness," said the landlady. "If you'd like to see where
they have laid her, Mr. Talboys, my little boy shall show you the way to
the churchyard."

So George Talboys and his faithful friend walked to the quiet spot,
where, beneath a mound of earth, to which the patches of fresh turf
hardly adhered, lay that wife of whose welcoming smile George had
dreamed so often in the far antipodes.

Robert left the young man by the side of this newly-made grave, and
returning in about a quarter of an hour, found that he had not once
stirred.

He looked up presently, and said that if there was a stone-mason's
anywhere near he should like to give an order.

They very easily found the stonemason, and sitting down amidst the
fragmentary litter of the man's yard, George Talboys wrote in pencil
this brief inscription for the headstone of his dead wife's grave:

  Sacred to the Memory of
  HELEN,
  THE BELOVED WIFE OF GEORGE TALBOYS,
  "Who departed this life
  August 24th, 18--, aged 22,
  Deeply regretted by her sorrowing Husband.




CHAPTER VI.

ANYWHERE, ANYWHERE OUT OF THE WORLD.


When they returned to Lansdowne Cottage they found the old man had not
yet come in, so they walked down to the beach to look for him. After a
brief search they found him, sitting upon a heap of pebbles, reading a
newspaper and eating filberts. The little boy was at some distance from
his grandfather, digging in the sand with a wooden spade. The crape
round the old man's shabby hat, and the child's poor little black frock,
went to George's heart. Go where he would he met fresh confirmation of
this great grief of his life. His wife was dead.

"Mr. Maldon," he said, as he approached his father-in-law.

The old man looked up, and, dropping his newspaper, rose from the
pebbles with a ceremonious bow. His faded light hair was tinged with
gray; he had a pinched hook nose; watery blue eyes, and an
irresolute-looking mouth; he wore his shabby dress with an affectation
of foppish gentility; an eye-glass dangled over his closely buttoned-up
waistcoat, and he carried a cane in his ungloved hand.

"Great Heaven!" cried George, "don't you know me?"

Mr. Maldon started and colored violently, with something of a frightened
look, as he recognized his son-in-law.

"My dear boy," he said, "I did not; for the first moment I did not. That
beard makes such a difference. You find the beard makes a great
difference, do you not, sir?" he said, appealing to Robert.

"Great heavens!" exclaimed George Talboys, "is this the way you welcome
me? I come to England to find my wife dead within a week of my touching
land, and you begin to chatter to me about my beard--you, her father!"

"True! true!" muttered the old man, wiping his bloodshot eyes; "a sad
shock, a sad shock, my dear George. If you'd only been here a week
earlier."

"If I had," cried George, in an outburst of grief and passion, "I
scarcely think that I would have let her die. I would have disputed for
her with death. I would! I would! Oh God! why did not the _Argus_ go
down with every soul on board her before I came to see this day?"

He began to walk up and down the beach, his father-in-law looking
helplessly at him, rubbing his feeble eyes with a handkerchief.

"I've a strong notion that that old man didn't treat his daughter too
well," thought Robert, as he watched the half-pay lieutenant. "He seems,
for some reason or other, to be half afraid of George."

While the agitated young man walked up and down in a fever of regret and
despair, the child ran to his grandfather, and clung about the tails of
his coat.

"Come home, grandpa, come home," he said. "I'm tired."

George Talboys turned at the sound of the babyish voice, and looked long
and earnestly at the boy.

He had his father's brown eyes and dark hair.

"My darling! my darling!" said George, taking the child in his arms, "I
am your father, come across the sea to find you. Will you love me?"

The little fellow pushed him away. "I don't know you," he said. "I love
grandpa and Mrs. Monks at Southampton."

"Georgey has a temper of his own, sir," said the old man. "He has been
spoiled."

They walked slowly back to the cottage, and once more George Talboys
told the history of that desertion which had seemed so cruel. He told,
too, of the twenty thousand pounds banked by him the day before. He had
not the heart to ask any questions about the past, and his father-in-law
only told him that a few months after his departure they had gone from
the place where George left them to live at Southampton, where Helen got
a few pupils for the piano, and where they managed pretty well till her
health failed, and she fell into the decline of which she died. Like
most sad stories it was a very brief one.

"The boy seems fond of you, Mr. Maldon," said George, after a pause.

"Yes, yes," answered the old man, smoothing the child's curling hair;
"yes. Georgey is very fond of his grandfather."

"Then he had better stop with you. The interest of my money will be
about six hundred a year. You can draw a hundred of that for Georgey's
education, leaving the rest to accumulate till he is of age. My friend
here will be trustee, and if he will undertake the charge, I will
appoint him guardian to the boy, allowing him for the present to remain
under your care."

"But why not take care of him yourself, George?" asked Robert Audley.

"Because I shall sail in the very next vessel that leaves Liverpool for
Australia. I shall be better in the diggings or the backwoods than ever
I could be here. I'm broken for a civilized life from this hour, Bob."

The old man's weak eyes sparkled as George declared this determination.

"My poor boy, I think you're right," he said, "I really think you're
right. The change, the wild life, the--the--" He hesitated and broke
down as Robert looked earnestly at him.

"You're in a great hurry to get rid of your son-in-law, I think, Mr.
Maldon," he said, gravely.

"Get rid of him, dear boy! Oh, no, no! But for his own sake, my dear
sir, for his own sake, you know."

"I think for his own sake he'd much better stay in England and look
after his son," said Robert.

"But I tell you I can't," cried George; "every inch of this accursed
ground is hateful to me--I want to run out of it as I would out of a
graveyard. I'll go back to town to-night, get that business about the
money settled early to-morrow morning, and start for Liverpool without a
moment's delay. I shall be better when I've put half the world between
me and her grave."

"Before he left the house he stole out to the landlady, and asked same
more questions about his dead wife.

"Were they poor?" he asked, "were they pinched for money while she was
ill?"

"Oh, no!" the woman answered; "though the captain dresses shabby, he has
always plenty of sovereigns in his purse. The poor lady wanted for
nothing."

George was relieved at this, though it puzzled him to know where the
drunken half-pay lieutenant could have contrived to find money for all
the expenses of his daughter's illness.

But he was too thoroughly broken down by the calamity which had befallen
him to be able to think much of anything, so he asked no further
questions, but walked with his father-in-law and Robert Audley down to
the boat by which they were to cross to Portsmouth.

The old man bade Robert a very ceremonious adieu.

"You did not introduce me to your friend, by-the-bye, my dear boy," he
said. George stared at him, muttered something indistinct, and ran down
the ladder to the boat before Mr. Maldon could repeat his request. The
steamer sped away through the sunset, and the outline of the island
melted in the horizon as they neared the opposite shore.

"To think," said George, "that two nights ago, at this time, I was
steaming into Liverpool, full of the hope of clasping her to my heart,
and to-night I am going away from her grave!"

The document which appointed Robert Audley as guardian to little George
Talboys was drawn up in a solicitor's office the next morning.

"It's a great responsibility," exclaimed Robert; "I, guardian to anybody
or anything! I, who never in my life could take care of myself!"

"I trust in your noble heart, Bob," said George. "I know you will take
care of my poor orphan boy, and see that he is well used by his
grandfather. I shall only draw enough from Georgey's fortune to take me
back to Sydney, and then begin my old work again."

But it seemed as if George was destined to be himself the guardian of
his son; for when he reached Liverpool, he found that a vessel had just
sailed, and that there would not be another for a month; so he returned
to London, and once more threw himself upon Robert Audley's hospitality.

The barrister received him with open arms; he gave him the room with the
birds and flowers, and had a bed put up in his dressing-room for
himself. Grief is so selfish that George did not know the sacrifices his
friend made for his comfort. He only knew that for him the sun was
darkened, and the business of life done. He sat all day long smoking
cigars, and staring at the flowers and canaries, chafing for the time to
pass that he might be far out at sea.

But just as the hour was drawing near for the sailing of the vessel,
Robert Audley came in one day, full of a great scheme.

A friend of his, another of those barristers whose last thought is of a
brief, was going to St. Petersburg to spend the winter, and wanted
Robert to accompany him. Robert would only go on condition that George
went too.

For a long time the young man resisted; but when he found that Robert
was, in a quiet way, thoroughly determined upon not going without him,
he gave in, and consented to join the party. What did it matter? he
said. One place was the same to him as another; anywhere out of England;
what did he care where?

This was not a very cheerful way of looking at things, but Robert Audley
was quite satisfied with having won his consent.

The three young men started under very favorable circumstances, carrying
letters of introduction to the most influential inhabitants of the
Russian capital.

Before leaving England, Robert wrote to his cousin Alicia, telling her
of his intended departure with his old friend George Talboys, whom he
had lately met for the first time after a lapse of years, and who had
just lost his wife.

Alicia's reply came by return post, and ran thus:

"MY DEAR ROBERT--How cruel of you to run away to that horrid St.
Petersburg before the hunting season! I have heard that people lose
their noses in that disagreeable climate, and as yours is rather a long
one, I should advise you to return before the very severe weather sets
in. What sort of person is this Mr. Talboys? If he is very agreeable you
may bring him to the Court as soon as you return from your travels. Lady
Audley tells me to request you to secure her a set of sables. You are
not to consider the price, but to be sure that they are the handsomest
that can be obtained. Papa is perfectly absurd about his new wife, and
she and I cannot get on together at all; not that she is, disagreeable
to me, for, as far as that goes, she makes herself agreeable to every
one; but she is so irretrievably childish and silly.

"Believe me to be, my dear Robert.

"Your affectionate cousin,

"ALICIA AUDLEY."




CHAPTER VII.

AFTER A YEAR.


The first year of George Talboys' widowhood passed away, the deep band
of crepe about his hat grew brown and dusty, and as the last burning day
of another August faded out, he sat smoking cigars in the quiet chambers
of Figtree Court, much as he had done the year before, when the horror
of his grief was new to him, and every object in life, however trifling
or however important, seemed saturated with his one great sorrow.

But the big ex-dragoon had survived his affliction by a twelvemonth, and
hard as it may be to have to tell it, he did not look much the worse for
it. Heaven knows what wasted agonies of remorse and self-reproach may
not have racked George's honest heart, as he lay awake at nights
thinking of the wife he had abandoned in the pursuit of a fortune, which
she never lived to share.

Once, while they were abroad, Robert Audley ventured to congratulate him
upon his recovered spirits. He burst into a bitter laugh.

"Do you know, Bob," he said, "that when some of our fellows were wounded
in India, they came home, bringing bullets inside them. They did not
talk of them, and they were stout and hearty, and looked as well,
perhaps, as you or I; but every change in the weather, however slight,
every variation of the atmosphere, however trifling, brought back the
old agony of their wounds as sharp as ever they had felt it on the
battle-field. I've had my wound, Bob; I carry the bullet still, and I
shall carry it into my coffin."

The travelers returned from St. Petersburg in the spring, and George
again took up his quarters at his old friend's chambers, only leaving
them now and then to run down to Southampton and take a look at his
little boy. He always went loaded with toys and sweetmeats to give to
the child; but, for all this, Georgey would not become very familiar
with his papa, and the young man's heart sickened as he began to fancy
that even his child was lost to him.

"What can I do?" he thought. "If I take him away from his grandfather, I
shall break his heart; if I let him remain, he will grow up a stranger
to me, and care more for that drunken old hypocrite than for his own
father. But then, what could an ignorant, heavy dragoon like me do with
such a child? What could I teach him, except to smoke cigars and idle
around all day with his hands in his pockets?"

So the anniversary of that 30th of August, upon which George had seen
the advertisement of his wife's death in the _Times_ newspaper, came
round for the first time, and the young man put off his black clothes
and the shabby crape from his hat, and laid his mournful garments in a
trunk in which he kept a packet of his wife's letters, her portrait, and
that lock of hair which had been cut from her head after death. Robert
Audley had never seen either the letters, the portrait, or the long
tress of silky hair; nor, indeed, had George ever mentioned the name of
his dead wife after that one day at Ventnor, on which he learned the
full particulars of her decease.

"I shall write to my cousin Alicia to-day, George," the young barrister
said, upon this very 30th of August. "Do you know that the day after
to-morrow is the 1st of September? I shall write and tell her that we
will both run down to the Court for a week's shooting."

"No, no, Bob; go by yourself; they don't want me, and I'd rather--"

"Bury yourself in Figtree Court, with no company but my dogs and
canaries! No, George, you shall do nothing of the kind."

"But I don't care for shooting."

"And do you suppose _I_ care for it?" cried Robert, with charming
_naivete_. "Why, man, I don't know a partridge from a pigeon, and it
might be the 1st of April, instead of the 1st of September, for aught I
care. I never hurt a bird in my life, but I have hurt my own shoulder
with the weight of my gun. I only go down to Essex for the change of
air, the good dinners, and the sight of my uncle's honest, handsome
face. Besides, this time I've another inducement, as I want to see this
fair-haired paragon--my new aunt. You'll go with me, George?"

"Yes, if you really wish it."

The quiet form his grief had taken after its first brief violence, left
him as submissive as a child to the will of his friend; ready to go
anywhere or do anything; never enjoying himself, or originating any
enjoyment, but joining in the pleasures of others with a hopeless,
uncomplaining, unobtrusive resignation peculiar to his simple nature.
But the return of post brought a letter from Alicia Audley, to say that
the two young men could not be received at the Court.

"There are seventeen spare bed-rooms," wrote the young lady, in an
indignant running hand, "but for all that, my dear Robert, you can't
come; for my lady has taken it into her silly head that she is too ill
to entertain visitors (there is no more the matter with her than there
is with me), and she cannot have gentlemen (great, rough men, she says)
in the house. Please apologize to your friend Mr. Talboys, and tell him
that papa expects to see you both in the hunting season."

"My lady's airs and graces shan't keep us out of Essex for all that,"
said Robert, as he twisted the letter into a pipe-light for his big
meerschaum. "I'll tell you what we'll do, George: there's a glorious inn
at Audley, and plenty of fishing in the neighborhood; we'll go there and
have a week's sport. Fishing is much better than shooting; you've only
to lie on a bank and stare at your line; I don't find that you often
catch anything, but it's very pleasant."

He held the twisted letter to the feeble spark of fire glimmering in the
grate, as he spoke, and then changing his mind, deliberately unfolded
it, and smoothed the crumpled paper with his hand.

"Poor little Alicia!" he said, thoughtfully; "it's rather hard to treat
her letter so cavalierly--I'll keep it;" upon which Mr. Robert Audley
put the note back into its envelope, and afterward thrust it into a
pigeon-hole in his office desk, marked _important_. Heaven knows what
wonderful documents there were in this particular pigeon-hole, but I do
not think it likely to have contained anything of great judicial value.
If any one could at that moment have told the young barrister that so
simple a thing as his cousin's brief letter would one day come to be a
link in that terrible chain of evidence afterward to be slowly forged in
the only criminal case in which he was ever to be concerned, perhaps Mr.
Robert Audley would have lifted his eyebrows a little higher than usual.

So the two young men left London the next day, with one portmanteau and
a rod and tackle between them, and reached the straggling,
old-fashioned, fast-decaying village of Audley, in time to order a good
dinner at the Sun Inn.

Audley Court was about three-quarters of a mile from the village, lying,
as I have said, deep down in the hollow, shut in by luxuriant timber.
You could only reach it by a cross-road bordered by trees, and as trimly
kept as the avenues in a gentleman's park. It was a lonely place enough,
even in all its rustic beauty, for so bright a creature as the late Miss
Lucy Graham, but the generous baronet had transformed the interior of
the gray old mansion into a little palace for his young wife, and Lady
Audley seemed as happy as a child surrounded by new and costly toys.

In her better fortunes, as in her old days of dependence, wherever she
went she seemed to take sunshine and gladness with her. In spite of Miss
Alicia's undisguised contempt for her step-mother's childishness and
frivolity, Lucy was better loved and more admired than the baronet's
daughter. That very childishness had a charm which few could resist. The
innocence and candor of an infant beamed in Lady Audley's fair face, and
shone out of her large and liquid blue eyes. The rosy lips, the delicate
nose, the profusion of fair ringlets, all contributed to preserve to her
beauty the character of extreme youth and freshness. She owned to twenty
years of age, but it was hard to believe her more than seventeen. Her
fragile figure, which she loved to dress in heavy velvets, and stiff,
rustling silks, till she looked like a child tricked out for a
masquerade, was as girlish as if she had just left the nursery. All her
amusements were childish. She hated reading, or study of any kind, and
loved society. Rather than be alone, she would admit Phoebe Marks into
her confidence, and loll on one of the sofas in her luxurious
dressing-room, discussing a new costume for some coming dinner-party; or
sit chattering to the girl with her jewel-box beside her, upon the satin
cushions, and Sir Michael's presents spread out in her lap, while she
counted and admired her treasures.

She had appeared at several public balls at Chelmsford and Colchester,
and was immediately established as the belle of the county. Pleased with
her high position and her handsome house; with every caprice gratified,
every whim indulged; admired and caressed wherever she went; fond of her
generous husband; rich in a noble allowance of pin-money; with no poor
relations to worry her with claims upon her purse or patronage; it would
have been hard to find in the County of Essex a more fortunate creature
than Lucy, Lady Audley.

The two young men loitered over the dinner-table in the private
sitting-room at the Sun Inn. The windows were thrown wide open, and the
fresh country air blew in upon them as they dined. The weather was
lovely; the foliage of the woods touched here and there with faint
gleams of the earliest tints of autumn; the yellow corn still standing
in some of the fields, in others just falling under the shining sickle;
while in the narrow lanes you met great wagons drawn by broad-chested
cart-horses, carrying home the rich golden store. To any one who has
been, during the hot summer months, pent up in London, there is in the
first taste of rustic life a kind of sensuous rapture scarcely to be
described. George Talboys felt this, and in this he experienced the
nearest approach to enjoyment that he had ever known since his wife's
death.

The clock struck five as they finished dinner.

"Put on your hat, George," said Robert Audley; "they don't dine at the
Court till seven; we shall have time to stroll down and see the old
place and its inhabitants."

The landlord, who had come into the room with a bottle of wine, looked
up as the young man spoke.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Audley," he said, "but if you want to see your
uncle, you'll lose your time by going to the Court just now. Sir Michael
and my lady and Miss Alicia have all gone to the races up at Chorley,
and they won't be back till nigh upon eight o'clock, most likely. They
must pass by here to go home."

Under these circumstances of course it was no use going to the Court, so
the two young men strolled through the village and looked at the old
church, and then went and reconnoitered the streams in which they were
to fish the next day, and by such means beguiled the time until after
seven o'clock. At about a quarter past that hour they returned to the
inn, and seating themselves in the open window, lit their cigars and
looked out at the peaceful prospect.

We hear every day of murders committed in the country. Brutal and
treacherous murders; slow, protracted agonies from poisons administered
by some kindred hand; sudden and violent deaths by cruel blows,
inflicted with a stake cut from some spreading oak, whose every shadow
promised--peace. In the county of which I write, I have been shown a
meadow in which, on a quiet summer Sunday evening, a young farmer
murdered the girl who had loved and trusted him; and yet, even now, with
the stain of that foul deed upon it, the aspect of the spot is--peace.
No species of crime has ever been committed in the worst rookeries about
Seven Dials that has not been also done in the face of that rustic calm
which still, in spite of all, we look on with a tender, half-mournful
yearning, and associate with--peace.

It was dusk when gigs and chaises, dog-carts and clumsy farmers'
phaetons, began to rattle through the village street, and under the
windows of the Sun Inn; deeper dusk still when an open carriage and four
drew suddenly up beneath the rocking sign-post.

It was Sir Michael Audley's barouche which came to so sudden a stop
before the little inn. The harness of one of the leaders had become out
of order, and the foremost postillion dismounted to set it right.

"Why, it's my uncle," cried Robert Audley, as the carriage stopped.
"I'll run down and speak to him."

George lit another cigar, and, sheltered by the window-curtains, looked
out at the little party. Alicia sat with her back to the horses, and he
could perceive, even in the dusk, that she was a handsome brunette; but
Lady Audley was seated on the side of the carriage furthest from the
inn, and he could see nothing of the fair-haired paragon of whom he had
heard so much.

"Why, Robert," exclaimed Sir Michael, as his nephew emerged from the
inn, "this is a surprise!"

"I have not come to intrude upon you at the Court, my dear uncle," said
the young man, as the baronet shook him by the hand in his own hearty
fashion. "Essex is my native county, you know, and about this time of
year I generally have a touch of homesickness; so George and I have come
down to the inn for two or three day's fishing."

"George--George who?"

"George Talboys."

"What, has he come?" cried Alicia. "I'm so glad; for I'm dying to see
this handsome young widower."

"Are you, Alicia?" said her cousin, "Then egad, I'll run and fetch him,
and introduce you to him at once."

Now, so complete was the dominion which Lady Audley had, in her own
childish, unthinking way, obtained over her devoted husband, that it was
very rarely that the baronet's eyes were long removed from his wife's
pretty face. When Robert, therefore, was about to re-enter the inn, it
needed but the faintest elevation of Lucy's eyebrows, with a charming
expression of weariness and terror, to make her husband aware that she
did not want to be bored by an introduction to Mr. George Talboys.

"Never mind to-night, Bob," he said. "My wife is a little tired after
our long day's pleasure. Bring your friend to dinner to-morrow, and then
he and Alicia can make each other's acquaintance. Come round and speak
to Lady Audley, and then we'll drive home."

My lady was so terribly fatigued that she could only smile sweetly, and
hold out a tiny gloved hand to her nephew by marriage.

"You will come and dine with us to-morrow, and bring your interesting
friend?" she said, in a low and tired voice. She had been the chief
attraction of the race-course, and was wearied out by the exertion of
fascinating half the county.

"It's a wonder she didn't treat you to her never-ending laugh,"
whispered Alicia, as she leaned over the carriage-door to bid Robert
good-night; "but I dare say she reserves that for your delectation
to-morrow. I suppose _you_ are fascinated as well as everybody else?"
added the young lady, rather snappishly.

"She is a lovely creature, certainly," murmured Robert, with placid
admiration.

"Oh, of course! Now, she is the first woman of whom I ever heard you say
a civil word, Robert Audley. I'm sorry to find you can only admire wax
dolls."

Poor Alicia had had many skirmishes with her cousin upon that particular
temperament of his, which, while it enabled him to go through life with
perfect content and tacit enjoyment, entirely precluded his feeling one
spark of enthusiasm upon any subject whatever.

"As to his ever falling in love," thought the young lady sometimes, "the
idea is preposterous. If all the divinities on earth were ranged before
him, waiting for his sultanship to throw the handkerchief, he would only
lift his eyebrows to the middle of his forehead, and tell them to
scramble for it."

But, for once in his life, Robert was almost enthusiastic.

"She's the prettiest little creature you ever saw in your life, George,"
he cried, when the carriage had driven off and he returned to his
friend. "Such blue eyes, such ringlets, such a ravishing smile, such a
fairy-like bonnet--all of a-tremble with heart's-ease and dewy spangles,
shining out of a cloud of gauze. George Talboys, I feel like the hero of
a French novel: I am falling in love with my aunt."

The widower only sighed and puffed his cigar fiercely out of the open
window. Perhaps he was thinking of that far-away time--little better
than five years ago, in fact; but such an age gone by to him--when he
first met the woman for whom he had worn crape round his hat three days
before. They returned, all those old unforgotten feelings; they came
back, with the scene of their birth-place. Again he lounged with his
brother officers upon the shabby pier at the shabby watering-place,
listening to a dreary band with a cornet that was a note and a half
flat. Again he heard the old operatic airs, and again _she_ came
tripping toward him, leaning on her old father's arm, and pretending
(with such a charming, delicious, serio-comic pretense) to be listening
to the music, and quite unaware of the admiration of half a dozen
open-mouthed cavalry officers. Again the old fancy came back that she
was something too beautiful for earth, or earthly uses, and that to
approach her was to walk in a higher atmosphere and to breathe a purer
air. And since this she had been his wife, and the mother of his child.
She lay in the little churchyard at Ventnor, and only a year ago he had
given the order for her tombstone. A few slow, silent tears dropped upon
his waistcoat as he thought of these things in the quiet and darkening
room.

Lady Audley was so exhausted when she reached home, that she excused
herself from the dinner-table, and retired at once to her dressing-room,
attended by her maid, Phoebe Marks.

She was a little capricious in her conduct to this maid--sometimes very
confidential, sometimes rather reserved; but she was a liberal mistress,
and the girl had every reason to be satisfied with her situation.

This evening, in spite of her fatigue, she was in extremely high
spirits, and gave an animated account of the races, and the company
present at them.

"I am tired to death, though, Phoebe," she said, by-and-by. "I am afraid
I must look a perfect fright, after a day in the hot sun."

There were lighted candles on each side of the glass before which Lady
Audley was standing unfastening her dress. She looked full at her maid
as she spoke, her blue eyes clear and bright, and the rosy childish lips
puckered into an arch smile.

"You are a little pale, my lady," answered the girl, "but you look as
pretty as ever."

"That's right, Phoebe," she said, flinging herself into a chair, and
throwing back her curls at the maid, who stood, brush in hand, ready to
arrange the luxuriant hair for the night. "Do you know, Phoebe, I have
heard some people say that you and I are alike?"

"I have heard them say so, too, my lady," said the girl, quietly "but
they must be very stupid to say it, for your ladyship is a beauty, and I
am a poor, plain creature."

"Not at all, Phoebe," said the little lady, superbly; "you _are_ like
me, and your features are very nice; it is only color that you want. My
hair is pale yellow shot with gold, and yours is drab; my eyebrows and
eyelashes are dark brown, and yours are almost--I scarcely like to say
it, but they're almost white, my dear Phoebe. Your complexion is sallow,
and mine is pink and rosy. Why, with a bottle of hair-dye, such as we
see advertised in the papers, and a pot of rouge, you'd be as
good-looking as I, any day, Phoebe."

She prattled on in this way for a long time, talking of a hundred
different subjects, and ridiculing the people she had met at the races,
for her maid's amusement. Her step-daughter came into the dressing-room
to bid her good-night, and found the maid and mistress laughing aloud
over one of the day's adventures. Alicia, who was never familiar with
her servants, withdrew in disgust at my lady's frivolity.

"Go on brushing my hair, Phoebe," Lady Audley said, every time the girl
was about to complete her task, "I quite enjoy a chat with you."

At last, just as she had dismissed her maid, she suddenly called her
back. "Phoebe Marks," she said, "I want you to do me a favor."

"Yes, my lady."

"I want you to go to London by the first train to-morrow morning to
execute a little commission for me. You may take a day's holiday
afterward, as I know you have friends in town; and I shall give you a
five-pound note if you do what I want, and keep your own counsel about
it."

"Yes, my lady."

"See that that door is securely shut, and come and sit on this stool at
my feet."

The girl obeyed. Lady Audley smoothed her maid's neutral-tinted hair
with her plump, white, and bejeweled hand as she reflected for a few
moments.

"And now listen, Phoebe. What I want you to do is very simple."

It was so simple that it was told in five minutes, and then Lady Audley
retired into her bed-room, and curled herself up cozily under the
eider-down quilt. She was a chilly creature, and loved to bury herself
in soft wrappings of satin and fur.

"Kiss me, Phoebe," she said, as the girl arranged the curtains. "I hear
Sir Michael's step in the anteroom; you will meet him as you go out, and
you may as well tell him that you are going up by the first train
to-morrow morning to get my dress from Madam Frederick for the dinner at
Morton Abbey."

It was late the next morning when Lady Audley went down to
breakfast--past ten o'clock. While she was sipping her coffee a servant
brought her a sealed packet, and a book for her to sign.

"A telegraphic message!" she cried; for the convenient word telegram had
not yet been invented. "What can be the matter?"

She looked up at her husband with wide-open, terrified eyes, and seemed
half afraid to break the seal. The envelope was addressed to Miss Lucy
Graham, at Mr. Dawson's, and had been sent on from the village.

"Read it, my darling," he said, "and do not be alarmed; it may be
nothing of any importance."

It came from a Mrs. Vincent, the schoolmistress with whom she had lived
before entering Mr. Dawson's family. The lady was dangerously ill, and
implored her old pupil to go and see her.

"Poor soul! she always meant to leave me her money," said Lucy, with a
mournful smile. "She has never heard of the change in my fortunes. Dear
Sir Michael, I must go to her."

"To be sure you must, dearest. If she was kind to my poor girl in her
adversity, she has a claim upon her prosperity that shall never be
forgotten. Put on your bonnet, Lucy; we shall be in time to catch the
express."

"You will go with me?"

"Of course, my darling. Do you suppose I would let you go alone?"

"I was sure you would go with me," she said, thoughtfully.

"Does your friend send any address?"

"No; but she always lived at Crescent Villa, West Brompton; and no doubt
she lives there still."

There was only time for Lady Audley to hurry on her bonnet and shawl
before she heard the carriage drive round to the door, and Sir Michael
calling to her at the foot of the staircase.

Her suite of rooms, as I have said, opened one out of another, and
terminated in an octagon antechamber hung with oil-paintings. Even in
her haste she paused deliberately at the door of this room,
double-locked it, and dropped the key into her pocket. This door once
locked cut off all access to my lady's apartments.




CHAPTER VIII.

BEFORE THE STORM.


So the dinner at Audley Court was postponed, and Miss Alicia had to wait
still longer for an introduction to the handsome young widower, Mr.
George Talboys.

I am afraid, if the real truth is to be told, there was, perhaps,
something of affectation in the anxiety this young lady expressed to
make George's acquaintance; but if poor Alicia for a moment calculated
upon arousing any latent spark of jealousy lurking in her cousin's
breast by this exhibition of interest, she was not so well acquainted
with Robert Audley's disposition as she might have been. Indolent,
handsome, and indifferent, the young barrister took life as altogether
too absurd a mistake for any one event in its foolish course to be for a
moment considered seriously by a sensible man.

His pretty, gipsy-faced cousin might have been over head and ears in
love with him; and she might have told him so, in some charming,
roundabout, womanly fashion, a hundred times a day for all the three
hundred and sixty-five days in the year; but unless she had waited for
some privileged 29th of February, and walked straight up to him, saying,
"Robert, please will you marry me?" I very much doubt if he would ever
have discovered the state of her feelings.

Again, had he been in love with her himself, I fancy that the tender
passion would, with him, have been so vague and feeble a sentiment that
he might have gone down to his grave with a dim sense of some uneasy
sensation which might be love or indigestion, and with, beyond this, no
knowledge whatever of his state.

So it was not the least use, my poor Alicia, to ride about the lanes
around Audley during those three days which the two young men spent in
Essex; it was wasted trouble to wear that pretty cavalier hat and plume,
and to be always, by the most singular of chances, meeting Robert and
his friend. The black curls (nothing like Lady Audley's feathery
ringlets, but heavy clustering locks, that clung about your slender
brown throat), the red and pouting lips, the nose inclined to be
_retrousse_, the dark complexion, with its bright crimson flush, always
ready to glance up like a signal light in a dusky sky, when you came
suddenly upon your apathetic cousin--all this coquettish _espiegle_,
brunette beauty was thrown away upon the dull eyes of Robert Audley, and
you might as well have taken your rest in the cool drawing-room at the
Court, instead of working your pretty mare to death under the hot
September sun.

Now fishing, except to the devoted disciple of Izaak Walton, is not the
most lively of occupations; therefore, it is scarcely, perhaps, to be
wondered that on the day after Lady Audley's departure, the two young
men (one of whom was disabled by that heart wound which he bore so
quietly, from really taking pleasure in anything, and the other of whom
looked upon almost all pleasure as a negative kind of trouble) began to
grow weary of the shade of the willows overhanging the winding streams
about Audley.

"Figtree Court is not gay in the long vacation," said Robert,
reflectively: "but I think, upon the whole, it's better than this; at
any rate, it's near a tobacconist's," he added, puffing resignedly at an
execrable cigar procured from the landlord of the Sun Inn.

George Talboys, who had only consented to the Essex expedition in
passive submission to his friend, was by no means inclined to object to
their immediate return to London. "I shall be glad to get back, Bob," he
said, "for I want to take a run down to Southampton; I haven't seen the
little one for upward of a month."

He always spoke of his son as "the little one;" always spoke of him
mournfully rather than hopefully. He accounted for this by saying that
he had a fancy that the child would never learn to love him; and worse
even than this fancy, a dim presentiment that he would not live to see
his little Georgey reach manhood.

"I'm not a romantic man, Bob," he would say sometimes, "and I never read
a line of poetry in my life that was any more to me than so many words
and so much jingle; but a feeling has come over me, since my wife's
death, that I am like a man standing upon a long, low shore, with
hideous cliffs frowning down upon him from behind, and the rising tide
crawling slowly but surely about his feet. It seems to grow nearer and
nearer every day, that black, pitiless tide; not rushing upon me with a
great noise and a mighty impetus, but crawling, creeping, stealing,
gliding toward me, ready to close in above my head when I am least
prepared for the end."

Robert Audley stared at his friend in silent amazement; and, after a
pause of profound deliberation, said solemnly, "George Talboys, I could
understand this if you had been eating heavy suppers. Cold pork, now,
especially if underdone, might produce this sort of thing. You want
change of air, my dear boy; you want the refreshing breezes of Figtree
Court, and the soothing air of Fleet street. Or, stay," he added,
suddenly, "I have it! You've been smoking our friend the landlord's
cigars; that accounts for everything."

They met Alicia Audley on her mare about half an hour after they had
come to the determination of leaving Essex early the next morning. The
young lady was very much surprised and disappointed at hearing her
cousin's determination, and for that very reason pretended to take the
matter with supreme indifference.

"You are very soon tired of Audley, Robert," she said, carelessly; "but
of course you have no friends here, except your relations at the Court;
while in London, no doubt, you have the most delightful society and--"

"I get good tobacco," murmured Robert, interrupting his cousin. "Audley
is the dearest old place, but when a man has to smoke dried cabbage
leaves, you know, Alicia--"

"Then you are really going to-morrow morning?"

"Positively--by the express train that leaves at 10.50."

"Then Lady Audley will lose an introduction to Mr. Talboys, and Mr.
Talboys will lose the chance of seeing the prettiest woman in Essex."

"Really--" stammered George.

"The prettiest woman in Essex would have a poor chance of getting much
admiration out of my friend, George Talboys," said Robert. "His heart is
at Southampton, where he has a curly-headed little urchin, about as high
as his knee, who calls him 'the big gentleman,' and asks him for
sugar-plums."

"I am going to write to my step-mother by to-night's post," said Alicia.
"She asked me particularly in her letter how long you were going to
stop, and whether there was any chance of her being back in time to
receive you."

Miss Audley took a letter from the pocket of her riding-jacket as she
spoke--a pretty, fairy-like note, written on shining paper of a peculiar
creamy hue.

"She says in her postcript, 'Be sure you answer my question about Mr.
Audley and his friend, you volatile, forgetful Alicia!'"

"What a pretty hand she writes!" said Robert, as his cousin folded the
note.

"Yes, it is pretty, is it not? Look at it, Robert."

She put the letter into his hand, and he contemplated it lazily for a
few minutes, while Alicia patted the graceful neck of her chestnut mare,
which was anxious to be off once more.

"Presently, Atalanta, presently. Give me back my note, Bob."

"It is the prettiest, most coquettish little hand I ever saw. Do you
know, Alicia, I have no great belief in those fellows who ask you for
thirteen postage stamps, and offer to tell you what you have never been
able to find out yourself; but upon my word I think that if I had never
seen your aunt, I should know what she was like by this slip of paper.
Yes, here it all is--the feathery, gold-shot, flaxen curls, the penciled
eyebrows, the tiny, straight nose, the winning, childish smile; all to
be guessed in these few graceful up-strokes and down-strokes. George,
look here!"

But absent-minded and gloomy George Talboys had strolled away along the
margin of the ditch, and stood striking the bulrushes with his cane,
half a dozen paces away from Robert and Alicia.

"Nevermind," said the young lady, impatiently; for she by no means
relished this long disquisition upon my lady's note. "Give me the
letter, and let me go; it's past eight, and I must answer it by
to-night's post. Come, Atalanta! Good-by, Robert--good-by, Mr. Talboys.
A pleasant journey to town."

The chestnut mare cantered briskly through the lane, and Miss Audley was
out of sight before those two big, bright tears that stood in her eyes
for one moment, before her pride sent them, back again, rose from her
angry heart.

"To have only one cousin in the world," she cried, passionately, "my
nearest relation after papa, and for him to care about as much for me as
he would for a dog!"

By the merest of accidents, however, Robert and his friend did not go by
the 10.50 express on the following morning, for the young barrister
awoke with such a splitting headache, that he asked George to send him a
cup of the strongest green tea that had ever been made at the Sun, and
to be furthermore so good as to defer their journey until the next day.
Of course George assented, and Robert Audley spent the forenoon in a
darkened room with a five-days'-old Chelmsford paper to entertain
himself withal.

"It's nothing but the cigars, George," he said, repeatedly. "Get me out
of the place without my seeing the landlord; for if that man and I meet
there will be bloodshed."

Fortunately for the peace of Audley, it happened to be market-day at
Chelmsford; and the worthy landlord had ridden off in his chaise-cart to
purchase supplies for his house--among other things, perhaps, a fresh
stock of those very cigars which had been so fatal in their effect upon
Robert.

The young men spent a dull, dawdling, stupid, unprofitable day; and
toward dusk Mr. Audley proposed that they should stroll down to the
Court, and ask Alicia to take them over the house.

"It will kill a couple of hours, you know, George: and it seems a great
pity to drag you away from Audley without having shown you the old
place, which, I give you my honor, is very well worth seeing."

The sun was low in the skies as they took a short cut through the
meadows, and crossed a stile into the avenue leading to the archway--a
lurid, heavy-looking, ominous sunset, and a deathly stillness in the
air, which frightened the birds that had a mind to sing, and left the
field open to a few captious frogs croaking in the ditches. Still as the
atmosphere was, the leaves rustled with that sinister, shivering motion
which proceeds from no outer cause, but is rather an instinctive shudder
of the frail branches, prescient of a coming storm. That stupid clock,
which knew no middle course, and always skipped from one hour to the
other, pointed to seven as the young men passed under the archway; but,
for all that, it was nearer eight.

They found Alicia in the lime-walk, wandering listlessly up and down
under the black shadow of the trees, from which every now and then a
withered leaf flapped slowly to the ground.

Strange to say, George Talboys, who very seldom observed anything, took
particular notice of this place.

"It ought to be an avenue in a churchyard," he said. "How peacefully the
dead might sleep under this somber shade! I wish the churchyard at
Ventnor was like this."

They walked on to the ruined well; and Alicia told them some old legend
connected with the spot--some gloomy story, such as those always
attached to an old house, as if the past were one dark page of sorrow
and crime.

"We want to see the house before it is dark, Alicia," said Robert.

"Then we must be quick." she answered. "Come."

She led the way through an open French window, modernized a few years
before, into the library, and thence to the hall.

In the hall they passed my lady's pale-faced maid, who looked furtively
under her white eyelashes at the two young men.

They were going up-stairs, when Alicia turned and spoke to the girl.

"After we have been in the drawing-room, I should like to show these
gentlemen Lady Audley's rooms. Are they in good order, Phoebe?"

"Yes, miss; but the door of the anteroom is locked, and I fancy that my
lady has taken the key to London."

"Taken the key! Impossible!" cried Alicia.

"Indeed, miss, I think she has. I cannot find it, and it always used to
be in the door."

"I declare," said Alicia, impatiently, "that is not at all unlike my
lady to have taken this silly freak into her head. I dare say she was
afraid we should go into her rooms, and pry about among her pretty
dresses, and meddle with her jewelry. It is very provoking, for the best
pictures in the house are in that antechamber. There is her own
portrait, too, unfinished but wonderfully like."

"Her portrait!" exclaimed Robert Audley. "I would give anything to see
it, for I have only an imperfect notion of her face. Is there no other
way of getting into the room, Alicia?"

"Another way?"

"Yes; is there any door, leading through some of the other rooms, by
which we can contrive to get into hers?"

His cousin shook her head, and conducted them into a corridor where
there were some family portraits. She showed them a tapestried chamber,
the large figures upon the faded canvas looking threatening in the dusky
light.

"That fellow with the battle-ax looks as if he wanted to split George's
head open," said Mr. Audley, pointing to a fierce warrior, whose
uplifted arm appeared above George Talboys' dark hair.

"Come out of this room, Alicia," added the young man, nervously; "I
believe it's damp, or else haunted. Indeed, I believe all ghosts to be
the result of damp or dyspepsia. You sleep in a damp bed--you awake
suddenly in the dead of the night with a cold shiver, and see an old
lady in the court costume of George the First's time, sitting at the
foot of the bed. The old lady's indigestion, and the cold shiver is a
damp sheet."

There were lighted candles in the drawing-room. No new-fangled lamps had
ever made their appearance at Audley Court. Sir Michael's rooms were
lighted by honest, thick, yellow-looking wax candles, in massive silver
candlesticks, and in sconces against the walls.

There was very little to see in the drawing-room; and George Talboys
soon grew tired of staring at the handsome modern furniture, and at a
few pictures of some of the Academicians.

"Isn't there a secret passage, or an old oak chest, or something of that
kind, somewhere about the place, Alicia?" asked Robert.

"To be sure!" cried Miss Audley, with a vehemence that startled her
cousin; "of course. Why didn't I think of it before? How stupid of me,
to be sure!"

"Why stupid?"

"Because, if you don't mind crawling upon your hands and knees, you can
see my lady's apartments, for that passage communicates with her
dressing-room. She doesn't know of it herself, I believe. How astonished
she'd be if some black-visored burglar, with a dark-lantern, were to
rise through the floor some night as she sat before her looking-glass,
having her hair dressed for a party!"

"Shall we try the secret passage, George?" asked Mr. Audley.

"Yes, if you wish it."

Alicia led them into the room which had once been her nursery. It was
now disused, except on very rare occasions when the house was full of
company.

Robert Audley lifted a corner of the carpet, according to his cousin's
directions, and disclosed a rudely-cut trap-door in the oak flooring.

"Now listen to me," said Alicia. "You must let yourself down by the
hands into the passage, which is about four feet high; stoop your head,
walk straight along it till you come to a sharp turn which will take you
to the left, and at the extreme end of it you will find a short ladder
below a trap-door like this, which you will have to unbolt; that door
opens into the flooring of my lady's dressing-room, which is only
covered with a square Persian carpet that you can easily manage to
raise. You understand me?"

"Perfectly."

"Then take the light; Mr. Talboys will follow you. I give you twenty
minutes for your inspection of the paintings--that is, about a minute
apiece--and at the end of that time I shall expect to see you return."

Robert obeyed her implicitly, and George submissively following his
friend, found himself, in five minutes, standing amidst the elegant
disorder of Lady Audley's dressing-room.

She had left the house in a hurry on her unlooked-for journey to London,
and the whole of her glittering toilette apparatus lay about on the
marble dressing-table. The atmosphere of the room was almost oppressive
for the rich odors of perfumes in bottles whose gold stoppers had not
been replaced. A bunch of hot-house flowers was withering upon a tiny
writing-table. Two or three handsome dresses lay in a heap upon the
ground, and the open doors of a wardrobe revealed the treasures within.
Jewelry, ivory-backed hair-brushes, and exquisite china were scattered
here and there about the apartment. George Talboys saw his bearded face
and tall, gaunt figure reflected in the glass, and wondered to see how
out of place he seemed among all these womanly luxuries.

They went from the dressing-room to the boudoir, and through the boudoir
into the ante-chamber, in which there were, as Alicia had said, about
twenty valuable paintings, besides my lady's portrait.

My lady's portrait stood on an easel, covered with a green baize in the
center of the octagonal chamber. It had been a fancy of the artist to
paint her standing in this very room, and to make his background a
faithful reproduction of the pictured walls. I am afraid the young man
belonged to the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, for he had spent a most
unconscionable time upon the accessories of this picture--upon my lady's
crispy ringlets and the heavy folds of her crimson velvet dress.

The two young men looked at the paintings on the walls first, leaving
this unfinished portrait for a _bonne bouche_.

By this time it was dark, the candle carried by Robert only making one
nucleus of light as he moved about holding it before the pictures one by
one. The broad, bare window looked out upon the pale sky, tinged with
the last cold flicker of the twilight. The ivy rustled against the glass
with the same ominous shiver as that which agitated every leaf in the
garden, prophetic of the storm that was to come.

"There are our friend's eternal white horses," said Robert, standing
beside a Wouvermans. "Nicholas Poussin--Salvator--ha--hum! Now for the
portrait."

He paused with his hand on the baize, and solemnly addressed his friend.

"George Talboys," he said, "we have between us only one wax candle, a
very inadequate light with which to look at a painting. Let me,
therefore, request that you will suffer us to look at it one at a time;
if there is one thing more disagreeable than another, it is to have a
person dodging behind your back and peering over your shoulder, when
you're trying to see what a picture's made of."

George fell back immediately. He took no more interest in any lady's
picture than in all the other wearinesses of this troublesome world. He
fell back, and leaning his forehead against the window-panes, looked out
at the night.

When he turned round he saw that Robert had arranged the easel very
conveniently, and that he had seated himself on a chair before it for
the purpose of contemplating the painting at his leisure.

He rose as George turned round.

"Now, then, for your turn, Talboys," he said. "It's an extraordinary
picture."

He took George's place at the window, and George seated himself in the
chair before the easel.

Yes, the painter must have been a pre-Raphaelite. No one but a
pre-Raphaelite would have painted, hair by hair, those feathery masses
of ringlets, with every glimmer of gold, and every shadow of pale brown.
No one but a pre-Raphaelite would have so exaggerated every attribute of
that delicate face as to give a lurid brightness to the blonde
complexion, and a strange, sinister light to the deep blue eyes. No one
but a pre-Raphaelite could have given to that pretty pouting mouth the
hard and almost wicked look it had in the portrait.

It was so like, and yet so unlike. It was as if you had burned
strange-colored fires before my lady's face, and by their influence
brought out new lines and new expressions never seen in it before. The
perfection of feature, the brilliancy of coloring, were there; but I
suppose the painter had copied quaint mediaeval monstrosities until his
brain had grown bewildered, for my lady, in his portrait of her, had
something of the aspect of a beautiful fiend.

Her crimson dress, exaggerated like all the rest in this strange
picture, hung about her in folds that looked like flames, her fair head
peeping out of the lurid mass of color as if out of a raging furnace.
Indeed the crimson dress, the sunshine on the face, the red gold
gleaming in the yellow hair, the ripe scarlet of the pouting lips, the
glowing colors of each accessory of the minutely painted background, all
combined to render the first effect of the painting by no means an
agreeable one.

But strange as the picture was, it could not have made any great
impression on George Talboys, for he sat before it for about a quarter
of an hour without uttering a word--only staring blankly at the painted
canvas, with the candlestick grasped in his strong right hand, and his
left arm hanging loosely by his side. He sat so long in this attitude,
that Robert turned round at last.

"Why, George, I thought you had gone to sleep!"

"I had almost."

"You've caught a cold from standing in that damp tapestried room. Mark
my words, George Talboys, you've caught a cold; you're as hoarse as a
raven. But come along."

Robert Audley took the candle from his friend's hand, and crept back
through the secret passage, followed by George--very quiet, but scarcely
more quiet than usual.

They found Alicia in the nursery waiting for them.

"Well?" she said, interrogatively.

"We managed it capitally. But I don't like the portrait; there's
something odd about it."

"There is," said Alicia; "I've a strange fancy on that point. I think
that sometimes a painter is in a manner inspired, and is able to see,
through the normal expression of the face, another expression that is
equally a part of it, though not to be perceived by common eyes. We have
never seen my lady look as she does in that picture; but I think that
she _could_ look so."

"Alicia," said Robert Audley, imploringly, "don't be German!"

"But, Robert--"

"Don't be German, Alicia, if you love me. The picture is--the picture:
and my lady is--my lady. That's my way of taking things, and I'm not
metaphysical; don't unsettle me."

He repeated this several times with an air of terror that was perfectly
sincere; and then, having borrowed an umbrella in case of being
overtaken by the coming storm, left the Court, leading passive George
Talboys away with him. The one hand of the stupid clock had skipped to
nine by the time they reached the archway; but before they could pass
under its shadow they had to step aside to allow a carriage to dash past
them. It was a fly from the village, but Lady Audley's fair face peeped
out at the window. Dark as it was, she could see the two figures of the
young men black against the dusk.

"Who is that?" she asked, putting out her head. "Is it the gardener?"

"No, my dear aunt," said Robert, laughing; "it is your most dutiful
nephew."

He and George stopped by the archway while the fly drew up at the door,
and the surprised servants came out to welcome their master and
mistress.

"I think the storm will hold off to-night," said the baronet looking up
at the sky; "but we shall certainly have it tomorrow."




CHAPTER IX.

AFTER THE STORM.


Sir Michael was mistaken in his prophecy upon the weather. The storm did
not hold off until next day, but burst with terrible fury over the
village of Audley about half an hour before midnight.

Robert Audley took the thunder and lightning with the same composure
with which he accepted all the other ills of life. He lay on a sofa in
the sitting-room, ostensibly reading the five-days-old Chelmsford paper,
and regaling himself occasionally with a few sips from a large tumbler
of cold punch. But the storm had quite a different effect upon George
Talboys. His friend was startled when he looked at the young man's white
face as he sat opposite the open window listening to the thunder, and
staring at the black sky, rent every now and then by forked streaks of
steel-blue lightning.

"George," said Robert, after watching him for some time, "are you
frightened of the lightning?"

"No," he answered, curtly.

"But, dear boy, some of the most courageous men have been frightened of
it. It is scarcely to be called a fear: it is constitutional. I am sure
you are frightened of it."

"No, I am not."

"But, George, if you could see yourself, white and haggard, with your
great hollow eyes staring out at the sky as if they were fixed upon a
ghost. I tell you I know that you are frightened."

"And I tell you that I am not."

"George Talboys, you are not only afraid of the lightning, but you are
savage with yourself for being afraid, and with me for telling you of
your fear."

"Robert Audley, if you say another word to me, I shall knock you down,"
cried George, furiously; having said which, Mr. Talboys strode out of
the room, banging the door after him with a violence that shook the
house. Those inky clouds, which had shut in the sultry earth as if with
a roof of hot iron, poured out their blackness in a sudden deluge as
George left the room; but if the young man was afraid of the lightning,
he certainly was not afraid of the rain; for he walked straight
down-stairs to the inn door, and went out into the wet high road. He
walked up and down, up and down, in the soaking shower for about twenty
minutes, and then, re-entering the inn, strode up to his bedroom.

Robert Audley met him on the landing, with his hair beaten about his
white face, and his garments dripping wet.

"Are you going to bed, George?"

"Yes."

"But you have no candle."

"I don't want one."

"But look at your clothes, man! Do you see the wet streaming down your
coat-sleeves? What on earth made you go out upon such a night?"

"I am tired, and want to go to bed--don't bother me."

"You'll take some hot brandy-and-water, George?"

Robert Audley stood in his friend's way as he spoke, anxious to prevent
his going to bed in the state he was in; but George pushed him fiercely
aside, and, striding past him, said, in the same hoarse voice Robert had
noticed at the Court:

"Let me alone, Robert Audley, and keep clear of me if you can."

Robert followed George to his bedroom, but the young man banged the door
in his face, so there was nothing for it but to leave Mr. Talboys to
himself, to recover his temper as best he might.

"He was irritated at my noticing his terror of the lightning," though
Robert, as he calmly retired to rest, serenely indifferent to the
thunder, which seemed to shake him in his bed, and the lightning playing
fitfully round the razors in his open dressing-case.

The storm rolled away from the quiet village of Audley, and when Robert
awoke the next morning it was to see bright sunshine, and a peep of
cloudless sky between the white curtains of his bedroom window.

It was one of those serene and lovely mornings that sometimes succeed a
storm. The birds sung loud and cheerily, the yellow corn uplifted itself
in the broad fields, and waved proudly after its sharp tussle with the
tempest, which had done its best to beat down the heavy ears with cruel
wind and driving rain half the night through. The vine-leaves clustering
round Robert's window fluttered with a joyous rustling, shaking the
rain-drops in diamond showers from every spray and tendril.

Robert Audley found his friend waiting for him at the breakfast-table.

George was very pale, but perfectly tranquil--if anything, indeed, more
cheerful than usual.

He shook Robert by the hand with something of that hearty manner for
which he had been distinguished before the one affliction of his life
overtook and shipwrecked him.

"Forgive me, Bob," he said, frankly, "for my surly temper of last night.
You were quite correct in your assertion; the thunderstorm _did_ upset
me. It always had the same effect upon me in my youth."

"Poor old boy! Shall we go up by the express, or shall we stop here and
dine with my uncle to-night?" asked Robert.

"To tell the truth, Bob, I would rather do neither. It's a glorious
morning. Suppose we stroll about all day, take another turn with the rod
and line, and go up to town by the train that leaves here at 6.15 in the
evening?"

Robert Audley would have assented to a far more disagreeable proposition
than this, rather than have taken the trouble to oppose his friend, so
the matter was immediately agreed upon; and after they had finished
their breakfast, and ordered a four o'clock dinner, George Talboys took
the fishing-rod across his broad shoulders, and strode out of the house
with his friend and companion.

But if the equable temperament of Mr. Robert Audley had been undisturbed
by the crackling peals of thunder that shook the very foundations of the
Sun Inn, it had not been so with the more delicate sensibilties of his
uncle's young wife. Lady Audley confessed herself terribly frightened of
the lightning. She had her bedstead wheeled into a corner of the room,
and with the heavy curtains drawn tightly round her, she lay with her
face buried in the pillow, shuddering convulsively at every sound of the
tempest without. Sir Michael, whose stout heart had never known a fear,
almost trembled for this fragile creature, whom it was his happy
privilege to protect and defend. My lady would not consent to undress
till nearly three o'clock in the morning, when the last lingering peal
of thunder had died away among the distant hills. Until that hour she
lay in the handsome silk dress in which she had traveled, huddled
together among the bedclothes, only looking up now and then with a
scared face to ask if the storm was over.

Toward four o'clock her husband, who spent the night in watching by her
bedside, saw her drop off into a deep sleep, from which she did not
awake for nearly five hours.

But she came into the breakfast-room, at half-past nine o'clock, singing
a little Scotch melody, her cheeks tinged with as delicate a pink as the
pale hue of her muslin morning dress. Like the birds and the flowers,
she seemed to recover her beauty and joyousness in the morning sunshine.
She tripped lightly out onto the lawn, gathering a last lingering
rosebud here and there, and a sprig or two of geranium, and returning
through the dewy grass, warbling long cadences for very happiness of
heart, and looking as fresh and radiant as the flowers in her hands. The
baronet caught her in his strong arms as she came in through the open
window.

"My pretty one," he said, "my darling, what happiness to see you your
own merry self again! Do you know, Lucy, that once last night, when you
looked out through the dark-green bed-curtains, with your poor, white
face, and the purple rims round your hollow eyes, I had almost a
difficulty to recognize my little wife in that terrified,
agonized-looking creature, crying out about the storm. Thank God for the
morning sun, which has brought back the rosy cheeks and bright smile! I
hope to Heaven, Lucy, I shall never again see you look as you did last
night."

She stood on tiptoe to kiss him, and then was only tall enough to reach
his white beard. She told him, laughing, that she had always been a
silly, frightened creature--frightened of dogs, frightened of cattle,
frightened of a thunderstorm, frightened of a rough sea. "Frightened of
everything and everybody but my dear, noble, handsome husband," she
said.

She had found the carpet in her dressing-room disarranged, and had
inquired into the mystery of the secret passage. She chid Miss Alicia in
a playful, laughing way, for her boldness in introducing two great men
into my lady's rooms.

"And they had the audacity to look at my picture, Alicia," she said,
with mock indignation. "I found the baize thrown on the ground, and a
great man's glove on the carpet. Look!"

"She held up a thick driving glove as she spoke. It was George's, which
he had dropped looking at the picture.

"I shall go up to the Sun, and ask those boys to dinner," Sir Michael
said, as he left the Court upon his morning walk around his farm.

Lady Audley flitted from room to room in the bright September
sunshine--now sitting down to the piano to trill out a ballad, or the
first page of an Italian bravura, or running with rapid fingers through
a brilliant waltz--now hovering about a stand of hot-house flowers,
doing amateur gardening with a pair of fairy-like, silver-mounted
embroidery scissors--now strolling into her dressing-room to talk to
Phoebe Marks, and have her curls rearranged for the third or fourth
time; for the ringlets were always getting into disorder, and gave no
little trouble to Lady Audley's maid.

My dear lady seemed, on this particular September day, restless from
very joyousness of spirit, and unable to stay long in one place, or
occupy herself with one thing.

While Lady Audley amused herself in her own frivolous fashion, the two
young men strolled slowly along the margin of the stream until they
reached a shady corner where the water was deep and still, and the long
branches of the willows trailed into the brook.

George Talboys took the fishing-rod, while Robert stretched himself at
full length on a railway rug, and balancing his hat upon his nose as a
screen from the sunshine, fell fast asleep.

Those were happy fish in the stream on the banks of which Mr. Talboys
was seated. They might have amused themselves to their hearts' content
with timid nibbles at this gentleman's bait without in any manner
endangering their safety; for George only stared vacantly in the water,
holding his rod in a loose, listless hand, and with a strange, far-away
look in his eyes. As the church clock struck two he threw down his rod,
and, striding away along the bank, left Robert Audley to enjoy a nap
which, according to that gentleman's habits, was by no means unlikely to
last for two or three hours. About a quarter of a mile further on George
crossed a rustic bridge, and struck into the meadows which led to Audley
Court.

The birds had sung so much all the morning, that they had, perhaps, by
this time grown tired; the lazy cattle were asleep in the meadows; Sir
Michael was still away on his morning's ramble; Miss Alicia had
scampered off an hour before on her chestnut mare; the servants were all
at dinner in the back part of the house; and my lady had strolled, book
in hand, into the shadowy lime-walk; so the gray old building had never
worn a more peaceful aspect than on that bright afternoon when George
Talboys walked across the lawn to ring a sonorous peal at the sturdy,
iron-bound oak door.

The servant who answered his summons told him that Sir Michael was out,
and my lady walking in the lime-tree avenue.

He looked a little disappointed at this intelligence, and muttering
something about wishing to see my lady, or going to look for my lady
(the servant did not clearly distinguish his words), strode away from
the door without leaving either card or message for the family.

It was full an hour and a half after this when Lady Audley returned to
the house, not coming from the lime-walk, but from exactly the opposite
direction, carrying her open book in her hand, and singing as she came.
Alicia had just dismounted from her mare, and stood in the low-arched
doorway, with her great Newfoundland dog by her side.

The dog, which had never liked my lady, showed his teeth with a
suppressed growl.

"Send that horrid animal away, Alicia," Lady Audley said, impatiently.
"The brute knows that I am frightened of him, and takes advantage of my
terror. And yet they call the creatures generous and noble-hearted! Bah,
Caesar! I hate you, and you hate me; and if you met me in the dark in
some narrow passage you would fly at my throat and strangle me, wouldn't
you?"

My lady, safely sheltered behind her step-daughter, shook her yellow
curls at the angry animal, and defied him maliciously.

"Do you know, Lady Audley, that Mr. Talboys, the young widower, has been
here asking for Sir Michael and you?"

Lucy Audley lifted her penciled eyebrows. "I thought they were coming to
dinner," she said. "Surely we shall have enough of them then."

She had a heap of wild autumn flowers in the skirt of her muslin dress.
She had come through the fields at the back of the Court, gathering the
hedge-row blossoms in her way. She ran lightly up the broad staircase to
her own rooms. George's glove lay on her boudoir table. Lady Audley rung
the bell violently, and it was answered by Phoebe Marks. "Take that
litter away," she said, sharply. The girl collected the glove and a few
withered flowers and torn papers lying on the table into her apron.

"What have you been doing all this morning?" asked my lady. "Not wasting
your time, I hope?"

"No, my lady, I have been altering the blue dress. It is rather dark on
this side of the house, so I took it up to my own room, and worked at
the window."

The girl was leaving the room as she spoke, but she turned around and
looked at Lady Audley as if waiting for further orders.

Lucy looked up at the same moment, and the eyes of the two women met.

"Phoebe Marks," said my lady, throwing herself into an easy-chair, and
trifling with the wild flowers in her lap, "you are a good, industrious
girl, and while I live and am prosperous, you shall never want a firm
friend or a twenty-pound note."




CHAPTER X.

MISSING.


When Robert Audley awoke he was surprised to see the fishing-rod lying
on the bank, the line trailing idly in the water, and the float bobbing
harmlessly up and down in the afternoon sunshine. The young barrister
was a long time stretching his arms and legs in various directions to
convince himself, by means of such exercise, that he still retained the
proper use of those members; then, with a mighty effort, he contrived to
rise from the grass, and having deliberately folded his railway rug into
a convenient shape for carrying over his shoulder, he strolled away to
look for George Talboys.

Once or twice he gave a sleepy shout, scarcely loud enough to scare the
birds in the branches above his head, or the trout in the stream at his
feet: but receiving no answer, grew tired of the exertion, and dawdled
on, yawning as he went, and still looking for George Talboys.

By-and-by he took out his watch, and was surprised to find that it was a
quarter past four.

"Why, the selfish beggar must have gone home to his dinner!" he
muttered, reflectively; "and yet that isn't much like him, for he seldom
remembers even his meals unless I jog his memory."

Even a good appetite, and the knowledge that his dinner would very
likely suffer by this delay, could not quicken Mr. Robert Audley's
constitutional dawdle, and by the time he strolled in at the front door
of the Sun, the clocks were striking five. He so fully expected to find
George Talboys waiting for him in the little sitting-room, that the
absence of that gentleman seemed to give the apartment a dreary look,
and Robert groaned aloud.

"This is lively!" he said. "A cold dinner, and nobody to eat it with!"

The landlord of the Sun came himself to apologize for his ruined dishes.

"As fine a pair of ducks, Mr. Audley, as ever you clapped eyes on, but
burnt up to a cinder, along of being kep' hot."

"Never mind the ducks," Robert said impatiently; "where's Mr. Talboys?"

"He ain't been in, sir, since you went out together this morning."

"What!" cried Robert. "Why, in heaven's name, what has the man done with
himself?"

He walked to the window and looked out upon the broad, white high road.
There was a wagon laden with trusses of hay crawling slowly past, the
lazy horses and the lazy wagoner drooping their heads with a weary stoop
under the afternoon's sunshine. There was a flock of sheep straggling
about the road, with a dog running himself into a fever in the endeavor
to keep them decently together. There were some bricklayers just
released from work--a tinker mending some kettles by the roadside; there
was a dog-cart dashing down the road, carrying the master of the Audley
hounds to his seven o'clock dinner; there were a dozen common village
sights and sounds that mixed themselves up into a cheerful bustle and
confusion; but there was no George Talboys.

"Of all the extraordinary things that ever happened to me in the whole
course of my life," said Mr. Robert Audley, "this is the most
miraculous!"

The landlord still in attendance, opened his eyes as Robert made this
remark. What could there be extraordinary in the simple fact of a
gentleman being late for his dinner?"

"I shall go and look for him," said Robert, snatching up his hat and
walking straight out of the house.

But the question was where to look for him. He certainly was not by the
trout stream, so it was no good going back there in search of him.
Robert was standing before the inn, deliberating on what was best to be
done, when the landlord came out after him.

"I forgot to tell you, Mr. Audley, as how your uncle called here five
minutes after you was gone, and left a message, asking of you and the
other gentleman to go down to dinner at the Court."

"Then I shouldn't wonder," said Robert, "if George Talboys has gone down
to the Court to call upon my uncle. It isn't like him, but it's just
possible that he has done it."

It was six o'clock when Robert knocked at the door of his uncle's house.
He did not ask to see any of the family, but inquired at once for his
friend.

Yes, the servant told him; Mr. Talboys had been there at two o'clock or
a little after.

"And not since?"

"No, not since."

Was the man sure that it was at two Mr. Talboys called? Robert asked.

"Yes, perfectly sure. He remembered the hour because it was the
servants' dinner hour, and he had left the table to open the door to Mr.
Talboys.

"Why, what can have become of the man?" thought Robert, as he turned his
back upon the Court. "From two till six--four good hours--and no signs
of him!"

If any one had ventured to tell Mr. Robert Audley that he could possibly
feel a strong attachment to any creature breathing, that cynical
gentleman would have elevated his eyebrows in supreme contempt at the
preposterous notion. Yet here he was, flurried and anxious, bewildering
his brain by all manner of conjectures about his missing friend; and
false to every attribute of his nature, walking fast.

"I haven't walked fast since I was at Eton," he murmured, as he hurried
across one of Sir Michael's meadows in the direction of the village;
"and the worst of it is, that I haven't the most remote idea where I am
going."

Here he crossed another meadow, and then seating himself upon a stile,
rested his elbows upon his knees, buried his face in his hands, and set
himself seriously to think the matter out.

"I have it," he said, after a few minutes' thought; "the railway
station!" He sprang over the stile, and started off in the direction of
the little red brick building.

There was no train expected for another half hour, and the clerk was
taking his tea in an apartment on one side of the office, on the door of
which was inscribed in large, white letters, "Private."

But Mr. Audley was too much occupied with the one idea of looking for
his friend to pay any attention to this warning. He strode at once to
the door, and rattling his cane against it, brought the clerk out of his
sanctum in a perspiration from hot tea, and with his mouth full of bread
and butter.

"Do you remember the gentleman that came down to Audley with me,
Smithers?" asked Robert.

"Well, to tell you the real truth, Mr. Audley, I can't say that I do.
You came by the four o'clock, if you remember, and there's always a good
many passengers by that train."

"You don't remember him, then?"

"Not to my knowledge, sir."

"That's provoking! I want to know, Smithers, whether he has taken a
ticket for London since two o'clock to-day. He's a tall, broad-chested
young fellow, with a big brown beard. You couldn't well mistake him."

"There was four or five gentlemen as took tickets for the 3.30 up," said
the clerk rather vaguely, casting an anxious glance over his shoulder at
his wife, who looked by no means pleased at this interruption to the
harmony of the tea-table.

"Four or five gentlemen! But did either of them answer to the
description of my friend?"

"Well, I think one of them had a beard, sir."

"A dark-brown beard?"

"Well, I don't know, but it was brownish-like."

"Was he dressed in gray?"

"I believe it was gray; a great many gents wear gray. He asked for the
ticket sharp and short-like, and when he'd got it walked straight out
onto the platform whistling."

"That's George," said Robert. "Thank you, Smithers; I needn't trouble
you any more. It's as clear as daylight," he muttered, as he left the
station; "he's got one of his gloomy fits on him, and he's gone back to
London without saying a word about it. I'll leave Audley myself
to-morrow morning; and for to-night--why, I may as well go down to the
Court and make the acquaintance of my uncle's young wife. They don't
dine till seven; if I get back across the fields I shall be in time.
Bob--otherwise Robert Audley--this sort of thing will never do; you are
falling over head and ears in love with your aunt."




CHAPTER XI.

THE MARK UPON MY LADY'S WRIST.


Robert found Sir Michael and Lady Audley in the drawing-room. My lady
was sitting on a music-stool before the grand piano, turning over the
leaves of some new music. She twirled upon the revolving seat, making a
rustling with her silk flounces, as Mr. Robert Audley's name was
announced; then, leaving the piano, she made her nephew a pretty, mock
ceremonious courtesy.

"Thank you so much for the sables," she said, holding out her little
fingers, all glittering and twinkling with the diamonds she wore upon
them; "thank you for those beautiful sables. How good it was of you to
get them for me."

Robert had almost forgotten the commission he had executed for Lady
Audley during his Russian expedition. His mind was so full of George
Talboys that he only acknowledged nay lady's gratitude by a bow.

"Would you believe it, Sir Michael?" he said. "That foolish chum of mine
has gone back to London leaving me in the lurch."

"Mr. George Talboys returned to town?" exclaimed my lady, lifting her
eyebrows. "What a dreadful catastrophe!" said Alicia, maliciously,
"since Pythias, in the person of Mr. Robert Audley, cannot exist for
half an hour without Damon, commonly known as George Talboys."

"He's a very good fellow," Robert said, stoutly; "and to tell the honest
truth, I'm rather uneasy about him."

"Uneasy about him!" My lady was quite anxious to know why Robert was
uneasy about his friend.

"I'll tell you why, Lady Audley," answered the young barrister. "George
had a bitter blow a year ago in the death of his wife. He has never got
over that trouble. He takes life pretty quietly--almost as quietly as I
do--but he often talks very strangely, and I sometimes think that one
day this grief will get the better of him, and he will do something
rash."

Mr. Robert Audley spoke vaguely, but all three of his listeners knew
that the something rash to which he alluded was that one deed for which
there is no repentance.

There was a brief pause, during which Lady Audley arranged her yellow
ringlets by the aid of the glass over the console table opposite to her.

"Dear me!" she said, "this is very strange. I did not think men were
capable of these deep and lasting affections. I thought that one pretty
face was as good as another pretty face to them; and that when number
one with blue eyes and fair hair died, they had only to look out for
number two, with dark eyes and black hair, by way of variety."

"George Talboys is not one of those men. I firmly believe that his
wife's death broke his heart."

"How sad!" murmured Lady Audley. "It seems almost cruel of Mrs. Talboys
to die, and grieve her poor husband so much."

"Alicia was right, she is childish," thought Robert as he looked at his
aunt's pretty face.

My lady was very charming at the dinner-table; she professed the most
bewitching incapacity for carving the pheasant set before her, and
called Robert to her assistance.

"I could carve a leg of mutton at Mr. Dawson's," she said, laughing;
"but a leg of mutton is so easy, and then I used to stand up."

Sir Michael watched the impression my lady made upon his nephew with a
proud delight in her beauty and fascination.

"I am so glad to see my poor little woman in her usual good spirits once
more," he said. "She was very down-hearted yesterday at a disappointment
she met with in London."

"A disappointment!"

"Yes, Mr. Audley, a very cruel one," answered my lady. "I received the
other morning a telegraphic message from my dear old friend and
school-mistress, telling me that she was dying, and that if I wanted to
see her again, I must hasten to her immediately. The telegraphic
dispatch contained no address, and of course, from that very
circumstance, I imagined that she must be living in the house in which I
left her three years ago. Sir Michael and I hurried up to town
immediately, and drove straight to the old address. The house was
occupied by strange people, who could give me no tidings of my friend.
It is in a retired place, where there are very few tradespeople about.
Sir Michael made inquiries at the few shops there are, but, after taking
an immense deal of trouble, could discover nothing whatever likely to
lead to the information we wanted. I have no friends in London, and had
therefore no one to assist me except my dear, generous husband, who did
all in his power, but in vain, to find my friend's new residence."

"It was very foolish not to send the address in the telegraphic
message," said Robert.

"When people are dying it is not so easy to think of all these things,"
murmured my lady, looking reproachfully at Mr. Audley with her soft blue
eyes.

In spite of Lady Audley's fascination, and in spite of Robert's very
unqualified admiration of her, the barrister could not overcome a vague
feeling of uneasiness on this quiet September evening.

As he sat in the deep embrasure of a mullioned window, talking to my
lady, his mind wandered away to shady Figtree Court, and he thought of
poor George Talboys smoking his solitary cigar in the room with the
birds and canaries.

"I wish I'd never felt any friendliness for the fellow," he thought. "I
feel like a man who has an only son whose life has gone wrong with him.
I wish to Heaven I could give him back his wife, and send him down to
Ventnor to finish his days in peace."

Still my lady's pretty musical prattle ran on as merrily and
continuously as the babble in some brook; and still Robert's thoughts
wandered, in spite of himself, to George Talboys.

He thought of him hurrying down to Southampton by the mail train to see
his boy. He thought of him as he had often seen him spelling over the
shipping advertisements in the _Times_, looking for a vessel to take him
back to Australia. Once he thought of him with a shudder, lying cold and
stiff at the bottom of some shallow stream with his dead face turned
toward the darkening sky.

Lady Audley noticed his abstraction, and asked him what he was thinking
of.

"George Talboys," he answered abruptly.

She gave a little nervous shudder.

"Upon my word," she said, "you make me quite uncomfortable by the way in
which you talk of Mr. Talboys. One would think that something
extraordinary had happened to him."

"God forbid! But I cannot help feeling uneasy about him."

Later in the evening Sir Michael asked for some music, and my lady went
to the piano. Robert Audley strolled after her to the instrument to turn
over the leaves of her music; but she played from memory, and he was
spared the trouble his gallantry would have imposed upon him.

He carried a pair of lighted candles to the piano, and arranged them
conveniently for the pretty musician. She struck a few chords, and then
wandered into a pensive sonata of Beethoven's. It was one of the many
paradoxes in her character, that love of somber and melancholy melodies,
so opposite to her gay nature.

Robert Audley lingered by her side, and as he had no occupation in
turning over the leaves of her music, he amused himself by watching her
jeweled, white hands gliding softly over the keys, with the lace sleeves
dropping away from, her graceful, arched wrists. He looked at her pretty
fingers one by one; this one glittering with a ruby heart; that
encircled by an emerald serpent; and about them all a starry glitter of
diamonds. From the fingers his eyes wandered to the rounded wrists: the
broad, flat, gold bracelet upon her right wrist dropped over her hand,
as she executed a rapid passage. She stopped abruptly to rearrange it;
but before she could do so Robert Audley noticed a bruise upon her
delicate skin.

"You have hurt your arm, Lady Audley!" he exclaimed. She hastily
replaced the bracelet.

"It is nothing," she said. "I am unfortunate in having a skin which the
slightest touch bruises."

She went on playing, but Sir Michael came across the room to look into
the matter of the bruise upon his wife's pretty wrist.

"What is it, Lucy?" he asked; "and how did it happen?"

"How foolish you all are to trouble yourselves about anything so
absurd!" said Lady Audley, laughing. "I am rather absent in mind, and
amused myself a few days ago by tying a piece of ribbon around my arm so
tightly, that it left a bruise when I removed it."

"Hum!" thought Robert. "My lady tells little childish white lies; the
bruise is of a more recent date than a few days ago; the skin has only
just begun to change color."

Sir Michael took the slender wrist in his strong hand.

"Hold the candle, Robert," he said, "and let us look at this poor little
arm."

It was not one bruise, but four slender, purple marks, such as might
have been made by the four fingers of a powerful hand, that had grasped
the delicate wrist a shade too roughly. A narrow ribbon, bound tightly,
might have left some such marks, it is true, and my lady protested once
more that, to the best of her recollection, that must have been how they
were made.

Across one of the faint purple marks there was a darker tinge, as if a
ring worn on one of those strong and cruel fingers had been ground into
the tender flesh.

"I am sure my lady must tell white lies," thought Robert, "for I can't
believe the story of the ribbon."

He wished his relations good-night and good-by at about half past ten
o'clock; he should run up to London by the first train to look for
George in Figtree Court.

"If I don't find him there I shall go to Southampton," he said; "and if
I don't find him there--"

"What then?" asked my lady.

"I shall think that something strange has happened."

Robert Audley felt very low-spirited as he walked slowly home between
the shadowy meadows; more low-spirited still when he re-entered the
sitting room at Sun Inn, where he and George had lounged together,
staring out of the window and smoking their cigars.

"To think," he said, meditatively, "that it is possible to care so much
for a fellow! But come what may, I'll go up to town after him the first
thing to-morrow morning; and, sooner than be balked in finding him, I'll
go to the very end of the world."

With Mr. Audley's lymphatic nature, determination was so much the
exception rather than the rule, that when he did for once in his life
resolve upon any course of action, he had a certain dogged, iron-like
obstinacy that pushed him on to the fulfillment of his purpose.

The lazy bent of his mind, which prevented him from thinking of half a
dozen things at a time, and not thinking thoroughly of any one of them,
as is the manner of your more energetic people, made him remarkably
clear-sighted upon any point to which he ever gave his serious
attention.

Indeed, after all, though solemn benchers laughed at him, and rising
barristers shrugged their shoulders under rustling silk gowns, when
people spoke of Robert Audley, I doubt if, had he ever taken the trouble
to get a brief, he might not have rather surprised the magnates who
underrated his abilities.




CHAPTER XII.

STILL MISSING.


The September sunlight sparkled upon the fountain in the Temple Gardens
when Robert Audley returned to Figtree Court early the following
morning.

He found the canaries singing in the pretty little room in which George
had slept, but the apartment was in the same prim order in which the
laundress had arranged it after the departure of the two young men--not
a chair displaced, or so much as the lid of a cigar-box lifted, to
bespeak the presence of George Talboys. With a last, lingering hope, he
searched upon the mantelpieces and tables of his rooms, on the chance of
finding some letter left by George.

"He may have slept here last night, and started for Southampton early
this morning," he thought. "Mrs. Maloney has been here, very likely, to
make everything tidy after him."

But as he sat looking lazily around the room, now and then whistling to
his delighted canaries, a slipshod foot upon the staircase without
bespoke the advent of that very Mrs. Maloney who waited upon the two
young men.

No, Mr. Talboys had not come home; she had looked in as early as six
o'clock that morning, and found the chambers empty.

"Had anything happened to the poor, dear gentleman?" she asked, seeing
Robert Audley's pale face.

He turned around upon her quite savagely at this question.

Happened to him! What should happen to him? They had only parted at two
o'clock the day before.

Mrs. Maloney would have related to him the history of a poor dear young
engine-driver, who had once lodged with her, and who went out, after
eating a hearty dinner, in the best of spirits, to meet with his death
from the concussion of an express and a luggage train; but Robert put on
his hat again, and walked straight out of the house before the honest
Irishwoman could begin her pitiful story.

It was growing dusk when he reached Southampton. He knew his way to the
poor little terrace of houses, in a full street leading down to the
water, where George's father-in-law lived. Little Georgey was playing at
the open parlor window as the young man walked down the street.

Perhaps it was this fact, and the dull and silent aspect of the house,
which filled Robert Audley's mind with a vague conviction that the man
he came to look for was not there. The old man himself opened the door,
and the child peeped out of the parlor to see the strange gentleman.

He was a handsome boy, with his father's brown eyes and dark waving
hair, and with some latent expression which was not his father's and
which pervaded his whole face, so that although each feature of the
child resembled the same feature in George Talboys, the boy was not
actually like him.

Mr. Maldon was delighted to see Robert Audley; he remembered having had
the pleasure of meeting him at Ventnor, on the melancholy occasion
of--He wiped his watery old eyes by way of conclusion to the sentence.
Would Mr. Audley walk in? Robert strode into the parlor. The furniture
was shabby and dingy, and the place reeked with the smell of stale
tobacco and brandy-and-water. The boy's broken playthings, and the old
man's broken clay pipes and torn, brandy-and-water-stained newspapers
were scattered upon the dirty carpet. Little Georgey crept toward the
visitor, watching him furtively out of his big, brown eyes. Robert took
the boy on his knee, and gave him his watch-chain to play with while he
talked to the old man.

"I need scarcely ask the question that I come to ask," he said; "I was
in hopes I should have found your son-in-law here."

"What! you knew that he was coming to Southampton?"

"Knew that he was coming?" cried Robert, brightening up. "He _is_ here,
then?"

"No, he is not here now; but he has been here."

"When?"

"Late last night; he came by the mail."

"And left again immediately?"

"He stayed little better than an hour."

"Good Heaven!" said Robert, "what useless anxiety that man has given me!
What can be the meaning of all this?"

"You knew nothing of his intention, then?"

"Of what intention?"

"I mean of his determination to go to Australia."

"I know that it was always in his mind more or less, but not more just
now than usual."

"He sails to-night from Liverpool. He came here at one o'clock this
morning to have a look at the boy, he said, before he left England,
perhaps never to return. He told me he was sick of the world, and that
the rough life out there was the only thing to suit him. He stayed an
hour, kissed the boy without awaking him, and left Southampton by the
mail that starts at a quarter-past two."

"What can be the meaning of all this?" said Robert. "What could be his
motive for leaving England in this manner, without a word to me, his
most intimate friend--without even a change of clothes; for he has left
everything at my chambers? It is the most extraordinary proceeding!"

The old man looked very grave. "Do you know, Mr. Audley," he said,
tapping his forehead significantly, "I sometimes fancy that Helen's
death had a strange effect upon poor George."

"Pshaw!" cried Robert, contemptuously; "he felt the blow most cruelly,
but his brain was as sound as yours or mine."

"Perhaps he will write to you from Liverpool," said George's
father-in-law. He seemed anxious to smooth over any indignation that
Robert might feel at his friend's conduct.

"He ought," said Robert, gravely, "for we've been good friends from the
days when we were together at Eton. It isn't kind of George Talboys to
treat me like this."

But even at the moment that be uttered the reproach a strange thrill of
remorse shot through his heart.

"It isn't like him," he said, "it isn't like George Talboys."

Little Georgey caught at the sound. "That's my name," he said, "and my
papa's name--the big gentleman's name."

"Yes, little Georgey, and your papa came last night and kissed you in
your sleep. Do you remember?"

"No," said the boy, shaking his curly little head.

"You must have been very fast asleep, little Georgey, not to see poor
papa."

The child did not answer, but presently, fixing his eyes upon Robert's
face, he said abruptly:

"Where's the pretty lady?"

"What pretty lady?"

"The pretty lady that used to come a long while ago."

"He means his poor mamma," said the old man.

"No," cried the boy resolutely, "not mamma. Mamma was always crying. I
didn't like mamma--"

"Hush, little Georgey!"

"But I didn't, and she didn't like me. She was always crying. I mean the
pretty lady; the lady that was dressed so fine, and that gave me my gold
watch."

"He means the wife of my old captain--an excellent creature, who took a
great fancy to Georgey, and gave him some handsome presents."

"Where's my gold watch? Let me show the gentleman my gold watch," cried
Georgey.

"It's gone to be cleaned, Georgey," answered his grandfather.

"It's always going to be cleaned," said the boy.

"The watch is perfectly safe, I assure you, Mr. Audley," murmured the
old man, apologetically; and taking out a pawnbroker's duplicate, he
handed it to Robert.

It was made out in the name of Captain Mortimer: "Watch, set with
diamonds, £11."

"I'm often hard pressed for a few shillings, Mr. Audley," said the old
man. "My son-in-law has been very liberal to me; but there are others,
there are others, Mr. Audley--and--and--I've not been treated well." He
wiped away some genuine tears as he said this in a pitiful, crying
voice. "Come, Georgey, it's time the brave little man was in bed. Come
along with grandpa. Excuse me for a quarter of an hour, Mr. Audley."

The boy went very willingly. At the door of the room the old man looked
back at his visitor, and said in the same peevish voice, "This is a poor
place for me to pass my declining years in, Mr. Audley. I've made many
sacrifices, and I make them still, but I've not been treated well."

Left alone in the dusky little sitting-room, Robert Audley folded his
arms, and sat absently staring at the floor.

George was gone, then; he might receive some letter of explanation
perhaps, when he returned to London; but the chances were that he would
never see his old friend again.

"And to think that I should care so much for the fellow!" he said,
lifting his eyebrows to the center of his forehead.

"The place smells of stale tobacco like a tap-room," he muttered
presently; "there can be no harm in my smoking a cigar here."

He took one from the case in his pocket: there was a spark of fire in
the little grate, and he looked about for something to light his cigar
with.

A twisted piece of paper lay half burned upon the hearthrug; he picked
it up, and unfolded it, in order to get a better pipe-light by folding
it the other way of the paper. As he did so, absently glancing at the
penciled writing upon the fragment of thin paper, a portion of a name
caught his eye--a portion of the name that was most in his thoughts. He
took the scrap of paper to the window, and examined it by the declining
light.

It was part of a telegraphic dispatch. The upper portion had been burnt
away, but the more important part, the greater part of the message
itself, remained.

"--alboys came to    last night, and left by the
mail for London, on his way to Liverpool, whence he was to sail for
Sydney."

The date and the name and address of the sender of the message had been
burnt with the heading. Robert Audley's face blanched to a deathly
whiteness. He carefully folded the scrap of paper, and placed it between
the leaves of his pocket-book.

"My God!" he said, "what is the meaning of this? I shall go to Liverpool
to-night, and make inquiries there!"




CHAPTER XIII.

TROUBLED DREAMS.


Robert Audley left Southampton by the mail, and let himself into his
chambers just as the dawn was creeping cold and gray into the solitary
rooms, and the canaries were beginning to rustle their feathers feebly
in the early morning.

There were several letters in the box behind the door, but there was
none from George Talboys.

The young barrister was worn out by a long day spent in hurrying from
place to place. The usual lazy monotony of his life had been broken as
it had never been broken before in eight-and-twenty tranquil, easy-going
years. His mind was beginning to grow confused upon the point of time.
It seemed to him months since he had lost sight of George Talboys. It
was so difficult to believe that it was less than forty-eight hours ago
that the young man had left him asleep under the willows by the trout
stream.

His eyes were painfully weary for want of sleep. He searched about the
room for some time, looking in all sorts of impossible places for a
letter from George Talboys, and then threw himself dressed upon his
friend's bed, in the room with the canaries and geraniums.

"I shall wait for to-morrow morning's post," he said; "and if that
brings no letter from George, I shall start for Liverpool without a
moment's delay."

He was thoroughly exhausted, and fell into a heavy sleep--a sleep which
was profound without being in any way refreshing, for he was tormented
all the time by disagreeable dreams--dreams which were painful, not from
any horror in themselves, but from a vague and wearying sense of their
confusion and absurdity.

At one time he was pursuing strange people and entering strange houses
in the endeavor to unravel the mystery of the telegraphic dispatch; at
another time he was in the church-yard at Ventnor, gazing at the
headstone George had ordered for the grave of his dead wife. Once in the
long, rambling mystery of these dreams he went to the grave, and found
this headstone gone, and on remonstrating with the stonemason, was told
that the man had a reason for removing the inscription; a reason that
Robert would some day learn.

In another dream he saw the grave of Helen Talboys open, and while he
waited, with the cold horror lifting up his hair, to see the dead woman
rise and stand before him with her stiff, charnel-house drapery clinging
about her rigid limbs, his uncle's wife tripped gaily put of the open
grave, dressed in the crimson velvet robes in which the artist had
painted her, and with her ringlets flashing like red gold in the
unearthly light that shone about her.

But into all these dreams the places he had last been in, and the people
with whom he had last been concerned, were dimly interwoven--sometimes
his uncle; sometimes Alicia; oftenest of all my lady; the trout stream
in Essex; the lime-walk at the Court. Once he was walking in the black
shadows of this long avenue, with Lady Audley hanging on his arm, when
suddenly they heard a great knocking in the distance, and his uncle's
wife wound her slender arms around him, crying out that it was the day
of judgment, and that all wicked secrets must now be told. Looking at
her as she shrieked this in his ear, he saw that her face had grown
ghastly white, and that her beautiful golden ringlets were changing into
serpents, and slowly creeping down her fair neck.

He started from his dream to find that there was some one really
knocking at the outer door of his chambers.

It was a dreary, wet morning, the rain beating against the windows, and
the canaries twittering dismally to each other--complaining, perhaps, of
the bad weather. Robert could not tell how long the person had been
knocking. He had mixed the sound with his dreams, and when he woke he
was only half conscious of other things.

"It's that stupid Mrs. Maloney, I dare say," he muttered. "She may knock
again for all I care. Why can't she use her duplicate key, instead of
dragging a man out of bed when he's half dead with fatigue."

The person, whoever it was, did knock again, and then desisted,
apparently tired out; but about a minute afterward a key turned in the
door.

"She had her key with her all the time, then," said Robert. "I'm very
glad I didn't get up."

The door between the sitting-room and bed-room was half open, and he
could see the laundress bustling about, dusting the furniture, and
rearranging things that had never been disarranged.

"Is that you, Mrs. Maloney?" he asked.

"Yes, sir,"

"Then why, in goodness' name, did you make that row at the door, when
you had a key with you all the time?"

"A row at the door, sir?"

"Yes; that infernal knocking."

"Sure I never knocked, Mister Audley, but walked straight in with my
kay--"

"Then who did knock? There's been some one kicking up a row at that door
for a quarter of an hour, I should think; you must have met him going
down-stairs."

"But I'm rather late this morning, sir, for I've been in Mr. Martin's
rooms first, and I've come straight from the floor above."

"Then you didn't see any one at the door, or on the stairs?"

"Not a mortal soul, sir."

"Was ever anything so provoking?" said Robert. "To think that I should
have let this person go away without ascertaining who he was, or what he
wanted! How do I know that it was not some one with a message or a
letter from George Talboys?"

"Sure if it was, sir, he'll come again," said Mrs. Maloney, soothingly.

"Yes, of course, if it was anything of consequence he'll come again,"
muttered Robert. The fact was, that from the moment of finding the
telegraphic message at Southampton, all hope of hearing of George had
faded out of his mind. He felt that there was some mystery involved in
the disappearance of his friend--some treachery toward himself, or
toward George. What if the young man's greedy old father-in-law had
tried to separate them on account of the monetary trust lodged in Robert
Audley's hands? Or what if, since even in these civilized days all kinds
of unsuspected horrors are constantly committed--what if the old man had
decoyed George down to Southampton, and made away with him in order to
get possession of that £20,000, left in Robert's custody for little
Georgey's use?

But neither of these suppositions explained the telegraphic message, and
it was the telegraphic message which had filled Robert's mind with a
vague sense of alarm. The postman brought no letter from George Talboys,
and the person who had knocked at the door of the chambers did not
return between seven and nine o'clock, so Robert Audley left Figtree
Court once more in search of his friend. This time he told the cabman to
drive to the Euston Station, and in twenty minutes he was on the
platform, making inquiries about the trains.

The Liverpool express had started half an hour before he reached the
station, and he had to wait an hour and a quarter for a slow train to
take him to his destination.

Robert Audley chafed cruelly at this delay. Half a dozen vessels might
sail for Australia while he roamed up and down the long platform,
tumbling over trucks and porters, and swearing at his ill-luck.

He bought the _Times_ newspaper, and looked instinctively at the second
column, with a morbid interest in the advertisements of people
missing--sons, brothers, and husbands who had left their homes, never to
return or to be heard of more.

There was one advertisement of a young man found drowned somewhere on
the Lambeth shore.

What if that should have been George's fate? No; the telegraphic message
involved his father-in-law in the fact of his disappearance, and every
speculation about him must start from that one point.

It was eight o'clock in the evening when Robert got into Liverpool; too
late for anything except to make inquiries as to what vessel had sailed
within the last two days for the antipodes.

An emigrant ship had sailed at four o'clock that afternoon--the
_Victoria Regia_, bound for Melbourne.

The result of his inquiries amounted to this--If he wanted to find out
who had sailed in the _Victoria Regia_, he must wait till the next
morning, and apply for information of that vessel.

Robert Audley was at the office at nine o'clock the next morning, and
was the first person after the clerks who entered it.

He met with every civility from the clerk to whom he applied. The young
man referred to his books, and running his pen down the list of
passengers who had sailed in the _Victoria Regia_, told Robert that
there was no one among them of the name of Talboys. He pushed his
inquiries further. Had any of the passengers entered their names within
a short time of the vessel's sailing?

One of the other clerks looked up from his desk as Robert asked this
question. Yes, he said; he remembered a young man's coming into the
office at half-past three o'clock in the afternoon, and paying his
passage money. His name was the last on the list--Thomas Brown.

Robert Audley shrugged his shoulders. There could have been no possible
reason for George's taking a feigned name. He asked the clerk who had
last spoken if he could remember the appearance of this Mr. Thomas
Brown.

No; the office was crowded at the time; people were running in and out,
and he had not taken any particular notice of this last passenger.

Robert thanked them for their civility, and wished them good-morning. As
he was leaving the office, one of the young men called after him:

"Oh, by-the-by, sir," he said, "I remember one thing about this Mr.
Thomas Brown--his arm was in a sling."

There was nothing more for Robert Audley to do but to return to town. He
re-entered his chambers at six o'clock that evening, thoroughly worn out
once more with his useless search.

Mrs. Maloney brought him his dinner and a pint of wine from a tavern in
the Strand. The evening was raw and chilly, and the laundress had
lighted a good fire in the sitting-room grate.

After eating about half a mutton-chop, Robert sat with his wine untasted
upon the table before him, smoking cigars and staring into the blaze.

"George Talboys never sailed for Australia," he said, after long and
painful reflection. "If he is alive, he is still in England; and if he
is dead, his body is hidden in some corner of England."

He sat for hours smoking and thinking--trouble and gloomy thoughts
leaving a dark shadow upon his moody face, which neither the brilliant
light of the gas nor the red blaze of the fire could dispel.

Very late in the evening he rose from his chair, pushed away the table,
wheeled his desk over to the fire-place, took out a sheet of fools-cap,
and dipped a pen in the ink.

But after doing this he paused, leaned his forehead upon his hand, and
once more relapsed into thought.

"I shall draw up a record of all that has occurred between our going
down to Essex and to-night, beginning at the very beginning."

He drew up this record in short, detached sentences, which he numbered
as he wrote.

It ran thus:

"_Journal of Facts connected with the Disappearance of George Talboys,
inclusive of Facts which have no apparent Relation to that
Circumstance._"

In spite of the troubled state of his mind, he was rather inclined to be
proud of the official appearance of this heading. He sat for some time
looking at it with affection, and with the feather of his pen in his
mouth. "Upon my word," he said, "I begin to think that I ought to have
pursued my profession, instead of dawdling my life away as I have done."

He smoked half a cigar before he had got his thoughts in proper train,
and then began to write:

"1. I write to Alicia, proposing to take George down to the Court."

"2. Alicia writes, objecting to the visit, on the part of Lady Audley."

"3. We go to Essex in spite of that objection. I see my lady. My lady
refuses to be introduced to George on that particular evening on the
score of fatigue."

"4. Sir Michael invites George and me to dinner for the following
evening."

"5. My lady receives a telegraphic dispatch the next morning which
summons her to London."

"6. Alicia shows me a letter from my lady, in which she requests to be
told when I and my friend, Mr. Talboys, mean to leave Essex. To this
letter is subjoined a postscript, reiterating the above request."

"7. We call at the Court, and ask to see the house. My lady's apartments
are locked."

"8. We get at the aforesaid apartments by means of a secret passage, the
existence of which is unknown to my lady. In one of the rooms we find
her portrait."

"9. George is frightened at the storm. His conduct is exceedingly
strange for the rest of the evening."

"10. George quite himself again the following morning. I propose leaving
Audley Court immediately; he prefers remaining till the evening."

"11. We go out fishing. George leaves me to go to the Court."

"12. The last positive information I can obtain of him in Essex is at
the Court, where the servant says he thinks Mr. Talboys told him he
would go and look for my lady in the grounds."

"13. I receive information about him at the station which may or may not
be correct."

"14. I hear of him positively once more at Southampton, where, according
to his father-in-law, he had been for an hour on the previous night."

"15. The telegraphic message."

When Robert Audley had completed this brief record, which he drew up
with great deliberation, and with frequent pauses for reflection,
alterations and erasures, he sat for a long time contemplating the
written page.

At last he read it carefully over, stopping at some of the numbered
paragraphs, and marking some of them with a pencil cross; then he folded
the sheet of foolscap, went over to a cabinet on the opposite side of
the room, unlocked it, and placed the paper in that very pigeon-hole
into which he had thrust Alicia's letter--the pigeon-hole marked
_Important_.

Having done this, he returned to his easy-chair by the fire, pushed away
his desk, and lighted a cigar. "It's as dark as midnight from first to
last," he said; "and the clew to the mystery must be found either at
Southampton or in Essex. Be it how it may, my mind is made up. I shall
first go to Audley Court, and look for George Talboys in a narrow
radius."




CHAPTER XIV.

PHOEBE'S SUITOR.


"Mr. George Talboys.--Any person who has met this gentleman since the
7th inst., or who possesses any information respecting him subsequent to
that date, will be liberally rewarded on communicating with A.Z., 14
Chancery Lane."

Sir Michael Audley read the above advertisement in the second column of
the _Times_, as he sat at breakfast with my lady and Alicia two or three
days after Robert's return to town.

"Robert's friend has not yet been heard of, then," said the baronet,
after reading the advertisement to his wife and daughter.

"As for that," replied my lady, "I cannot help wondering that any one
can be silly enough to advertise for him. The young man was evidently of
a restless, roving disposition--a sort of Bamfyld Moore Carew of modern
life, whom no attraction could ever keep in one spot."

Though the advertisement appeared three successive times, the party at
the Court attached very little importance to Mr. Talboys disappearance;
and after this one occasion his name was never again mentioned by either
Sir Michael, my lady, or Alicia.

Alicia Audley and her pretty stepmother were by no means any better
friends after that quiet evening on which the young barrister had dined
at the Court.

"She is a vain, frivolous, heartless little coquette," said Alicia,
addressing herself to her Newfoundland dog Caesar, who was the sole
recipient of the young lady's confidences; "she is a practiced and
consummate flirt, Caesar; and not contented with setting her yellow
ringlets and her silly giggle at half the men in Essex, she must needs
make that stupid cousin of mine dance attendance upon her. I haven't
common patience with her."

In proof of which last assertion Miss Alice Audley treated her
stepmother with such very palpable impertinence that Sir Michael felt
himself called upon to remonstrate with his only daughter.

"The poor little woman is very sensitive, you know, Alicia," the baronet
said, gravely, "and she feels your conduct most acutely."

"I don't believe it a bit, papa," answered Alicia, stoutly. "You think
her sensitive because she has soft little white hands, and big blue eyes
with long lashes, and all manner of affected, fantastical ways, which
you stupid men call fascinating. Sensitive! Why, I've seen her do cruel
things with those slender white fingers, and laugh at the pain she
inflicted. I'm very sorry, papa," she added, softened a little by her
father's look of distress; "though she has come between us, and robbed
poor Alicia of the love of that dear, generous heart, I wish I could
like her for your sake; but I can't, I can't, and no more can Caesar.
She came up to him once with her red lips apart, and her little white
teeth glistening between them, and stroked his great head with her soft
hand; but if I had not had hold of his collar, he would have flown at
her throat and strangled her. She may bewitch every man in Essex, but
she'd never make friends with my dog."

"Your dog shall be shot," answered Sir Michael angrily, "if his vicious
temper ever endangers Lucy."

The Newfoundland rolled his eyes slowly round in the direction of the
speaker, as if he understood every word that had been said. Lady Audley
happened to enter the room at this very moment, and the animal cowered
down by the side of his mistress with a suppressed growl. There was
something in the manner of the dog which was, if anything, more
indicative of terror than of fury; incredible as it appears that Caesar
should be frightened by so fragile a creature as Lucy Audley.

Amicable as was my lady's nature, she could not live long at the Court
without discovering Alicia's dislike to her. She never alluded to it but
once; then, shrugging her graceful white shoulders, she said, with a
sigh:

"It seems very hard that you cannot love me, Alicia, for I have never
been used to make enemies; but since it seems that it must be so, I
cannot help it. If we cannot be friends, let us be neutral. You won't
try to injure me?"

"Injure you!" exclaimed Alicia; "how should I injure you?"

"You'll not try to deprive me of your father's affection?"

"I may not be as amiable as you are, my lady, and I may not have the
same sweet smiles and pretty words for every stranger I meet, but I am
not capable of a contemptible meanness; and even if I were, I think you
are so secure of my father's love, that nothing but your own act will
ever deprive you of it."

"What a severe creature you are, Alicia!" said my lady, making a little
grimace. "I suppose you mean to infer by all that, that I'm deceitful.
Why, I can't help smiling at people, and speaking prettily to them. I
know I'm no _better_ than the rest of the world; but I can't help it if
I'm _pleasanter_. It's constitutional."

Alicia having thus entirely shut the door upon all intimacy between Lady
Audley and herself, and Sir Michael being chiefly occupied in
agricultural pursuits and manly sports, which kept him away from home,
it was perhaps natural that my lady, being of an eminently social
disposition, should find herself thrown a good deal upon her
white-eyelashed maid for society.

Phoebe Marks was exactly the sort of a girl who is generally promoted
from the post of lady's maid to that of companion. She had just
sufficient education to enable her to understand her mistress when Lucy
chose to allow herself to run riot in a species of intellectual
tarantella, in which her tongue went mad to the sound of its own rattle,
as the Spanish dancer at the noise of his castanets. Phoebe knew enough
of the French language to be able to dip into the yellow-paper-covered
novels which my lady ordered from the Burlington Arcade, and to
discourse with her mistress upon the questionable subjects of these
romances. The likeness which the lady's maid bore to Lucy Audley was,
perhaps, a point of sympathy between the two women. It was not to be
called a striking likeness; a stranger might have seen them both
together, and yet have failed to remark it. But there were certain dim
and shadowy lights in which, meeting Phoebe Marks gliding softly through
the dark oak passages of the Court, or under the shrouded avenues in the
garden, you might have easily mistaken her for my lady.

Sharp October winds were sweeping the leaves from the limes in the long
avenue, and driving them in withered heaps with a ghostly rustling noise
along the dry gravel walks. The old well must have been half choked up
with the leaves that drifted about it, and whirled in eddying circles
into its black, broken mouth. On the still bosom of the fish-pond the
same withered leaves slowly rotted away, mixing themselves with the
tangled weeds that discolored the surface of the water. All the
gardeners Sir Michael could employ could not keep the impress of
autumn's destroying hand from the grounds about the Court.

"How I hate this desolate month!" my lady said, as she walked about the
garden, shivering beneath her sable mantle. "Every thing dropping to
ruin and decay, and the cold flicker of the sun lighting up the ugliness
of the earth, as the glare of gas-lamps lights the wrinkles of an old
woman. Shall I ever grow old, Phoebe? Will my hair ever drop off as the
leaves are falling from those trees, and leave me wan and bare like
them? What is to become of me when I grow old?"

She shivered at the thought of this more than she had done at the cold,
wintry breeze, and muffling herself closely in her fur, walked so fast
that her maid had some difficulty in keeping up with her.

"Do you remember, Phoebe," she said, presently, relaxing her pace, "do
you remember that French story we read--the story of a beautiful woman
who had committed some crime--I forget what--in the zenith of her power
and loveliness, when all Paris drank to her every night, and when the
people ran away from the carriage of the king to flock about hers, and
get a peep at her face? Do you remember how she kept the secret of what
she had done for nearly half a century, spending her old age in her
family chateau, beloved and honored by all the province as an
uncanonized saint and benefactress to the poor; and how, when her hair
was white, and her eyes almost blind with age, the secret was revealed
through one of those strange accidents by which such secrets always are
revealed in romances, and she was tried, found guilty, and condemned to
be burned alive? The king who had worn her colors was dead and gone; the
court of which she had been a star had passed away; powerful
functionaries and great magistrates, who might perhaps have helped her,
were moldering in the graves; brave young cavaliers, who would have died
for her, had fallen upon distant battle-fields; she had lived to see the
age to which she had belonged fade like a dream; and she went to the
stake, followed by only a few ignorant country people, who forgot all
her bounties, and hooted at her for a wicked sorceress."

"I don't care for such dismal stories, my lady," said Phoebe Marks with
a shudder. "One has no need to read books to give one the horrors in
this dull place."

Lady Audley shrugged her shoulders and laughed at her maid's candor.

"It is a dull place, Phoebe," she said, "though it doesn't do to say so
to my dear old husband. Though I am the wife of one of the most
influential men in the county, I don't know that I wasn't nearly as well
off at Mr. Dawson's; and yet it's something to wear sables that cost
sixty guineas, and have a thousand pounds spent on the decoration of
one's apartments."

Treated as a companion by her mistress, in the receipt of the most
liberal wages, and with perquisites such as perhaps lady's maid never
had before, it was strange that Phoebe Marks should wish to leave her
situation; but it was not the less a fact that she was anxious to
exchange all the advantages of Audley Court for the very unpromising
prospect which awaited her as the wife of her Cousin Luke.

The young man had contrived in some manner to associate himself with the
improved fortunes of his sweetheart. He had never allowed Phoebe any
peace till she had obtained for him, by the aid of my lady's
interference, a situation as undergroom of the Court.

He never rode out with either Alicia or Sir Michael; but on one of the
few occasions upon which my lady mounted the pretty little gray
thoroughbred reserved for her use, he contrived to attend her in her
ride. He saw enough, in the very first half hour they were out, to
discover that, graceful as Lucy Audley might look in her long blue cloth
habit, she was a timid horsewoman, and utterly unable to manage the
animal she rode.

Lady Audley remonstrated with her maid upon her folly in wishing to
marry the uncouth groom.

The two women were seated together over the fire in my lady's
dressing-room, the gray sky closing in upon the October afternoon, and
the black tracery of ivy darkening the casement windows.

"You surely are not in love with the awkward, ugly creature are you,
Phoebe?" asked my lady sharply.

The girl was sitting on a low stool at her mistress feet. She did not
answer my lady's question immediately, but sat for some time looking
vacantly into the red abyss in the hollow fire.

Presently she said, rather as if she had been thinking aloud than
answering Lucy's question:

"I don't think I can love him. We have been together from children, and
I promised, when I was little better than fifteen, that I'd be his wife.
I daren't break that promise now. There have been times when I've made
up the very sentence I meant to say to him, telling him that I couldn't
keep my faith with him; but the words have died upon my lips, and I've
sat looking at him, with a choking sensation, in my throat that wouldn't
let me speak. I daren't refuse to marry him. I've often watched and
watched him, as he has sat slicing away at a hedge-stake with his great
clasp-knife, till I have thought that it is just such men as he who have
decoyed their sweethearts into lonely places, and murdered them for
being false to their word. When he was a boy he was always violent and
revengeful. I saw him once take up that very knife in a quarrel with his
mother. I tell you, my lady, I must marry him."

"You silly girl, you shall do nothing of the kind!" answered Lucy. "You
think he'll murder you, do you? Do you think, then, if murder is in him,
you would be any safer as his wife? If you thwarted him, or made him
jealous; if he wanted to marry another woman, or to get hold of some
poor, pitiful bit of money of yours, couldn't he murder you then? I tell
you you sha'n't marry him, Phoebe. In the first place I hate the man;
and, in the next place I can't afford to part with you. We'll give him a
few pounds and send him about his business."

Phoebe Marks caught my lady's hand in hers, and clasped them
convulsively.

"My lady--my good, kind mistress!" she cried, vehemently, "don't try to
thwart me in this--don't ask me to thwart him. I tell you I must marry
him. You don't know what he is. It will be my ruin, and the ruin of
others, if I break my word. I must marry him!"

"Very well, then, Phoebe," answered her mistress, "I can't oppose you.
There must be some secret at the bottom of all this." "There is, my
lady," said the girl, with her face turned away from Lucy.

"I shall be very sorry to lose you; but I have promised to stand your
friend in all things. What does your cousin mean to do for a living
when, you are married?"

"He would like to take a public house."

"Then he shall take a public house, and the sooner he drinks himself to
death the better. Sir Michael dines at a bachelor's party at Major
Margrave's this evening, and my step-daughter is away with her friends
at the Grange. You can bring your cousin into the drawing-room after
dinner, and I'll tell him what I mean to do for him."

"You are very good, my lady," Phoebe answered with a sigh.

Lady Audley sat in the glow of firelight and wax candles in the
luxurious drawing-room; the amber damask cushions of the sofa
contrasting with her dark violet velvet dress, and her rippling hair
falling about her neck in a golden haze. Everywhere around her were the
evidences of wealth and splendor; while in strange contrast to all this,
and to her own beauty; the awkward groom stood rubbing his bullet head
as my lady explained to him what she intended to do for her confidential
maid. Lucy's promises were very liberal, and she had expected that,
uncouth as the man was, he would, in his own rough manner, have
expressed his gratitude.

To her surprise he stood staring at the floor without uttering a word in
answer to her offer. Phoebe was standing close to his elbow, and seemed
distressed at the man's rudeness.

"Tell my lady how thankful you are, Luke," she said.

"But I'm not so over and above thankful," answered her lover, savagely.
"Fifty pound ain't much to start a public. You'll make it a hundred, my
lady?"

"I shall do nothing of the kind," said Lady Audley, her clear blue eyes
flashing with indignation, "and I wonder at your impertinence in asking
it."

"Oh, yes, you will, though," answered Luke, with quiet insolence that
had a hidden meaning. "You'll make it a hundred, my lady."

Lady Audley rose from her seat, looked the man steadfastly in the face
till his determined gaze sunk under hers; then walking straight up to
her maid, she said in a high, piercing voice, peculiar to her in moments
of intense agitation:

"Phoebe Marks, you have told _this man_!"

The girl fell on her knees at my lady's feet.

"Oh, forgive me, forgive me!" she cried. "He forced it from me, or I
would never, never have told!"




CHAPTER XV.

ON THE WATCH.


Upon a lowering morning late in November, with the yellow fog low upon
the flat meadows, and the blinded cattle groping their way through the
dim obscurity, and blundering stupidly against black and leafless
hedges, or stumbling into ditches, undistinguishable in the hazy
atmosphere; with the village church looming brown and dingy through the
uncertain light; with every winding path and cottage door, every gable
end and gray old chimney, every village child and straggling cur seeming
strange and weird of aspect in the semi-darkness, Phoebe Marks and her
Cousin Luke made their way through the churchyard of Audley, and
presented themselves before a shivering curate, whose surplice hung in
damp folds, soddened by the morning mist, and whose temper was not
improved by his having waited five minutes for the bride and bridegroom.

Luke Marks, dressed in his ill-fitting Sunday clothes, looked by no
means handsomer than in his every-day apparel; but Phoebe, arrayed in a
rustling silk of delicate gray, that had been worn about half a dozen
times by her mistress, looked, as the few spectators of the ceremony
remarked, "quite the lady."

A very dim and shadowy lady, vague of outline, and faint of coloring,
with eyes, hair, complexion and dress all melting into such pale and
uncertain shades that, in the obscure light of the foggy November
morning a superstitious stranger might have mistaken the bride for the
ghost of some other bride, dead and buried in the vault below the
church.

Mr. Luke Marks, the hero of the occasion, thought very little of all
this. He had secured the wife of his choice, and the object of his
life-long ambition--a public house. My lady had provided the
seventy-five pounds necessary for the purchase of the good-will and
fixtures, with the stock of ales and spirits, of a small inn in the
center of a lonely little village, perched on the summit of a hill, and
called Mount Stanning. It was not a very pretty house to look at; it had
something of a tumble-down, weather-beaten appearance, standing, as it
did, upon high ground, sheltered only by four or five bare and overgrown
poplars, that had shot up too rapidly for their strength, and had a
blighted, forlorn look in consequence. The wind had had its own way with
the Castle Inn, and had sometimes made cruel use of its power. It was
the wind that battered and bent the low, thatched roofs of outhouses and
stables, till they hung over and lurched forward, as a slouched hat
hangs over the low forehead of some village ruffian; it was the wind
that shook and rattled the wooden shutters before the narrow casements,
till they hung broken and dilapidated upon their rusty hinges; it was
the wind that overthrew the pigeon house, and broke the vane that had
been imprudently set up to tell the movements of its mightiness; it, was
the wind that made light of any little bit of wooden trellis-work, or
creeping plant, or tiny balcony, or any modest decoration whatsoever,
and tore and scattered it in its scornful fury; it was the wind that
left mossy secretions on the discolored surface of the plaster walls; it
was the wind, in short, that shattered, and ruined, and rent, and
trampled upon the tottering pile of buildings, and then flew shrieking
off, to riot and glory in its destroying strength. The dispirited
proprietor grew tired of his long struggle with this mighty enemy; so
the wind was left to work its own will, and the Castle Inn fell slowly
to decay. But for all that it suffered without, it was not the less
prosperous within doors. Sturdy drovers stopped to drink at the little
bar; well-to-do farmers spent their evenings and talked politics in the
low, wainscoted parlor, while their horses munched some suspicious
mixture of moldy hay and tolerable beans in the tumble-down stables.
Sometimes even the members of the Audley hunt stopped to drink and bait
their horses at the Castle Inn; while, on one grand and
never-to-be-forgotten occasion, a dinner had been ordered by the master
of the hounds for some thirty gentlemen, and the proprietor driven
nearly mad by the importance of the demand.

So Luke Marks, who was by no means troubled with an eye for the
beautiful, thought himself very fortunate in becoming the landlord of
the Castle Inn, Mount Stanning.

A chaise-cart was waiting in the fog to convey the bride and bridegroom
to their new home; and a few of the villagers, who had known Phoebe from
a child, were lingering around the churchyard gate to bid her good-by.
Her pale eyes were still paler from the tears she had shed, and the red
rims which surrounded them. The bridegroom was annoyed at this
exhibition of emotion.

"What are you blubbering for, lass?" he said, fiercely. "If you didn't
want to marry me you should have told me so. I ain't going to murder
you, am I?"

The lady's maid shivered as he spoke to her, and dragged her little silk
mantle closely around her.

"You're cold in all this here finery," said Luke, staring at her costly
dress with no expression of good-will. "Why can't women dress according
to their station? You won't have no silk gownds out of my pocket, I can
tell you."

He lifted the shivering girl into the chaise, wrapped a rough great-coat
about her, and drove off through the yellow fog, followed by a feeble
cheer from two or three urchins clustered around the gate.

A new maid was brought from London to replace Phoebe Marks about the
person of my lady--a very showy damsel, who wore a black satin gown, and
rose-colored ribbons in her cap, and complained bitterly of the dullness
of Audley Court.

But Christmas brought visitors to the rambling old mansion. A country
squire and his fat wife occupied the tapestried chamber; merry girls
scampered up and down the long passages, and young men stared out of the
latticed windows, watching for southerly winds and cloudy skies; there
was not an empty stall in the roomy old stables; an extempore forge had
been set up in the yard for the shoeing of hunters; yelping dogs made
the place noisy with their perpetual clamor; strange servants herded
together on the garret story; and every little casement hidden away
under some pointed gable, and every dormer window in the quaint old
roof, glimmered upon the winter's night with its separate taper, till,
coming suddenly upon Audley Court, the benighted stranger, misled by the
light, and noise, and bustle of the place, might have easily fallen into
young Marlowe's error, and have mistaken the hospitable mansion for a
good, old-fashioned inn, such as have faded from this earth since the
last mail coach and prancing tits took their last melancholy journey to
the knacker's yard.

Among other visitors Mr. Robert Audley came down to Essex for the
hunting season, with half a dozen French novels, a case of cigars, and
three pounds of Turkish tobacco in his portmanteau.

The honest young country squires, who talked all breakfast time of
Flying Dutchman fillies and Voltigeur colts; of glorious runs of seven
hours' hard riding over three counties, and a midnight homeward ride of
thirty miles upon their covert hacks; and who ran away from the
well-spread table with their mouths full of cold sirloin, to look at
that off pastern, or that sprained forearm, or the colt that had just
come back from the veterinary surgeon's, set down Robert Audley,
dawdling over a slice of bread and marmalade, as a person utterly
unworthy of any remark whatsoever.

The young barrister had brought a couple of dogs with him; and the
country gentleman who gave fifty pounds for a pointer; and traveled a
couple of hundred miles to look at a leash of setters before be struck a
bargain, laughed aloud at the two miserable curs, one of which had
followed Robert Audley through Chancery Lane, and half the length of
Holborn; while his companion had been taken by the barrister _vi et
armis_ from a coster-monger who was ill-using him. And as Robert
furthermore insisted on having these two deplorable animals under his
easy-chair in the drawing-room, much to the annoyance of my lady, who,
as we know, hated all dogs, the visitors at Audley Court looked upon the
baronet's nephew as an inoffensive species of maniac.

During other visits to the Court Robert Audley had made a feeble show of
joining in the sports of the merry assembly. He had jogged across half a
dozen ploughed fields on a quiet gray pony of Sir Michael's, and drawing
up breathless and panting at door of some farm-house, had expressed his
intention of following the hounds no further _that_ morning. He had even
gone so far as to put on, with great labor, a pair of skates, with a
view to taking a turn on the frozen surface of the fishpond, and had
fallen ignominously at the first attempt, lying placidly extended on the
flat of his back until such time as the bystanders should think fit to
pick him up. He had occupied the back seat in a dog-cart during a
pleasant morning drive, vehemently protesting against being taken up
hill, and requiring the vehicle to be stopped every ten minutes in order
to readjust the cushions. But this year he showed no inclination for any
of these outdoor amusements, and he spent his time entirely in lounging
in the drawing-room, and making himself agreeable, after his own lazy
fashion, to my lady and Alicia.

Lady Audley received her nephew's attentions in that graceful
half-childish fashion which her admirers found so charming; but Alicia
was indignant at the change in her cousin's conduct.

"You were always a poor, spiritless fellow, Bob," said the young lady,
contemptuously, as she bounced into the drawing-room in her
riding-habit, after a hunting breakfast, from which Robert had absented
himself, preferring a cup of tea in my lady's boudoir; "but this year I
don't know what has come to you. You are good for nothing but to hold a
skein of silk or read Tennyson to Lady Audley."

"My dear, hasty, impetuous Alicia, don't be violent," said the young man
imploringly. "A conclusion isn't a five-barred gate; and you needn't
give your judgment its head, as you give your mare Atalanta hers, when
you're flying across country at the heels of an unfortunate fox. Lady
Audley interests me, and my uncle's county friends do not. Is that a
sufficient answer, Alicia?"

Miss Audley gave her head a little scornful toss.

"It's as good an answer as I shall ever get from, you, Bob," she said,
impatiently; "but pray amuse yourself in your own way; loll in an
easy-chair all day, with those two absurd dogs asleep on your knees;
spoil my lady's window-curtains with your cigars and annoy everybody in
the house with your stupid, inanimate countenance."

Mr. Robert Audley opened his handsome gray eyes to their widest extent
at this tirade, and looked helplessly at Miss Alicia.

The young lady was walking up and down the room, slashing the skirt of
her habit with her riding-whip. Her eyes sparkled with an angry flash,
and a crimson glow burned under her clear brown skin. The young
barrister knew very well, by these diagnostics, that his cousin was in a
passion.

"Yes," she repeated, "your stupid, inanimate countenance. Do you know,
Robert Audley, that with all your mock amiability, you are brimful of
conceit and superciliousness. You look down upon our amusements; you
lift up your eyebrows, and shrug your shoulders, and throw yourself back
in your chair, and wash your hands of us and our pleasures. You are a
selfish, cold-hearted Sybarite--"

"Alicia! Good--gracious--me!"

The morning paper dropped out of his hands, and he sat feebly staring at
his assailant.

"Yes, _selfish_, Robert Audley! You take home half-starved dogs, because
you like half-starved dogs. You stoop down, and pat the head of every
good-for-nothing cur in the village street, because you like
good-for-nothing curs. You notice little children, and give them
halfpence, because it amuses you to do so. But you lift your eyebrows a
quarter of a yard when poor Sir Harry Towers tells a stupid story, and
stare the poor fellow out of countenance with your lazy insolence. As to
your amiability, you would let a man hit you, and say 'Thank you' for
the blow, rather than take the trouble to hit him again; but you
wouldn't go half a mile out of your way to serve your dearest friend.
Sir Harry is worth twenty of you, though he _did_ write to ask if my
m-a-i-r Atalanta had recovered from the sprain. He can't spell, or lift
his eyebrows to the roots of his hair; but he would go through fire and
water for the girl he loves; while _you_--"

At this very point, when Robert was most prepared to encounter his
cousin's violence, and when Miss Alicia seemed about to make her
strongest attack, the young lady broke down altogether, and burst into
tears.

Robert sprang from his easy-chair, upsetting his dogs on the carpet.

"Alicia, my darling, what is it?"

"It's--it's--it's the feather of my hat that got into my eyes," sobbed
his cousin; and before he could investigate the truth of this assertion
Alicia had darted out of the room.

Robert Audley was preparing to follow her, when he heard her voice in
the court-yard below, amidst the tramping of horses and the clamor of
visitors, dogs, and grooms. Sir Harry Towers, the most aristocratic
young sportsman in the neighborhood, had just taken her little foot in
his hand as she sprung into her saddle.

"Good Heaven!" exclaimed Robert, as he watched the merry party of
equestrians until they disappeared under the archway. "What does all
this mean? How charmingly she sits her horse! What a pretty figure, too,
and a fine, candid, brown, rosy face: but to fly at a fellow like that,
without the least provocation! That's the consequence of letting a girl
follow the hounds. She learns to look at everything in life as she does
at six feet of timber or a sunk fence; she goes through the world as she
goes across country--straight ahead, and over everything. Such a nice
girl as she might have been, too, if she'd been brought up in Figtree
Court! If ever I marry, and have daughters (which remote contingency may
Heaven forefend!) they shall be educated in Paper Buildings, take their
sole exercise in the Temple Gardens, and they shall never go beyond the
gates till they are marriageable, when I will walk them straight across
Fleet street to St. Dunstan's church, and deliver them into the hands of
their husbands."

With such reflections as these did Mr. Robert Audley beguile the time
until my lady re-entered the drawing-room, fresh and radiant in her
elegant morning costume, her yellow curls glistening with the perfumed
waters in which she had bathed, and her velvet-covered sketch-book in
her arms. She planted a little easel upon a table by the window, seated
herself before it, and began to mix the colors upon her palette, Robert
watching her out of his half-closed eyes.

"You are sure my cigar does not annoy you, Lady Audley?"

"Oh, no indeed; I am quite used to the smell of tobacco. Mr. Dawson, the
surgeon, smoked all the evening when I lived in his house."

"Dawson is a good fellow, isn't he?" Robert asked, carelessly.

My lady burst into her pretty, gushing laugh.

"The dearest of good creatures," she said. "He paid me five-and-twenty
pounds a year--only fancy, five-and-twenty pounds! That made six pounds
five a quarter. How well I remember receiving the money--six dingy old
sovereigns, and a little heap of untidy, dirty silver, that came
straight from the till in the surgery! And then how glad I was to get
it! While _now_--I can't help laughing while I think of it--these colors
I am using cost a guinea each at Winsor & Newton's--the carmine and
ultramarine thirty shillings. I gave Mrs. Dawson one of my silk dresses
the other day, and the poor thing kissed me, and the surgeon carried the
bundle home under his cloak."

My lady laughed long and joyously at the thought. Her colors were mixed;
she was copying a water-colored sketch of an impossibly Turneresque
atmosphere. The sketch was nearly finished, and she had only to put in
some critical little touches with the most delicate of her sable
pencils. She prepared herself daintily for the work, looking sideways at
the painting.

All this time Mr. Robert Audley's eyes were fixed intently on her pretty
face.

"It _is_ a change," he said, after so long a pause that my lady might
have forgotten what she had been talking of, "it _is_ a change! Some
women would do a great deal to accomplish such a change as that."

Lady Audley's clear blue eyes dilated as she fixed them suddenly on the
young barrister. The wintry sunlight, gleaming full upon her face from a
side window, lit up the azure of those beautiful eyes, till their color
seemed to flicker and tremble betwixt blue and green, as the opal tints
of the sea change upon a summer's day. The small brush fell from her
hand, and blotted out the peasant's face under a widening circle of
crimson lake.

Robert Audley was tenderly coaxing the crumbled leaf of his cigar with
cautious fingers.

"My friend at the corner of Chancery Lane has not given me such good
Manillas as usual," he murmured. "If ever you smoke, my dear aunt (and I
am told that many women take a quiet weed under the rose), be very
careful how you choose your cigars."

My lady drew a long breath, picked up her brush, and laughed aloud at
Robert's advice.

"What an eccentric creature you are, Mr. Audley I Do you know that you
sometimes puzzle me--"

"Not more than you puzzle me, dear aunt."

My lady put away her colors and sketch book, and seating herself in the
deep recess of another window, at a considerable distance from Robert
Audley, settled to a large piece of Berlin-wool work--a piece of
embroidery which the Penelopes of ten or twelve years ago were very fond
of exercising their ingenuity upon--the Olden Time at Bolton Abbey.

Seated in the embrasure of this window, my lady was separated from
Robert Audley by the whole length of the room, and the young man could
only catch an occasional glimpse of her fair face, surrounded by its
bright aureole of hazy, golden hair.

Robert Audley had been a week at the Court, but as yet neither he nor my
lady had mentioned the name of George Talboys.

This morning, however, after exhausting the usual topics of
conversation, Lady Audley made an inquiry about her nephew's friend;
"That Mr. George--George--" she said, hesitating.

"Talboys," suggested Robert.

"Yes, to be sure--Mr. George Talboys. Rather a singular name, by-the-by,
and certainly, by all accounts, a very singular person. Have you seen
him lately?"

"I have not seen him since the 7th of September last--the day upon which
he left me asleep in the meadows on the other side of the village."

"Dear me!" exclaimed my lady, "what a very strange young man this Mr.
George Talboys must be! Pray tell me all about it."

Robert told, in a few words, of his visit to Southampton and his journey
to Liverpool, with their different results, my lady listening very
attentively.

In order to tell this story to better advantage, the young man left his
chair, and, crossing the room, took up his place opposite to Lady
Audley, in the embrasure of the window.

"And what do you infer from all this?" asked my lady, after a pause.

"It is so great a mystery to me," he answered, "that I scarcely dare to
draw any conclusion whatever; but in the obscurity I think I can grope
my way to two suppositions, which to me seem almost certainties."

"And they are--"

"First, that George Talboys never went beyond Southampton. Second, that
he never went to Southampton at all."

"But you traced him there. His father-in-law had seen him."

"I have reason to doubt his father-in-law's integrity."

"Good gracious me!" cried my lady, piteously. "What do you mean by all
this?"

"Lady Audley," answered the young man, gravely, "I have never practiced
as a barrister. I have enrolled myself in the ranks of a profession, the
members of which hold solemn responsibilities and have sacred duties to
perform; and I have shrunk from those responsibilities and duties, as I
have from all the fatigues of this troublesome life. But we are
sometimes forced into the very position we have most avoided, and I have
found myself lately compelled to think of these things. Lady Audley, did
you ever study the theory of circumstantial evidence?"

"How can you ask a poor little woman about such horrid things?"
exclaimed my lady.

"Circumstantial evidence," continued the young man, as if he scarcely
heard Lady Audley's interruption--"that wonderful fabric which is built
out of straws collected at every point of the compass, and which is yet
strong enough to hang a man. Upon what infinitesimal trifles may
sometimes hang the whole secret of some wicked mystery, inexplicable
heretofore to the wisest upon the earth! A scrap of paper, a shred of
some torn garment, the button off a coat, a word dropped incautiously
from the overcautious lips of guilt, the fragment of a letter, the
shutting or opening of a door, a shadow on a window-blind, the accuracy
of a moment tested by one of Benson's watches--a thousand circumstances
so slight as to be forgotten by the criminal, but links of iron in the
wonderful chain forged by the science of the detective officer; and lo!
the gallows is built up; the solemn bell tolls through the dismal gray
of the early morning, the drop creaks under the guilty feet, and the
penalty of crime is paid."

Faint shadows of green and crimson fell upon my lady's face from the
painted escutcheons in the mullioned window by which she sat; but every
trace of the natural color of that face had faded out, leaving it a
ghastly ashen gray.

Sitting quietly in her chair, her head fallen back upon the amber damask
cushions, and her little hands lying powerless in her lap, Lady Audley
had fainted away.

"The radius grows narrower day by day," said Robert Audley. "George
Talboys never reached Southampton."




CHAPTER XVI.

ROBERT AUDLEY GETS HIS CONGE.


The Christmas week was over, and one by one the country visitors dropped
away from Audley Court. The fat squire and his wife abandoned the gray,
tapestried chamber, and left the black-browed warriors looming from the
wall to scowl upon and threaten new guests, or to glare vengefully upon
vacancy. The merry girls on the second story packed, or caused to be
packed, their trunks and imperials, and tumbled gauze ball-dresses were
taken home that had been brought fresh to Audley. Blundering old family
chariots, with horses whose untrimmed fetlocks told of rougher work than
even country roads, were brought round to the broad space before the
grim oak door, and laden with chaotic heaps of womanly luggage. Pretty
rosy faces peeped out of carriage windows to smile the last farewell
upon the group at the hall door, as the vehicle rattled and rumbled
under the ivied archway. Sir Michael was in request everywhere. Shaking
hands with the young sportsmen; kissing the rosy-cheeked girls;
sometimes even embracing portly matrons who came to thank him for their
pleasant visit; everywhere genial, hospitable, generous, happy, and
beloved, the baronet hurried from room to room, from the hall to the
stables, from the stables to the court-yard, from the court-yard to the
arched gateway to speed the parting guest.

My lady's yellow curls flashed hither and thither like wandering gleams
of sunshine on these busy days of farewell. Her great blue eyes had a
pretty, mournful look, in charming unison with the soft pressure of her
little hand, and that friendly, though perhaps rather stereotyped
speech, in which she told her visitors how she was so sorry to lose
them, and how she didn't know what she should do till they came once
more to enliven the court by their charming society.

But however sorry my lady might be to lose her visitors, there was at
least one guest whose society she was not deprived of. Robert Audley
showed no intention of leaving his uncle's house. He had no professional
duties, he said; Figtree Court was delightfully shady in hot weather,
but there was a sharp corner round which the wind came in the summer
months, armed with avenging rheumatisms and influenzas. Everybody was so
good to him at the Court, that really he had no inclination to hurry
away.

Sir Michael had but one answer to this: "Stay, my dear boy; stay, my
dear Bob, as long as ever you like. I have no son, and you stand to me
in the place of one. Make yourself agreeable to Lucy, and make the Court
your home as long as you live."

To which Robert would merely reply by grasping his uncle's hand
vehemently, and muttering something about "a jolly old prince."

It was to be observed that there was sometimes a certain vague sadness
in the young man's tone when he called Sir Michael "a jolly old prince;"
some shadow of affectionate regret that brought a mist into Robert's
eyes, as he sat in a corner of the room looking thoughtfully at the
white-bearded baronet.

Before the last of the young sportsmen departed, Sir Harry Towers
demanded and obtained an interview with Miss Alicia Audley in the oak
library--an interview in which considerable emotion was displayed by the
stalwart young fox-hunter; so much emotion, indeed, and of such a
genuine and honest character, that Alicia fairly broke down as she told
him she should forever esteem and respect him for his true and noble
heart, but that he must never, never, unless he wished to cause her the
most cruel distress, ask more from her than this esteem and respect.

Sir Harry left the library by the French window opening into the
pond-garden. He strolled into that very lime-walk which George Talboys
had compared to an avenue in a churchyard, and under the leafless trees
fought the battle of his brave young heart.

"What a fool I am to feel it like this!" he cried, stamping his foot
upon the frosty ground. "I always knew it would be so; I always knew
that she was a hundred times too good for me. God bless her! How nobly
and tenderly she spoke; how beautiful she looked with the crimson
blushes under her brown skin, and the tears in her big, gray
eyes--almost as handsome as the day she took the sunk fence, and let me
put the brush in her hat as we rode home! God bless her! I can get over
anything as long as she doesn't care for that sneaking lawyer. But I
couldn't stand that."

That sneaking lawyer, by which appellation Sir Harry alluded to Mr.
Robert Audley, was standing in the hall, looking at a map of the midland
counties, when Alicia came out of the library, with red eyes, after her
interview with the fox-hunting baronet.

Robert, who was short-sighted, had his eyes within half an inch of the
surface of the map as the young lady approached him.

"Yes," he said, "Norwich _is_ in Norfolk, and that fool, young Vincent,
said it was in Herefordshire. Ha, Alicia, is that you?"

He turned round so as to intercept Miss Audley on her way to the
staircase.

"Yes," replied his cousin curtly, trying to pass him.

"Alicia, you have been crying."

The young lady did not condescend to reply.

"You have been crying, Alicia. Sir Harry Towers, of Towers Park, in the
county of Herts, has been making you an offer of his hand, eh?"

"Have you been listening at the door, Mr. Audley?"

"I have not, Miss Audley. On principle, I object to listen, and in
practice I believe it to be a very troublesome proceeding; but I am a
barrister, Miss Alicia, and able to draw a conclusion by induction. Do
you know what inductive evidence is, Miss Audley?"

"No," replied Alicia, looking at her cousin as a handsome young panther
might look at its daring tormentor.

"I thought not. I dare say Sir Harry would ask if it was a new kind of
horse-ball. I knew by induction that the baronet was going to make you
an offer; first, because he came downstairs with his hair parted on the
wrong side, and his face as pale as a tablecloth; secondly, because he
couldn't eat any breakfast, and let his coffee go the wrong way; and,
thirdly, because he asked for an interview with you before he left the
Court. Well, how's it to be, Alicia? Do we marry the baronet, and is
poor Cousin Bob to be the best man at the wedding?"

"Sir Harry Towers is a noble-hearted young man," said Alicia, still
trying to pass her cousin.

"But do we accept him--yes or no? Are we to be Lady Towers, with a
superb estate in Hertfordshire, summer quarters for our hunters, and a
drag with outriders to drive us across to papa's place in Essex? Is it
to be so, Alicia, or not?"

"What is that to you, Mr. Robert Audley?" cried Alicia, passionately.
"What do _you_ care what becomes of me, or whom I marry? If I married a
chimney-sweep you'd only lift up your eyebrows and say, 'Bless my soul,
she was always eccentric.' I have refused Sir Harry Towers; but when I
think of his generous and unselfish affection, and compare it with the
heartless, lazy, selfish, supercilious indifference of other men, I've a
good mind to run after him and tell him--"

"That you'll retract, and be my Lady Towers?"

"Yes."

"Then don't, Alicia, don't," said Robert Audley, grasping his cousin's
slender little wrist, and leading her up-stairs. "Come into the
drawing-room with me, Alicia, my poor little cousin; my charming,
impetuous, alarming little cousin. Sit down here in this mullioned
window, and let us talk seriously and leave off quarreling if we can."

The cousins had the drawing-room all to themselves. Sir Michael was out,
my lady in her own apartments, and poor Sir Harry Towers walking up and
down upon the gravel walk, darkened with the flickering shadows of the
leafless branches in the cold winter sunshine.

"My poor little Alicia," said Robert, as tenderly as if he had been
addressing some spoiled child, "do you suppose that because people don't
wear vinegar tops, or part their hair on the wrong side, or conduct
themselves altogether after the manner of well-meaning maniacs, by way
of proving the vehemence of their passion--do you suppose because of
this, Alicia Audley, that they may not be just as sensible of the merits
of a dear little warm-hearted and affectionate girl as ever their
neighbors can be? Life is such a very troublesome matter, when all is
said and done, that it's as well even to take its blessings quietly. I
don't make a great howling because I can get good cigars one door from
the corner of Chancery Lane, and have a dear, good girl for my cousin;
but I am not the less grateful to Providence that it is so."

Alicia opened her gray eyes to their widest extent, looking her cousin
full in the face with a bewildered stare. Robert had picked up the
ugliest and leanest of his attendant curs, and was placidly stroking the
animal's ears.

"Is this all you have to say to me, Robert?" asked Miss Audley, meekly.

"Well, yes, I think so," replied her cousin, after considerable
deliberation. "I fancy that what I wanted to say was this--don't marry
the fox-hunting baronet if you like anybody else better; for if you'll
only be patient and take life easily, and try and reform yourself of
banging doors, bouncing in and out rooms, talking of the stables, and
riding across country, I've no doubt the person you prefer will make you
a very excellent husband."

"Thank you, cousin," said Miss Audley, crimsoning with bright, indignant
blushes up to the roots of her waving brown hair; "but as you may not
know the person I prefer, I think you had better not take upon yourself
to answer for him."

Robert pulled the dog's ears thoughtfully for some moments.

"No, to be sure," he said, after a pause. "Of course, if I don't know
him--I thought I did."

"_Did you?_" exclaimed Alicia; and opening the door with a violence that
made her cousin shiver, she bounced out of the drawing-room.

"I only said I thought I knew him," Robert called after her; and, then,
as he sunk into an easy-chair, he murmured thoughtfully: "Such a nice
girl, too, if she didn't bounce."

So poor Sir Harry Towers rode away from Audley Court, looking very
crestfallen and dismal.

He had very little pleasure in returning to the stately mansion, hidden
among sheltering oaks and venerable beeches. The square, red brick
house, gleaming at the end of a long arcade of leafless trees was to be
forever desolate, he thought, since Alicia would not come to be its
mistress.

A hundred improvements planned and thought of were dismissed from his
mind as useless now. The hunter that Jim the trainer was breaking in for
a lady; the two pointer pups that were being reared for the next
shooting season; the big black retriever that would have carried
Alicia's parasol; the pavilion in the garden, disused since his mother's
death, but which he had meant to have restored for Miss Audley--all
these things were now so much vanity and vexation of spirit.

"What's the good of being rich if one has no one to help spend one's
money?" said the young baronet. "One only grows a selfish beggar, and
takes to drinking too much port. It's a hard thing that a girl can
refuse a true heart and such stables as we've got at the park. It
unsettles a man somehow."

Indeed, this unlooked for rejection had very much unsettled the few
ideas which made up the small sum of the baronet's mind.

He had been desperately in love with Alicia ever since the last hunting
season, when he had met her at the county ball. His passion, cherished
through the slow monotony of a summer, had broken out afresh in the
merry winter months, and the young man's _mauvaise honte_ alone had
delayed the offer of his hand. But he had never for a moment supposed
that he would be refused; he was so used to the adulation of mothers who
had daughters to marry, and of even the daughters themselves; he had
been so accustomed to feel himself the leading personage in an assembly,
although half the wits of the age had been there, and he could only say
"Haw, to be sure!" and "By Jove--hum!" he had been so spoiled by the
flatteries of bright eyes that looked, or seemed to look, the brighter
when he drew near, that without being possessed of one shadow of
personal vanity, he had yet come to think that he had only to make an
offer to the prettiest girl in Essex to behold himself immediately
accepted.

"Yes," he would say complacently to some admiring satellite, "I know I'm
a good match, and I know what makes the gals so civil. They're very
pretty, and they're very friendly to a fellow; but I don't care about
'em. They're all alike--they can only drop their eyes and say, 'Lor',
Sir Harry, why do you call that curly black dog a retriever?' or 'Oh Sir
Harry, and did the poor mare really sprain her pastern shoulder-blade?'
I haven't got much brains myself, I know," the baronet would add
deprecatingly; "and I don't want a strong-minded woman, who writes books
and wears green spectacles; but, hang it! I like a gal who knows what
she's talking about."

So when Alicia said "No," or rather made that pretty speech about esteem
and respect, which well-bred young ladies substitute for the obnoxious
monosyllable, Sir Harry Towers felt that the whole fabric of the future
he had built so complacently was shivered into a heap of dingy ruins.

Sir Michael grasped him warmly by the hand just before the young man
mounted his horse in the court-yard.

"I'm very sorry, Towers," he said. "You're as good a fellow as ever
breathed, and would have made my girl an excellent husband; but you know
there's a cousin, and I think that--"

"Don't say that, Sir Michael," interrupted the fox-hunter,
energetically. "I can get over anything but that. A fellow whose hand
upon the curb weighs half a ton (why, he pulled the Cavalier's mouth to
pieces, sir, the day you let him ride the horse); a fellow who turns his
collars down, and eats bread and marmalade! No, no, Sir Michael; it's a
queer world, but I can't think that of Miss Audley. There must be some
one in the background, sir; it can't be the cousin."

Sir Michael shook his head as the rejected suitor rode away.

"I don't know about that," he muttered. "Bob's a good lad, and the girl
might do worse; but he hangs back as if he didn't care for her. There's
some mystery--there's some mystery!"

The old baronet said this in that semi-thoughtful tone with which we
speak of other people's affairs. The shadows of the early winter
twilight, gathering thickest under the low oak ceiling of the hall, and
the quaint curve of the arched doorway, fell darkly round his handsome
head; but the light of his declining life, his beautiful and beloved
young wife, was near him, and he could see no shadows when she was by.

She came skipping through the hall to meet him, and, shaking her golden
ringlets, buried her bright head on her husband's breast.

"So the last of our visitors is gone, dear, and we're all alone," she
said. "Isn't that nice?"

"Yes, darling," he answered fondly, stroking her bright hair.

"Except Mr. Robert Audley. How long is that nephew of yours going to
stay here?"

"As long as he likes, my pet; he's always welcome," said the baronet;
and then, as if remembering himself, he added, tenderly: "But not unless
his visit is agreeable to you, darling; not if his lazy habits, or his
smoking, or his dogs, or anything about him is displeasing to you."

Lady Audley pursed up her rosy lips and looked thoughtfully at the
ground.

"It isn't that," she said, hesitatingly. "Mr. Audley is a very agreeable
young man, and a very honorable young man; but you know, Sir Michael,
I'm rather a young aunt for such a nephew, and--"

"And what, Lucy?" asked the baronet, fiercely.

"Poor Alicia is rather jealous of any attention Mr. Audley pays me,
and--and--I think it would be better for her happiness if your nephew
were to bring his visit to a close."

"He shall go to-night, Lucy," exclaimed Sir Michael. "I am a blind,
neglectful fool not to have thought of this before. My lovely little
darling, it was scarcely just to Bob to expose the poor lad to your
fascinations. I know him to be as good and true-hearted a fellow as ever
breathed, but--but--he shall go tonight."

"But you won't be too abrupt, dear? You won't be rude?"

"Rude! No, Lucy. I left him smoking in the lime-walk. I'll go and tell
him that he must get out of the house in an hour."

So in that leafless avenue, under whose gloomy shade George Talboys had
stood on that thunderous evening before the day of his disappearance,
Sir Michael Audley told his nephew that the Court was no home for him,
and that my lady was too young and pretty to accept the attentions of a
handsome nephew of eight-and-twenty.

Robert only shrugged his shoulders and elevated his thick, black
eyebrows as Sir Michael delicately hinted all this.

"I have been attentive to my lady," he said. "She interests me;" and
then, with a change in his voice, and an emotion not common to him, he
turned to the baronet, and grasping his hand, exclaimed, "God forbid, my
dear uncle, that I should ever bring trouble upon such a noble heart as
yours! God forbid that the slightest shadow of dishonor should ever fall
upon your honored head--least of all through agency of mine."

The young man uttered these few words in a broken and disjointed fashion
in which Sir Michael had never heard him speak, before, and then turning
away his head, fairly broke down.

He left the court that night, but he did not go far. Instead of taking
the evening train for London, he went straight up to the little village
of Mount Stanning, and walking into the neatly-kept inn, asked Phoebe
Marks if he could be accommodated with apartments.




CHAPTER XVII.

AT THE CASTLE INN.


The little sitting-room into which Phoebe Marks ushered the baronet's
nephew was situated on the ground floor, and only separated by a
lath-and-plaster partition from the little bar-parlor occupied by the
innkeeper and his wife.

It seemed as though the wise architect who had superintended the
building of the Castle Inn had taken especial care that nothing but the
frailest and most flimsy material should be used, and that the wind,
having a special fancy for this unprotected spot, should have full play
for the indulgence of its caprices.

To this end pitiful woodwork had been used instead of solid masonry;
rickety ceilings had been propped up by fragile rafters, and beams that
threatened on every stormy night to fall upon the heads of those beneath
them; doors whose specialty was never to be shut, yet always to be
banging; windows constructed with a peculiar view to letting in the
draft when they were shut, and keeping out the air when they were open.
The hand of genius had devised this lonely country inn; and there was
not an inch of woodwork, or trowelful of plaster employed in all the
rickety construction that did not offer its own peculiar weak point to
every assault of its indefatigable foe.

Robert looked about him with a feeble smile of resignation.

It was a change, decidedly, from the luxurious comforts of Audley Court,
and it was rather a strange fancy of the young barrister to prefer
loitering at this dreary village hostelry to returning to his snug
chambers in Figtree Court.

But he had brought his Lares and Penates with him, in the shape of his
German pipe, his tobacco canister, half a dozen French novels, and his
two ill-conditioned, canine favorites, which sat shivering before the
smoky little fire, barking shortly and sharply now and then, by way of
hinting for some slight refreshment.

While Mr. Robert Audley contemplated his new quarters, Phoebe Marks
summoned a little village lad who was in the habit of running errands
for her, and taking him into the kitchen, gave him a tiny note,
carefully folded and sealed.

"You know Audley Court?"

"Yes, mum."

"If you'll run there with this letter to-night, and see that it's put
safely in Lady Audley's hands, I'll give you a shilling."

"Yes, mum."

"You understand? Ask to see my lady; you can say you've a message--not a
note, mind--but a message from Phoebe Marks; and when you see her, give
this into her own hand."

"Yes, mum."

"You won't forget?"

"No, mum."

"Then be off with you."

The boy waited for no second bidding, but in another moment was scudding
along the lonely high road, down the sharp descent that led to Audley.

Phoebe Marks went to the window, and looked out at the black figure of
the lad hurrying through the dusky winter evening.

"If there's any bad meaning in his coming here," she thought, "my lady
will know of it in time, at any rate,"

Phoebe herself brought the neatly arranged tea-tray, and the little
covered dish of ham and eggs which had been prepared for this
unlooked-for visitor. Her pale hair was as smoothly braided, and her
light gray dress fitted as precisely as of old. The same neutral tints
pervaded her person and her dress; no showy rose-colored ribbons or
rustling silk gown proclaimed the well-to-do innkeeper's wife. Phoebe
Marks was a person who never lost her individuality. Silent and
self-constrained, she seemed to hold herself within herself, and take no
color from the outer world.

Robert looked at her thoughtfully as she spread the cloth, and drew the
table nearer to the fireplace.

"That," he thought, "is a woman who could keep a secret."

The dogs looked rather suspiciously at the quiet figure of Mrs. Marks
gliding softly about the room, from the teapot to the caddy, and from
the caddy to the kettle singing on the hob.

"Will you pour out my tea for me, Mrs. Marks?" said Robert, seating
himself on a horsehair-covered arm-chair, which fitted him as tightly in
every direction as if he had been measured for it.

"You have come straight from the Court, sir?" said Phoebe, as she handed
Robert the sugar-basin.

"Yes; I only left my uncle's an hour ago."

"And my lady, sir, was she quite well?"

"Yes, quite well."

"As gay and light-hearted as ever, sir?"

"As gay and light-hearted as ever."

Phoebe retired respectfully after having given Mr. Audley his tea, but
as she stood with her hand upon the lock of the door he spoke again.

"You knew Lady Audley when she was Miss Lucy Graham, did you not?" he
asked.

"Yes, sir. I lived at Mrs. Dawson's when my lady was governess there."

"Indeed! Was she long in the surgeon's family?"

"A year and a half, sir."

"And she came from London?"

"Yes, sir."

"And she was an orphan, I believe?"

"Yes, sir."

"Always as cheerful as she is now?"

"Always, sir."

Robert emptied his teacup and handed it to Mrs. Marks. Their eyes met--a
lazy look in his, and an active, searching glance in hers.

"This woman would be good in a witness-box," he thought; "it would take a
clever lawyer to bother her in a cross-examination."

He finished his second cup of tea, pushed away his plate, fed his dogs,
and lighted his pipe, while Phoebe carried off the tea-tray.

The wind came whistling up across the frosty open country, and through
the leafless woods, and rattled fiercely at the window-frames.

"There's a triangular draught from those two windows and the door that
scarcely adds to the comfort of this apartment," murmured Robert; "and
there certainly are pleasanter sensations than that of standing up to
one's knees in cold water."

He poked the fire, patted his dogs, put on his great coat, rolled a
rickety old sofa close to the hearth, wrapped his legs in his railway
rug, and stretching himself at full length upon the narrow horsehair
cushion, smoked his pipe, and watched the bluish-gray wreaths curling
upward to the dingy ceiling.

"No," he murmured, again; "that is a woman who can keep a secret. A
counsel for the prosecution could get very little out of her."

I have said that the bar-parlor was only separated from the sitting-room
occupied by Robert by a lath-and-plaster partition. The young barrister
could hear the two or three village tradesmen and a couple of farmers
laughing and talking round the bar, while Luke Marks served them from
his stock of liquors.

Very often he could even hear their words, especially the landlord's,
for he spoke in a coarse, loud voice, and had a more boastful manner
than any of his customers.

"The man is a fool," said Robert, as he laid down his pipe. "I'll go and
talk to him by-and-by."

He waited till the few visitors to the Castle had dropped away one by
one, and when Luke Marks had bolted the door upon the last of his
customers, he strolled quietly into the bar-parlor, where the landlord
was seated with his wife.

Phoebe was busy at a little table, upon which stood a prim work-box,
with every reel of cotton and glistening steel bodkin in its appointed
place. She was darning the coarse gray stockings that adorned her
husband's awkward feet, but she did her work as daintily as if they had
been my lady's delicate silken hose.

I say that she took no color from external things, and that the vague
air of refinement that pervaded her nature clung to her as closely in
the society of her boorish husband at the Castle Inn as in Lady Audley's
boudoir at the Court.

She looked up suddenly as Robert entered the bar-parlor. There was some
shade of vexation in her pale gray eyes, which changed to an expression
of anxiety--nay, rather of almost terror--as she glanced from Mr. Audley
to Luke Marks.

"I have come in for a few minutes' chat before I go to bed," said
Robert, settling himself very comfortably before the cheerful fire.
"Would you object to a cigar, Mrs. Marks? I mean, of course, to my
smoking one," he added, explanatorily.

"Not at all, sir."

"It would be a good 'un her objectin' to a bit o' 'bacca," growled Mr.
Marks, "when me and the customers smokes all day."

Robert lighted his cigar with a gilt-paper match of Phoebe's making that
adorned the chimney-piece, and took half a dozen reflective puffs before
he spoke.

"I want you to tell me all about Mount Stanning, Mr. Marks," he said,
presently.

"Then that's pretty soon told," replied Luke, with a harsh, grating
laugh. "Of all the dull holes as ever a man set foot in, this is about
the dullest. Not that the business don't pay pretty tidy; I don't
complain of that; but I should ha' liked a public at Chelmsford, or
Brentwood, or Romford, or some place where there's a bit of life in the
streets; and I might have had it," he added, discontentedly, "if folks
hadn't been so precious stingy."

As her husband muttered this complaint in a grumbling undertone, Phoebe
looked up from her work and spoke to him.

"We forgot the brew-house door, Luke," she said. "Will you come with me
and help me put up the bar?"

"The brew-house door can bide for to-night," said Mr. Marks; "I ain't
agoin' to move now. I've seated myself for a comfortable smoke."

He took a long clay pipe from a corner of the fender as he spoke, and
began to fill it deliberately.

"I don't feel easy about that brew-house door, Luke," remonstrated his
wife; "there are always tramps about, and they can get in easily when
the bar isn't up."

"Go and put the bar up yourself, then, can't you?" answered Mr. Marks.

"It's too heavy for me to lift."

"Then let it bide, if you're too fine a lady to see to it yourself.
You're very anxious all of a sudden about this here brew-house door. I
suppose you don't want me to open my mouth to this here gent, that's
about it. Oh, you needn't frown at me to stop my speaking! You're always
putting in your tongue and clipping off my words before I've half said
'em; but I won't stand it."

"Do you hear? I won't stand it!"

Phoebe Marks shrugged her shoulders, folded her work, shut her work-box,
and crossing her hands in her lap, sat with her gray eyes fixed upon her
husband's bull-like face.

"Then you don't particularly care to live at Mount Stanning?" said
Robert, politely, as if anxious to change the conversation.

"No, I don't," answered Luke; "and I don't care who knows it; and, as I
said before, if folks hadn't been so precious stingy, I might have had a
public in a thrivin' market town, instead of this tumble-down old place,
where a man has his hair blowed off his head on a windy day. What's
fifty pound, or what's a hundred pound--"

"Luke! Luke!"

"No, you're not goin' to stop my mouth with all your 'Luke, Lukes!'"
answered Mr. Marks to his wife's remonstrance. "I say again, what's a
hundred pound?"

"No," answered Robert Audley, with wonderful distinctness, and
addressing his words to Luke Marks, but fixing his eyes upon Phoebe's
anxious face. "What, indeed, is a hundred pounds to a man possessed of
the power which you hold, or rather which your wife holds, over the
person in question."

"Phoebe's face, at all times almost colorless, seemed scarcely capable
of growing paler; but as her eyelids drooped under Robert Audley's
searching glance, a visible change came over the pallid hues of her
complexion.

"A quarter to twelve," said Robert, looking at his watch.

"Late hours for such a quiet village as Mount Stanning. Good-night, my
worthy host. Good-night, Mrs. Marks. You needn't send me my shaving
water till nine o'clock to-morrow morning."




CHAPTER XVIII.

ROBERT RECEIVES A VISITOR WHOM HE HAD SCARCELY EXPECTED.


Eleven o'clock struck the next morning, and found Mr. Robert Audley
still lounging over the well ordered little breakfast table, with one of
his dogs at each side of his arm-chair, regarding him with watchful eyes
and opened mouths, awaiting the expected morsel of ham or toast. Robert
had a county paper on his knees, and made a feeble effort now and then
to read the first page, which was filled with advertisements of farming
stock, quack medicines, and other interesting matter.

The weather had changed, and the snow, which had for the last few days
been looming blackly in the frosty sky, fell in great feathery flakes
against the windows, and lay piled in the little bit of garden-ground
without.

The long, lonely road leading toward Audley seemed untrodden by a
footstep, as Robert Audley looked out at the wintry landscape.

"Lively," he said, "for a man used to the fascinations of Temple Bar."

As he watched the snow-flakes falling every moment thicker and faster
upon the lonely road, he was surprised by seeing a brougham driving
slowly up the hill.

"I wonder what unhappy wretch has too restless a spirit to stop at home
on such a morning as this," he muttered, as he returned to the arm-chair
by the fire.

He had only reseated himself a few moments when Phoebe Marks entered the
room to announce Lady Audley.

"Lady Audley! Pray beg her to come in," said Robert; and then, as Phoebe
left the room to usher in this unexpected visitor, he muttered between
his teeth--"A false move, my lady, and one I never looked for from you."

Lucy Audley was radiant on this cold and snowy January morning. Other
people's noses are rudely assailed by the sharp fingers of the grim
ice-king, but not my lady's; other people's lips turn pale and blue with
the chilling influence of the bitter weather, but my lady's pretty
little rosebud of a mouth retained its brightest coloring and cheeriest
freshness.

She was wrapped in the very sables which Robert Audley had brought from
Russia, and carried a muff that the young man thought seemed almost as
big as herself.

She looked a childish, helpless, babyfied little creature; and Robert
looked down upon her with some touch of pity in his eyes, as she came up
to the hearth by which he was standing, and warmed her tiny gloved hands
at the blaze.

"What a morning, Mr. Audley!" she said, "what a morning!"

"Yes, indeed! Why did you come out in such weather?"

"Because I wished to see you--particularly."

"Indeed!"

"Yes," said my lady, with an air of considerable embarrassment, playing
with the button of her glove, and almost wrenching it off in her
restlessness--"yes, Mr. Audley, I felt that you had not been well
treated; that--that you had, in short, reason to complain; and that an
apology was due to you."

"I do not wish for any apology, Lady Audley."

"But you are entitled to one," answered my lady, quietly. "Why, my dear
Robert, should we be so ceremonious toward each other? You were very
comfortable at Audley; we were very glad to have you there; but, my
dear, silly husband must needs take it into his foolish head that it is
dangerous for his poor little wife's peace of mind to have a nephew of
eight or nine and twenty smoking his cigars in her boudoir, and, behold!
our pleasant little family circle is broken up."

Lucy Audley spoke with that peculiar childish vivacity which seemed so
natural to her, Robert looking down almost sadly at her bright, animated
face.

"Lady Audley," he said, "Heaven forbid that either you or I should ever
bring grief or dishonor upon my uncle's generous heart! Better, perhaps,
that I should be out of the house--better, perhaps, that I had never
entered it!"

My lady had been looking at the fire while her nephew spoke, but at his
last words she lifted her head suddenly, and looked him full in the face
with a wondering expression--an earnest, questioning gaze, whose full
meaning the young barrister understood.

"Oh, pray do not be alarmed, Lady Audley," he said, gravely. "You have
no sentimental nonsense, no silly infatuation, borrowed from Balzac or
Dumas _fils_, to fear from me. The benchers of the Inner Temple will
tell you that Robert Audley is troubled with none of the epidemics whose
outward signs are turn-down collars and Byronic neckties. I say that I
wish I had never entered my uncle's house during the last year; but I
say it with a far more solemn meaning than any sentimental one."

My lady shrugged her shoulders.

"If you insist on talking in enigmas, Mr. Audley," she said, "you must
forgive a poor little woman if she declines to answer them."

Robert made no reply to this speech.

"But tell me," said my lady, with an entire change of tone, "what could
have induced you to come up to this dismal place?"

"Curiosity."

"Curiosity?"

"Yes; I felt an interest in that bull-necked man, with the dark-red hair
and wicked gray eyes. A dangerous man, my lady--a man in whose power I
should not like to be."

A sudden change came over Lady Audley's face; the pretty, roseate flush
faded out from her cheeks, and left them waxen white, and angry flashes
lightened in her blue eyes.

"What have I done to you, Robert Audley," she cried, passionately--"what
have I done to you that you should hate me so?"

He answered her very gravely:

"I had a friend, Lady Audley, whom I loved very dearly, and since I have
lost him I fear that my feelings toward other people are strangely
embittered."

"You mean the Mr. Talboys who went to Australia?"

"Yes, I mean the Mr. Talboys who I was told set out for Liverpool with
the idea of going to Australia."

"And you do not believe in his having sailed for Australia?"

"I do not."

"But why not?"

"Forgive me, Lady Audley, if I decline to answer that question."

"As you please," she said, carelessly.

"A week after my friend disappeared," continued Robert, "I posted an
advertisement to the Sydney and Melbourne papers, calling upon him if he
was in either city when the advertisement appeared, to write and tell me
of his whereabouts, and also calling on any one who had met him, either
in the colonies or on the voyage out, to give me any information
respecting him. George Talboys left Essex, or disappeared from Essex, on
the 6th of September last. I ought to receive some answer to this
advertisement by the end of this month. To-day is the 27th; the time
draws very near."

"And if you receive no answer?" asked Lady Audley.

"If I receive no answer I shall think that my fears have been not
unfounded, and I shall do my best to act."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Ah, Lady Audley, you remind me how very powerless I am in this matter.
My friend might have been made away with in this very inn, and I might
stay here for a twelvemonth, and go away at the last as ignorant of his
fate as if I had never crossed the threshold. What do we know of the
mysteries that may hang about the houses we enter? If I were to go
to-morrow into that commonplace, plebeian, eight-roomed house in which
Maria Manning and her husband murdered their guest, I should have no
awful prescience of that bygone horror. Foul deeds have been done under
the most hospitable roofs; terrible crimes have been committed amid the
fairest scenes, and have left no trace upon the spot where they were
done. I do not believe in mandrake, or in bloodstains that no time can
efface. I believe rather that we may walk unconsciously in an atmosphere
of crime, and breathe none the less freely. I believe that we may look
into the smiling face of a murderer, and admire its tranquil beauty."

My lady laughed at Robert's earnestness.

"You seem to have quite a taste for discussing these horrible subjects,"
she said, rather scornfully; "you ought to have been a detective police
officer."

"I sometimes think I should have been a good one."

"Why?"

"Because I am patient."

"But to return to Mr. George Talboys, whom we lost sight of in your
eloquent discussion. What if you receive no answer to your
advertisements?"

"I shall then consider myself justified in concluding my friend is
dead."

"Yes, and then--?"

"I shall examine the effects he left at my chambers."

"Indeed! and what are they? Coats, waistcoats, varnished boots, and
meerschaum pipes, I suppose," said Lady Audley, laughing.

"No; letters--letters from his friends, his old schoolfellows, his
father, his brother officers."

"Yes?"

"Letters, too, from his wife."

My lady was silent for some few moments, looking thoughtfully at the
fire.

"Have you ever seen any of the letters written by the late Mrs.
Talboys?" she asked presently.

"Never. Poor soul! her letters are not likely to throw much light upon
my friend's fate. I dare say she wrote the usual womanly scrawl. There
are very few who write so charming and uncommon a hand as yours, Lady
Audley."

"Ah, you know my hand, of course."

"Yes, I know it very well indeed."

My lady warmed her hands once more, and then taking up the big muff
which she had laid aside upon a chair, prepared to take her departure.

"You have refused to accept my apology, Mr. Audley," she said; "but I
trust you are not the less assured of my feelings toward you."

"Perfectly assured, Lady Audley."

"Then good-by, and let me recommend you not to stay long in this
miserable draughty place, if you do not wish to take rheumatism back to
Figtree Court."

"I shall return to town to-morrow morning to see after my letters."

"Then once more good-by."

She held out her hand; he took it loosely in his own. It seemed such a
feeble little hand that he might have crushed it in his strong grasp,
had he chosen to be so pitiless.

He attended her to her carriage, and watched it as it drove off, not
toward Audley, but in the direction of Brentwood, which was about six
miles from Mount Stanning.

About an hour and a half after this, as Robert stood at the door of the
inn, smoking a cigar and watching the snow falling in the whitened
fields opposite, he saw the brougham drive back, empty this time, to the
door of the inn.

"Have you taken Lady Audley back to the Court?" he said to the coachman,
who had stopped to call for a mug of hot spiced ale.

"No, sir; I've just come from the Brentwood station. My lady started for
London by the 12.40 train."

"For town?"

"Yes, sir."

"My lady gone to London!" said Robert, as he returned to the little
sitting-room. "Then I'll follow her by the next train; and if I'm not
very much mistaken, I know where to find her."

He packed his portmanteau, paid his bill, fastened his dogs together
with a couple of leathern collars and a chain, and stepped into the
rumbling fly kept by the Castle Inn for the convenience of Mount
Stanning. He caught an express that left Brentwood at three o'clock, and
settled himself comfortably in a corner of an empty first-class
carriage, coiled up in a couple of railway rugs, and smoking a cigar in
mild defiance of the authorities.




CHAPTER XIX.

THE WRITING IN THE BOOK.


It was exactly five minutes past four as Mr. Robert Audley stepped out
upon the platform at Shoreditch, and waited placidly until such time as
his dogs and his portmanteau should be delivered up to the attendant
porter who had called his cab, and undertaken the general conduct of his
affairs, with that disinterested courtesy which does such infinite
credit to a class of servitors who are forbidden to accept the tribute
of a grateful public.

Robert Audley waited with consummate patience for a considerable time;
but as the express was generally a long train, and as there were a great
many passengers from Norfolk carrying guns and pointers, and other
paraphernalia of a critical description, it took a long while to make
matters agreeable to all claimants, and even the barrister's seraphic
indifference to mundane affairs nearly gave way.

"Perhaps, when that gentleman who is making such a noise about a pointer
with liver-colored spots, has discovered the particular pointer and
spots that he wants--which happy combination of events scarcely seems
likely to arrive--they'll give me my luggage and let me go. The
designing wretches knew at a glance that I was born to be imposed upon;
and that if they were to trample the life out of me upon this very
platform, I should never have the spirit to bring an action against the
company."

Suddenly an idea seemed to strike him, and he left the porter to
struggle for the custody of his goods, and walked round to the other
side of the station.

He heard a bell ring, and looking at the clock, had remembered that the
down train for Colchester started at this time. He had learned what it
was to have an earnest purpose since the disappearance of George
Talboys; and he reached the opposite platform in time to see the
passengers take their seats.

There was one lady who had evidently only just arrived at the station;
for she hurried on to the platform at the very moment that Robert
approached the train, and almost ran against that gentleman in her haste
and excitement.

"I beg your pardon," she began, ceremoniously; then raising her eyes
from Mr. Audley's waistcoat, which was about on a level with her pretty
face, she exclaimed, "Robert, you in London already?"

"Yes, Lady Audley; you were quite right; the Castle Inn is a dismal
place, and--"

"You got tired of it--I knew you would. Please open the carriage door
for me: the train will start in two minutes."

Robert Audley was looking at his uncle's wife with rather a puzzled
expression of countenance.

"What does it mean?" he thought. "She is altogether a different being to
the wretched, helpless creature who dropped her mask for a moment, and
looked at me with her own pitiful face, in the little room at Mount
Stanning, four hours ago. What has happened to cause the change?"

He opened the door for her while he thought this, and helped her to
settle herself in her seat, spreading her furs over her knees, and
arranging the huge velvet mantle in which her slender little figure was
almost hidden.

"Thank you very much; how good you are to me," she said, as he did this.
"You will think me very foolish to travel upon such a day, without my
dear darling's knowledge too; but I went up to town to settle a very
terrific milliner's bill, which I did not wish my best of husbands to
see; for, indulgent as he is, he might think me extravagant; and I
cannot bear to suffer even in his thoughts."

"Heaven forbid that you ever should, Lady Audley," Robert said, gravely.

She looked at him for a moment with a smile, which had something defiant
in its brightness.

"Heaven forbid it, indeed," she murmured. "I don't think I ever shall."

The second bell rung, and the train moved as she spoke. The last Robert
Audley saw of her was that bright defiant smile.

"Whatever object brought her to London has been successfully
accomplished," he thought. "Has she baffled me by some piece of womanly
jugglery? Am I never to get any nearer to the truth, but am I to be
tormented all my life by vague doubts, and wretched suspicions, which
may grow upon me till I become a monomaniac? Why did she come to
London?"

He was still mentally asking himself this question as he ascended the
stairs in Figtree Court, with one of his dogs under each arm, and his
railway rugs over his shoulder.

He found his chambers in their accustomed order. The geraniums had been
carefully tended, and the canaries had retired for the night under cover
of a square of green baize, testifying to the care of honest Mrs.
Maloney. Robert cast a hurried glance round the sitting-room; then
setting down the dogs upon the hearth-rug, he walked straight into the
little inner chamber which served as his dressing-room.

It was in this room that he kept disused portmanteaus, battered japanned
cases, and other lumber; and it was in this room that George Talboys had
left his luggage. Robert lifted a portmanteau from the top of a large
trunk, and kneeling down before it with a lighted candle in his hand,
carefully examined the lock.

To all appearance it was exactly in the same condition in which George
had left it, when he laid his mourning garments aside and placed them in
this shabby repository with all other memorials of his dead wife. Robert
brushed his coat sleeve across the worn, leather-covered lid, upon which
the initials G. T. were inscribed with big brass-headed nails; but Mrs.
Maloney, the laundress, must have been the most precise of housewives,
for neither the portmanteau nor the trunk were dusty.

Mr. Audley dispatched a boy to fetch his Irish attendant, and paced up
and down his sitting-room waiting anxiously for her arrival.

She came in about ten minutes, and, after expressing her delight in the
return of "the master," humbly awaited his orders.

"I only sent for you to ask if anybody has been here; that is to say, if
anybody has applied to you for the key of my rooms to-day--any lady?"

"Lady? No, indeed, yer honor; there's been no lady for the kay; barrin'
it's the blacksmith."

"The blacksmith!"

"Yes; the blacksmith your honor ordered to come to-day."

"I order a blacksmith!" exclaimed Robert. "I left a bottle of French
brandy in the cupboard," he thought, "and Mrs. M. has been evidently
enjoying herself."

"Sure, and the blacksmith your honor tould to see to the locks," replied
Mrs. Maloney. "It's him that lives down in one of the little streets by
the bridge," she added, giving a very lucid description of the man's
whereabouts.

Robert lifted his eyebrows in mute despair.

"If you'll sit down and compose yourself, Mrs. M.," he said--he
abbreviated her name thus on principle, for the avoidance of unnecessary
labor--"perhaps we shall be able by and by to understand each other. You
say a blacksmith has been here?"

"Sure and I did, sir."

"To-day?"

"Quite correct, sir."

Step by step Mr. Audley elicited the following information. A locksmith
had called upon Mrs. Maloney that afternoon at three o'clock, and had
asked for the key of Mr. Audley's chambers, in order that he might look
to the locks of the doors, which he stated were all out of repair. He
declared that he was acting upon Mr. Audley's own orders, conveyed to
him by a letter from the country, where the gentleman was spending his
Christmas. Mrs. Maloney, believing in the truth of this statement, had
admitted the man to the chambers, where he stayed about half an hour.

"But you were with him while he examined the locks, I suppose?" Mr.
Audley asked.

"Sure I was, sir, in and out, as you may say, all the time, for I've
been cleaning the stairs this afternoon, and I took the opportunity to
begin my scouring while the man was at work."

"Oh, you were in and out all the time. If you _could_ conveniently give
me a plain answer, Mrs. M., I should be glad to know what was the
longest time that you were _out_ while the locksmith was in my
chambers?"

But Mrs. Maloney could not give a plain answer. It might have been ten
minutes; though she didn't think it was as much. It might have been a
quarter of an hour; but she was sure it wasn't more. It didn't _seem_ to
her more than five minutes, but "thim stairs, your honor;" and here she
rambled off into a disquisition upon the scouring of stairs in general,
and the stairs outside Robert's chambers in particular.

Mr. Audley sighed the weary sigh of mournful resignation.

"Never mind, Mrs. M.," he said; "the locksmith had plenty of time to do
anything he wanted to do, I dare say, without your being any the wiser."

Mrs. Maloney stared at her employer with mingled surprise and alarm.

"Sure, there wasn't anything for him to stale, your honor, barrin' the
birds and the geran'ums, and--"

"No, no, I understand. There, that'll do, Mrs. M. Tell me where the man
lives, and I'll go and see him."

"But you'll have a bit of dinner first, sir?"

"I'll go and see the locksmith before I have my dinner."

He took up his hat as he announced his determination, and walked toward
the door.

"The man's address, Mrs. M?"

The Irishwoman directed him to a small street at the back of St. Bride's
Church, and thither Mr. Robert Audley quietly strolled, through the miry
slush which simple Londoners call _snow_.

He found the locksmith, and, at the sacrifice of the crown of his hat,
contrived to enter the low, narrow doorway of a little open shop. A jet
of gas was flaring in the unglazed window, and there was a very merry
party in the little room behind the shop; but no one responded to
Robert's "Hulloa!" The reason of this was sufficiently obvious. The
merry party was so much absorbed in its own merriment as to be deaf to
all commonplace summonses from the outer world; and it was only when
Robert, advancing further into the cavernous little shop, made so bold
as to open the half-glass door which separated him from the
merry-makers, that he succeeded in obtaining their attention.

A very jovial picture of the Teniers school was presented to Mr. Robert
Audley upon the opening of this door.

The locksmith, with his wife and family, and two or three droppers-in of
the female sex, were clustered about a table, which was adorned by two
bottles; not vulgar bottles of that colorless extract of the juniper
berry, much affected by the masses; but of _bona fide_ port and
sherry--fiercely strong sherry, which left a fiery taste in the mouth,
nut-brown sherry--rather unnaturally brown, if anything--and fine old
port; no sickly vintage, faded and thin from excessive age: but a rich,
full-bodied wine, sweet and substantial and high colored.

The locksmith was speaking as Robert Audley opened the door.

"And with that," he said, "she walked off, as graceful as you please."

The whole party was thrown into confusion by the appearance of Mr.
Audley, but it was to be observed that the locksmith was more
embarrassed than his companions. He set down his glass so hurriedly,
that he spilt his wine, and wiped his mouth nervously with the back of
his dirty hand.

"You called at my chambers to-day," Robert said, quietly. "Don't let me
disturb you, ladies." This to the droppers-in. "You called at my
chambers to-day, Mr. White, and--"

The man interrupted him.

"I hope, sir, you will be so good as to look over the mistake," he
stammered. "I'm sure, sir, I'm very sorry it should have occurred. I was
sent for to another gentleman's chambers, Mr. Aulwin, in Garden Court;
and the name slipped my memory; and havin' done odd jobs before for you,
I thought it must be you as wanted me to-day; and I called at Mrs.
Maloney's for the key accordin'; but directly I see the locks in your
chambers, I says to myself, the gentleman's locks ain't out of order;
the gentleman don't want all his locks repaired."

"But you stayed half an hour."

"Yes, sir; for there was _one_ lock out of order--the door nighest the
staircase--and I took it off and cleaned it and put it on again. I won't
charge you nothin' for the job, and I hope as you'll be as good as to
look over the mistake as has occurred, which I've been in business
thirteen years come July, and--"

"Nothing of this kind ever happened before, I suppose," said Robert,
gravely. "No, it's altogether a singular kind of business, not likely to
come about every day. You've been enjoying yourself this evening I see,
Mr. White. You've done a good stroke of work to-day, I'll wager--made a
lucky hit, and you're what you call 'standing treat,' eh?"

Robert Audley looked straight into the man's dingy face as he spoke. The
locksmith was not a bad-looking fellow, and there was nothing that he
need have been ashamed of in his face, except the dirt, and that, as
Hamlet's mother says, "is common;" but in spite of this, Mr. White's
eyelids dropped under the young barrister's calm scrutiny, and he
stammered out some apologetic sort of speech about his "missus," and his
missus' neighbors, and port wine and sherry wine, with as much confusion
as if he, an honest mechanic in a free country, were called upon to
excuse himself to Robert Audley for being caught in the act of enjoying
himself in his own parlor.

Robert cut him short with a careless nod.

"Pray don't apologize," he said; "I like to see people enjoy themselves.
Good-night, Mr. White good-night, ladies."

He lifted his hat to "the missus," and the missus' neighbors, who were
much fascinated by his easy manner and his handsome face, and left the
shop.

"And so," he muttered to himself as he went back to his chambers, "'with
that she walked off as graceful as you please.'Who was it that walked
off; and what was the story which the locksmith was telling when I
interrupted him at that sentence? Oh, George Talboys, George Talboys, am
I ever to come any I nearer to the secret of your fate? Am I coming
nearer to it now, slowly but surely? Is the radius to grow narrower day
by day until it draws a dark circle around the home of those I love? How
is it all to end?"

He sighed wearily as he walked slowly back across the flagged
quadrangles in the Temple to his own solitary chambers.

Mrs. Maloney had prepared for him that bachelor's dinner, which, however
excellent and nutritious in itself, has no claim to the special charm of
novelty. She had cooked for him a mutton-chop, which was soddening
itself between two plates upon the little table near the fire.

Robert Audley sighed as he sat down to the familiar meal, remembering
his uncle's cook with a fond, regretful sorrow.

"Her cutlets a la Maintenon made mutton seem more than mutton; a
sublimated meat that could scarcely have grown upon any mundane sheep,"
he murmured sentimentally, "and Mrs. Maloney's chops are apt to be
tough; but such is life--what does it matter?"

He pushed away his plate impatiently after eating a few mouthfuls.

"I have never eaten a good dinner at this table since I lost George
Talboys," he said. "The place seems as gloomy as if the poor fellow had
died in the next room, and had never been taken away to be buried. How
long ago that September afternoon appears as I look back at it--that
September afternoon upon which I parted with him alive and well; and
lost him as suddenly and unaccountably as if a trap-door had opened in
the solid earth and let him through to the antipodes!"

Mr. Audley rose from the dinner-table and walked over to the cabinet in
which he kept the document he had drawn up relating to George Talboys.
He unlocked the doors of his cabinet, took the paper from the
pigeon-hole marked important, and seated himself at his desk to write.
He added several paragraphs to those in the document, numbering the
fresh paragraphs as carefully as he had numbered the old ones.

"Heaven help us all," he muttered once; "is this paper with which no
attorney has had any hand to be my first brief?"

He wrote for about half an hour, then replaced the document in the
pigeon-hole, and locked the cabinet. When he had done this, he took a
candle in his hand, and went into the room in which were his own
portmanteaus and the trunk belonging to George Talboys.

He took a bunch of keys from his pocket, and tried them one by one. The
lock of the shabby old trunk was a common one, and at the fifth trial
the key turned easily.

"There'd be no need for any one to break open such a lock as this,"
muttered Robert, as he lifted the lid of the trunk.

He slowly emptied it of its contents, taking out each article
separately, and laying it carefully upon a chair by his side. He handled
the things with a respectful tenderness, as if he had been lifting the
dead body of his lost friend. One by one he laid the neatly folded
mourning garments on the chair. He found old meerschaum pipes, and
soiled, crumpled gloves that had once been fresh from the Parisian
maker; old play-bills, whose biggest letters spelled the names of actors
who were dead and gone; old perfume-bottles, fragrant with essences,
whose fashion had passed away; neat little parcels of letters, each
carefully labeled with the name of the writer; fragments of old
newspapers; and a little heap of shabby, dilapidated books, each of
which tumbled into as many pieces as a pack of cards in Robert's
incautious hand. But among all the mass of worthless litter, each scrap
of which had once had its separate purpose, Robert Audley looked in vain
for that which he sought--the packet of letters written to the missing
man by his dead wife Helen Talboys. He had heard George allude more than
once to the existence of these letters. He had seen him once sorting the
faded papers with a reverent hand; and he had seen him replace them,
carefully tied together with a faded ribbon which had once been Helen's,
among the mourning garments in the trunk. Whether he had afterward
removed them, or whether they had been removed since his disappearance
by some other hand, it was not easy to say; but they were gone.

Robert Audley sighed wearily as he replaced the things in the empty box,
one by one, as he had taken them out. He stopped with the little heap of
tattered books in his hand, and hesitated for a moment.

"I will keep these out," he muttered, "there maybe something to help me
in one of them."

George's library was no very brilliant collection of literature. There
was an old Greek Testament and the Eton Latin Grammar; a French pamphlet
on the cavalry sword-exercise; an odd volume of Tom Jones with one half
of its stiff leather cover hanging to it by a thread; Byron's Don Juan,
printed in a murderous type, which must have been invented for the
special advantage of oculists and opticians; and a fat book in a faded
gilt and crimson cover.

Robert Audley locked the trunk and took the books under his arm. Mrs.
Maloney was clearing away the remains of his repast when he returned to
the sitting-room. He put the books aside on a little table in a corner
of the fire-place, and waited patiently while the laundress finished her
work. He was in no humor even for his meerschaum, consoler; the
yellow-papered fictions on the shelves above his head seemed stale and
profitless--he opened a volume of Balzac, but his uncle's wife's golden
curls danced and trembled in a glittering haze, alike upon the
metaphysical diablerie of the _Peau de Chagrin_, and the hideous social
horrors of "_Cousine Bette_." The volume dropped from his hand, and he
sat wearily watching Mrs. Maloney as she swept up the ashes on the
hearth, replenished the fire, drew the dark damask curtains, supplied
the simple wants of the canaries, and put on her bonnet in the disused
clerk's office, prior to bidding her employer good-night. As the door
closed upon the Irishwoman, he arose impatiently from his chair, and
paced up and down the room.

"Why do I go on with this," he said, "when I know that it is leading me,
step by step, day by day, hour by hour, nearer to that conclusion which,
of all others, I should avoid? Am I tied to a wheel, and must I go with
its every revolution, let it take me where it will? Or can I sit down
here to-night and say I have done my duty to my missing friend, I have
searched for him patiently, but I have searched in vain? Should I be
justified in doing this? Should I be justified in letting the chain
which I have slowly put together, link by link, drop at this point, or
must I go on adding fresh links to that fatal chain until the last rivet
drops into its place and the circle is complete? I think, and I believe,
that I shall never see my friend's face again; and that no exertion of
mine can ever be of any benefit to him. In plainer, crueler words I
believe him to be dead. Am I bound to discover how and where he died? or
being, as I think, on the road to that discovery, shall I do a wrong to
the memory of George Talboys by turning back or stopping still? What am
I to do?--what am I to do?"

He rested his elbows on his knees, and buried his face in his hands. The
one purpose which had slowly grown up in his careless nature until it
had become powerful enough to work a change in that very nature, made
him what he had never been before--a Christian; conscious of his own
weakness; anxious to keep to the strict line of duty; fearful to swerve
from the conscientious discharge of the strange task that had been
forced upon him; and reliant on a stronger hand than his own to point
the way which he was to go. Perhaps he uttered his first earnest prayer
that night, seated by his lonely fireside, thinking of George Talboys.
When he raised his head from that long and silent revery, his eyes had a
bright, determined glance, and every feature in his face seemed to wear
a new expression.

"Justice to the dead first," he said; "mercy to the living afterward."

He wheeled his easy-chair to the table, trimmed the lamp, and settled
himself to the examination of the books.

He took them up, one by one, and looked carefully through them, first
looking at the page on which the name of the owner is ordinarily
written, and then searching for any scrap of paper which might have been
left within the leaves. On the first page of the Eton Latin Grammar the
name of Master Talboys was written in a prim, scholastic hand; the
French pamphlet had a careless G.T. scrawled on the cover in pencil, in
George's big, slovenly calligraphy: the Tom Jones had evidently been
bought at a book-stall, and bore an inscription, dated March 14th, 1788,
setting forth that the book was a tribute of respect to Mr. Thos.
Scrowton, from his obedient servant, James Anderley; the Don Juan and
the Testament were blank. Robert Audley breathed more freely; he had
arrived at the last but one of the books without any result whatever,
and there only remained the fat gilt-and-crimson-bound volume to be
examined before his task was finished.

It was an annual of the year 1845. The copper-plate engravings of lovely
ladies, who had flourished in that day, were yellow and spotted with
mildew; the costumes grotesque and outlandish; the simpering beauties
faded and commonplace. Even the little clusters of verses (in which the
poet's feeble candle shed its sickly light upon the obscurities of the
artist's meaning) had an old-fashioned twang; like music on a lyre,
whose strings are slackened by the damps of time. Robert Audley did not
stop to read any of the mild productions. He ran rapidly through the
leaves, looking for any scrap of writing or fragment of a letter which
might have been used to mark a place. He found nothing but a bright ring
of golden hair, of that glittering hue which is so rarely seen except
upon the head of a child--a sunny lock, which curled as naturally as the
tendril of a vine; and was very opposite in texture, if not different in
hue, to the soft, smooth tresses which the landlady at Ventnor had given
to George Talboys after his wife's death. Robert Audley suspended his
examination of the book, and folded this yellow lock in a sheet of
letter paper, which he sealed with his signet-ring, and laid aside, with
the memorandum about George Talboys and Alicia's letter, in the
pigeon-hole marked important. He was going to replace the fat annual
among the other books, when he discovered that the two blank leaves at
the beginning were stuck together. He was so determined to prosecute his
search to the very uttermost, that he took the trouble to part these
leaves with the sharp end of his paper-knife, and he was rewarded for
his perseverance by finding an inscription upon one of them. This
inscription was in three parts, and in three different hands. The first
paragraph was dated as far back as the year in which the annual had been
published, and set forth that the book was the property of a certain
Miss Elizabeth Ann Bince, who had obtained the precious volume as a
reward for habits of order, and for obedience to the authorities of
Camford House Seminary, Torquay. The second paragraph was dated five
years later, and was in the handwriting of Miss Bince herself, who
presented the book, as a mark of undying affection and unfading esteem
(Miss Bince was evidently of a romantic temperament) to her beloved
friend, Helen Maldon. The third paragraph was dated September, 1853, and
was in the hand of Helen Maldon, who gave the annual to George Talboys;
and it was at the sight of this third paragraph that Mr. Robert Audley's
face changed from its natural hue to a sickly, leaden pallor.

"I thought it would be so," said the young man, shutting the book with a
weary sigh. "God knows I was prepared for the worst, and the worst has
come. I can understand all now. My next visit must be to Southampton. I
must place the boy in better hands."




CHAPTER XX

MRS. PLOWSON


Among the packet of letters which Robert Audley had found in George's
trunk, there was one labeled with the name of the missing man's
father--the father, who had never been too indulgent a friend to his
younger son, and who had gladly availed himself of the excuse afforded
by George's imprudent marriage to abandon the young man to his own
resources. Robert Audley had never seen Mr. Harcourt Talboys; but
George's careless talk of his father had given his friend some notion of
that gentleman's character. He had written to Mr. Talboys immediately
after the disappearance of George, carefully wording his letter, which
vaguely hinted at the writer's fear of some foul play in the mysterious
business; and, after the lapse of several weeks, he had received a
formal epistle, in which Mr. Harcourt Talboys expressly declared that he
had washed his hands of all responsibility in his son George's affairs
upon the young man's wedding-day; and that his absurd disappearance was
only in character with his preposterous marriage. The writer of this
fatherly letter added in a postscript that if George Talboys had any low
design of alarming his friends by this pretended disappearance, and
thereby playing on their feelings with a view to pecuniary advantage, he
was most egregiously deceived in the character of those persons with
whom he had to deal.

Robert Audley had answered this letter by a few indignant lines,
informing Mr. Talboys that his son was scarcely likely to hide himself
for the furtherance of any deep-laid design on the pockets of his
relatives, as he had left twenty thousand pounds in his bankers' hands
at the time of his disappearance. After dispatching this letter, Robert
had abandoned all thought of assistance from the man who, in the natural
course of things, should have been most interested in George's fate; but
now that he found himself advancing every day some step nearer to the
end that lay so darkly before him, his mind reverted to this heartlessly
indifferent Mr. Harcourt Talboys.

"I will run into Dorsetshire after I leave Southampton," he said, "and
see this man. If _he_ is content to let his son's fate rest a dark and
cruel mystery to all who knew him--if he is content to go down to his
grave uncertain to the last of this poor fellow's end--why should I try
to unravel the tangled skein, to fit the pieces of the terrible puzzle,
and gather together the stray fragments which, when collected, may make
such a hideous whole? I will go to him and lay my darkest doubts freely
before him. It will be for him to say what I am to do."

Robert Audley started by an early express for Southampton. The snow lay
thick and white upon the pleasant country through which he went; and the
young barrister had wrapped himself in so many comforters and railway
rugs as to appear a perambulating mass of woollen goods, rather than a
living member of a learned profession. He looked gloomily out of the
misty window, opaque with the breath of himself and an elderly Indian
officer, who was his only companion, and watched the fleeting landscape,
which had a certain phantom-like appearance in its shroud of snow. He
wrapped himself in the vast folds of his railway rug, with a peevish
shiver, and felt inclined to quarrel with the destiny which compelled
him to travel by an early train upon a pitiless winter's day.

"Who would have thought that I could have grown so fond of the fellow,"
he muttered, "or feel so lonely without him? I've a comfortable little
fortune in the three per cents.; I'm heir presumptive to my uncle's
title; and I know of a certain dear little girl who, as I think, would
do her best to make me happy; but I declare that I would freely give up
all, and stand penniless in the world to-morrow, if this mystery could
be satisfactorily cleared away, and George Talboys could stand by my
side."

He reached Southampton between eleven and twelve o'clock, and walked
across the platform, with the snow drifting in his face, toward the pier
and the lower end of the town. The clock of St. Michael's Church was
striking twelve as he crossed the quaint old square in which that
edifice stands, and groped his way through the narrow streets leading
down to the water.

Mr. Maldon had established his slovenly household gods in one of those
dreary thoroughfares which speculative builders love to raise upon some
miserable fragment of waste ground hanging to the skirts of a prosperous
town. Brigsome's Terrace was, perhaps, one of the most dismal blocks of
building that was ever composed of brick and mortar since the first
mason plied his trowel and the first architect drew his plan. The
builder who had speculated in the ten dreary eight-roomed prison-houses
had hung himself behind the parlor door of an adjacent tavern while the
carcases were yet unfinished. The man who had bought the brick and
mortar skeletons had gone through the bankruptcy court while the
paper-hangers were still busy in Brigsome's Terrace, and had whitewashed
his ceilings and himself simultaneously. Ill luck and insolvency clung
to the wretched habitations. The bailiff and the broker's man were as
well known as the butcher and the baker to the noisy children who played
upon the waste ground in front of the parlor windows. Solvent tenants
were disturbed at unhallowed hours by the noise of ghostly furniture
vans creeping stealthily away in the moonless night. Insolvent tenants
openly defied the collector of the water-rate from their ten-roomed
strongholds, and existed for weeks without any visible means of
procuring that necessary fluid.

Robert Audley looked about him with a shudder as he turned from the
waterside into this poverty-stricken locality. A child's funeral was
leaving one of the houses as he approached, and he thought with a thrill
of horror that if the little coffin had held George's son, he would have
been in some measure responsible for the boy's death.

"The poor child shall not sleep another night in this wretched hovel,"
he thought, as he knocked at the door of Mr. Maldon's house. "He is the
legacy of my best friend, and it shall be my business to secure his
safety."

A slipshod servant girl opened the door and looked at Mr. Audley rather
suspiciously as she asked him, very much through her nose, what he
pleased to want. The door of the little sitting room was ajar, and
Robert could hear the clattering of knives and forks and the childish
voice of little George prattling gayly. He told the servant that he had
come from London, that he wanted to see Master Talboys, and that he
would announce himself; and walking past her, without further ceremony
he opened the door of the parlor. The girl stared at him aghast as he
did this; and as if struck by some sudden and terrible conviction, threw
her apron over her head and ran out into the snow. She darted across the
waste ground, plunged into a narrow alley, and never drew breath till
she found herself upon the threshold of a certain tavern called the
Coach and Horses, and much affected by Mr. Maldon. The lieutenant's
faithful retainer had taken Robert Audley for some new and determined
collector of poor's rates--rejecting that gentleman's account of himself
as an artful fiction devised for the destruction of parochial
defaulters--and had hurried off to give her master timely warning of the
enemy's approach.

When Robert entered the sitting-room he was surprised to find little
George seated opposite to a woman who was doing the honors of a shabby
repast, spread upon a dirty table-cloth, and flanked by a pewter beer
measure. The woman rose as Robert entered, and courtesied very humbly to
the young barrister. She looked about fifty years of age, and was
dressed in rusty widow's weeds. Her complexion was insipidly fair, and
the two smooth bands of hair beneath her cap were of that sunless,
flaxen hue which generally accompanies pink cheeks and white eyelashes.
She had been a rustic beauty, perhaps, in her time, but her features,
although tolerably regular in their shape, had a mean, pinched look, as
if they had been made too small for her face. This defect was peculiarly
noticeable in her mouth, which was an obvious misfit for the set of
teeth it contained. She smiled as she courtesied to Mr. Robert Audley,
and her smile, which laid bare the greater part of this set of square,
hungry-looking teeth, by no means added to the beauty of her personal
appearance.

"Mr. Maldon is not at home, sir," she said, with insinuating civility;
"but if it's for the water-rate, he requested me to say that--"

She was interrupted by little George Talboys, who scrambled down from
the high chair upon which he had been perched, and ran to Robert Audley.

"I know you," he said; "you came to Ventnor with the big gentleman, and
you came here once, and you gave me some money, and I gave it to gran'pa
to take care of, and gran'pa kept it, and he always does."

Robert Audley took the boy in his arms, and carried him to a little
table in the window.

"Stand there, Georgey," he said, "I want to have a good look at you."

He turned the boy's face to the light, and pushed the brown curls off
his forehead with both hands.

"You are growing more like your father every day, Georgey; and you're
growing quite a man, too," he said; "would you like to go to school?"

"Oh, yes, please, I should like it very much," the boy answered,
eagerly. "I went to school at Miss Pevins' once--day-school, you
know--round the corner in the next street; but I caught the measles, and
gran'pa wouldn't let me go any more, for fear I should catch the measles
again; and gran'pa won't let me play with the little boys in the street,
because they're rude boys; he said blackguard boys; but he said I
mustn't say blackguard boys, because it's naughty. He says damn and
devil, but he says he may because he's old. I shall say damn and devil
when I'm old; and I should like to go to school, please, and I can go
to-day, if you like; Mrs. Plowson will get my frocks ready, won't you,
Mrs. Plowson?"

"Certainly, Master Georgey, if your grandpapa wishes it," the woman
answered, looking rather uneasily at Mr. Robert Audley.

"What on earth is the matter with this woman," thought Robert as he
turned from the boy to the fair-haired widow, who was edging herself
slowly toward the table upon which little George Talboys stood talking
to his guardian. "Does she still take me for a tax-collector with
inimical intentions toward these wretched goods and chattels; or can the
cause of her fidgety manner lie deeper still. That's scarcely likely,
though; for whatever secrets Lieutenant Maldon may have, it's not very
probable that this woman has any knowledge of them."

Mrs. Plowson had edged herself close to the little table by this time,
and was making a stealthy descent upon the boy, when Robert turned
sharply round.

"What are you going to do with the child?" he said.

"I was only going to take him away to wash his pretty face, sir, and
smooth his hair," answered the woman, in the most insinuating tone in
which she had spoken of the water-rate. "You don't see him to any
advantage, sir, while his precious face is dirty. I won't be five
minutes making him as neat as a new pin."

She had her long, thin arms about the boy as she spoke, and she was
evidently going to carry him off bodily, when Robert stopped her.

"I'd rather see him as he is, thank you," he said. "My time in
Southampton isn't very long, and I want to hear all that the little man
can tell me."

The little man crept closer to Robert, and looked confidingly into the
barrister's gray eyes.

"I like you very much," he said. "I was frightened of you when you came
before, because I was shy. I am not shy now--I am nearly six years old."

Robert patted the boy's head encouragingly, but he was not looking at
little George; he was watching the fair-haired widow, who had moved to
the window, and was looking out at the patch of waste ground.

"You're rather fidgety about some one, ma'am, I'm afraid," said Robert.

She colored violently as the barrister made this remark, and answered
him in a confused manner.

"I was looking for Mr. Maldon, sir," she said; "he'll be so disappointed
if he doesn't see you."

"You know who I am, then?"

"No, sir, but--"

The boy interrupted her by dragging a little jeweled watch from his
bosom and showing it to Robert.

"This is the watch the pretty lady gave me," he said. "I've got it
now--but I haven't had it long, because the jeweler who cleans it is an
idle man, gran'pa says, and always keeps it such a long time; and
gran'pa says it will have to be cleaned again, because of the taxes. He
always takes it to be cleaned when there's taxes--but he says if he were
to lose it the pretty lady would give me another. Do you know the pretty
lady?"

"No, Georgey, but tell me about her."

Mrs. Plowson made another descent upon the boy. She was armed with a
pocket-handkerchief this time, and displayed great anxiety about the
state of little George's nose, but Robert warded off the dreaded weapon,
and drew the child away from his tormentor.

"The boy will do very well, ma'am," he said, "if you'll be good enough
to let him alone for five minutes. Now, Georgey, suppose you sit on my
knee, and tell me all about the pretty lady."

The child clambered from the table onto Mr. Audley's knees, assisting
his descent by a very unceremonious manipulation of his guardian's
coat-collar.

"I'll tell you all about the pretty lady," he said, "because I like you
very much. Gran'pa told me not to tell anybody, but I'll tell you, you
know, because I like you, and because you're going to take me to school.
The pretty lady came here one night--long ago--oh, so long ago," said
the boy, shaking his head, with a face whose solemnity was expressive of
some prodigious lapse of time. "She came when I was not nearly so big as
I am now--and she came at night--after I'd gone to bed, and she came up
into my room, and sat upon the bed, and cried--and she left the watch
under my pillow, and she--Why do you make faces at me, Mrs. Plowson? I
may tell this gentleman," Georgey added, suddenly addressing the widow,
who was standing behind Robert's shoulder.

Mrs. Plowson mumbled some confused apology to the effect that she was
afraid Master George was troublesome.

"Suppose you wait till I say so, ma'am, before you stop the little
fellow's mouth," said Robert Audley, sharply. "A suspicious person might
think from your manner that Mr. Maldon and you had some conspiracy
between you, and that you were afraid of what the boy's talk may let
slip."

He rose from his chair, and looked full at Mrs. Plowson as he said this.
The fair-haired widow's face was as white as her cap when she tried to
answer him, and her pale lips were so dry that she was compelled to wet
them with her tongue before the words would come.

The little boy relieved her embarrassment.

"Don't be cross to Mrs. Plowson," he said. "Mrs. Plowson is very kind to
me. Mrs. Plowson is Matilda's mother. You don't know Matilda. Poor
Matilda was always crying; she was ill, she--"

The boy was stopped by the sudden appearance of Mr. Maldon, who stood on
the threshold of the parlor door staring at Robert Audley with a
half-drunken, half-terrified aspect, scarcely consistent with the
dignity of a retired naval officer. The servant girl, breathless and
panting, stood close behind her master. Early in the day though it was,
the old man's speech was thick and confused, as he addressed himself
fiercely to Mrs. Plowson.

"You're a prett' creature to call yoursel' sensible woman?" he said.
"Why don't you take th' chile 'way, er wash 's face? D'yer want to ruin
me? D'yer want to 'stroy me? Take th' chile 'way! Mr. Audley, sir, I'm
ver' glad to see yer; ver' 'appy to 'ceive yer in m' humbl' 'bode," the
old man added with tipsy politeness, dropping into a chair as he spoke,
and trying to look steadily at his unexpected visitor.

"Whatever this man's secrets are," thought Robert, as Mrs. Plowson
hustled little George Talboys out of the room, "that woman has no
unimportant share of them. Whatever the mystery may be, it grows darker
and thicker at every step; but I try in vain to draw back or to stop
short upon the road, for a stronger hand than my own is pointing the way
to my lost friend's unknown grave."




CHAPTER XXI.

LITTLE GEORGEY LEAVES HIS OLD HOME.


"I am going to take your grandson away with me, Mr. Maldon," Robert said
gravely, as Mrs. Plowson retired with her young charge.

The old man's drunken imbecility was slowly clearing away like the heavy
mists of a London fog, through which the feeble sunshine struggles dimly
to appear. The very uncertain radiance of Lieutenant Maldon's intellect
took a considerable time in piercing the hazy vapors of rum-and-water;
but the flickering light at last faintly glimmered athwart the clouds,
and the old man screwed his poor wits to the sticking-point.

"Yes, yes," he said, feebly; "take the boy away from his poor old
grandfather; I always thought so."

"You always thought that I should take him away?" scrutinizing the
half-drunken countenance with a searching glance. "Why did you think so,
Mr. Maldon?"

The fogs of intoxication got the better of the light of sobriety for a
moment, and the lieutenant answered vaguely:

"Thought so--'cause I thought so."

Meeting the young barrister's impatient frown, he made another effort,
and the light glimmered again.

"Because I thought you or his father would fetch 'm away."

"When I was last in this house, Mr. Maldon, you told me that George
Talboys had sailed for Australia."

"Yes, yes--I know, I know," the old man answered, confusedly, shuffling
his scanty limp gray hairs with his two wandering hands--"I know; but he
might have come back--mightn't he? He was restless, and--and--queer in
his mind, perhaps, sometimes. He might have come back."

He repeated this two or three times in feeble, muttering tones; groping
about on the littered mantle-piece for a dirty-looking clay pipe, and
filling and lighting it with hands that trembled violently.

Robert Audley watched those poor, withered, tremulous fingers dropping
shreds of tobacco upon the hearth rug, and scarcely able to kindle a
lucifer for their unsteadiness. Then walking once or twice up and down
the little room, he left the old man to take a few puffs from the great
consoler.

Presently he turned suddenly upon the half-pay lieutenant with a dark
solemnity in his handsome face.

"Mr. Maldon," he said, slowly watching the effect of every syllable as
he spoke, "George Talboys never sailed for Australia--that I know. More
than this, he never came to Southampton; and the lie you told me on the
8th of last September was dictated to you by the telegraphic message
which you received on that day."

The dirty clay pipe dropped from the tremulous hand, and shivered
against the iron fender, but the old man made no effort to find a fresh
one; he sat trembling in every limb, and looking, Heaven knows how
piteously, at Robert Audley.

"The lie was dictated to you, and you repeated your lesson. But you no
more saw George Talboys here on the 7th of September than I see him in
this room now. You thought you had burnt the telegraphic message, but
you had only burnt a part of it--the remainder is in my possession."

Lieutenant Maldon was quite sober now.

"What have I done?" he murmured, hopelessly. "Oh, my God! what have I
done?"

"At two o'clock on the 7th of September last," continued the pitiless,
accusing voice, "George Talboys was seen alive and well at a house in
Essex."

Robert paused to see the effect of these words. They had produced no
change in the old man. He still sat trembling from head to foot, and
staring with the fixed and solid gaze of some helpless wretch whose
every sense is gradually becoming numbed by terror.

"At two o'clock on that day," remarked Robert Audley, "my poor friend
was seen alive and well at ----, at the house of which I speak. From
that hour to this I have never been able to hear that he has been seen
by any living creature. I have taken such steps as _must_ have resulted
in procuring the information of his whereabouts, were he alive. I have
done this patiently and carefully--at first, even hopefully. Now I know
that he is dead."

Robert Audley had been prepared to witness some considerable agitation
in the old man's manner, but he was not prepared for the terrible
anguish, the ghastly terror, which convulsed Mr. Maldon's haggard face
as he uttered the last word.

"No, no, no, no," reiterated the lieutenant, in a shrill, half-screaming
voice; "no, no! For God's sake, don't say that! Don't think it--don't
let _me_ think it--don't let me dream of it! Not dead--anything but
dead! Hidden away, perhaps--bribed to keep out of the way, perhaps; but
not dead--not dead--not dead!"

He cried these words aloud, like one beside himself, beating his hands
upon his gray head, and rocking backward and forward in his chair. His
feeble hands trembled no longer--they were strengthened by some
convulsive force that gave them a new power.

"I believe," said Robert, in the same solemn, relentless voice, "that my
friend left Essex; and I believe he died on the 7th of September last."

The wretched old man, still beating his hands among his thin gray hair,
slid from his chair to the ground, and groveled at Robert's feet.

"Oh! no, no--for God's, no!" he shrieked hoarsely. "No! you don't know
what you say--you don't know what your words mean!"

"I know their weight and value only too well--as well as I see you do,
Mr. Maldon. God help us!"

"Oh, what am I doing? what am I doing?" muttered the old man, feebly;
then raising himself from the ground with an effort, he drew himself to
his full hight, and said, in a manner which was new to him, and which
was not without a certain dignity of his own--that dignity which must be
always attached to unutterable misery, in whatever form it may
appear--he said, gravely:

"You have no right to come here and terrify a man who has been drinking,
and who is not quite himself. You have no right to do it, Mr. Audley.
Even the--the officer, sir, who--who--." He did not stammer, but his
lips trembled so violently that his words seemed to be shaken into
pieces by their motion. "The officer, I repeat, sir, who arrests
a--thief, or a--." He stopped to wipe his lips, and to still them if he
could by doing so, which he could not. "A thief or a murderer--" His
voice died suddenly away upon the last word, and it was only by the
motion of those trembling lips that Robert knew what he meant. "Gives
him warning, sir, fair warning, that he may say nothing which shall
commit himself--or--or--other people. The--the--law, sir, has that
amount of mercy for a--a--suspected criminal. But you, sir,--you come to
my house, and you come at a time when--when--contrary to my usual
habits--which, as people will tell you, are sober--you take the
opportunity to--terrify me--and it is not right, sir--it is--"

Whatever he would have said died away into inarticulate gasps, which
seemed to choke him, and sinking into a chair, he dropped his face upon
the table, and wept aloud. Perhaps in all the dismal scenes of domestic
misery which had been acted in those spare and dreary houses--in all the
petty miseries, the burning shames, the cruel sorrows, the bitter
disgraces which own poverty for their father--there had never been such
a scene as this. An old man hiding his face from the light of day, and
sobbing aloud in his wretchedness. Robert Audley contemplated the
painful picture with a hopeless and pitying face.

"If I had known this," he thought, "I might have spared him. It would
have been better, perhaps, to have spared him."

The shabby room, the dirt, the confusion, the figure of the old man,
with his gray head upon the soiled tablecloth, amid the muddled _debris_
of a wretched dinner, grew blurred before the sight of Robert Audley as
he thought of another man, as old as this one, but, ah! how widely
different in every other quality! who might come by and by to feel the
same, or even a worse anguish, and to shed, perhaps, yet bitterer tears.
The moment in which the tears rose to his eyes and dimmed the piteous
scene before him, was long enough to take him back to Essex, and to show
him the image of his uncle, stricken by agony and shame.

"Why do I go on with this?" he thought; "how pitiless I am, and how
relentlessly I am carried on. It is not myself; it is the hand which is
beckoning me further and further upon the dark road, whose end I dare
not dream of."

He thought this, and a hundred times more than this, while the old man
sat with his face still hidden, wrestling with his anguish, but without
power to keep it down.

"Mr. Maldon," Robert Audley said, after a pause, "I do not ask you to
forgive me for what I have brought upon you, for the feeling is strong
within me that it must have come to you sooner or later--if not through
me, through some one else. There are--" he stopped for a moment
hesitating. The sobbing did not cease; it was sometimes low, sometimes
loud, bursting out with fresh violence, or dying away for an instant,
but never ceasing. "There are some things which, as people say, cannot
be hidden. I think there is truth in that common saying which had its
origin in that old worldly wisdom which people gathered from experience
and not from books. If--if I were content to let my friend rest in his
hidden grave, it is but likely that some stranger who had never heard
the name of George Talboys, might fall by the remotest accident upon the
secret of his death. To-morrow, perhaps; or ten years hence, or in
another generation, when the--the hand that wronged him is as cold as
his own. If I _could_ let the matter rest; if--if I could leave England
forever, and purposely fly from the possibility of ever coming across
another clew to the secret, I would do it--I would gladly, thankfully do
it--but I _cannot_! A hand which is stronger than my own beckons me on.
I wish to take no base advantage of you, less than of all other people;
but I must go on; I must go on. If there is any warning you would give
to any one, give it. If the secret toward which I am traveling day by
day, hour by hour, involves any one in whom you have an interest, let
that person fly before I come to the end. Let them leave this country;
let them leave all who know them--all whose peace their wickedness has
endangered; let them go away--they shall not be pursued. But if they
slight your warning--if they try to hold their present position in
defiance of what it will be in your power to tell them--let them beware
of me, for, when the hour comes, I swear that I will not spare them."

The old man looked up for the first time, and wiped his wrinkled face
upon a ragged silk handkerchief.

"I declare to you that I do not understand you," he said. "I solemnly
declare to you that I cannot understand; and I do not believe that
George Talboys is dead."

"I would give ten years of my own life if I could see him alive,"
answered Robert, sadly. "I am sorry for you, Mr. Malden--I am sorry for
all of us."

"I do not believe that my son-in-law is dead," said the lieutenant; "I
do not believe that the poor lad is dead."

He endeavored in a feeble manner to show to Robert Audley that his wild
outburst of anguish had been caused by his grief for the loss of George;
but the pretense was miserably shallow.

Mrs. Plowson re-entered the room, leading little Georgey, whose face
shone with that brilliant polish which yellow soap and friction can
produce upon the human countenance.

"Dear heart alive!" exclaimed Mrs. Plowson, "what has the poor old
gentleman been taking on about? We could hear him in the passage,
sobbin' awful."

Little George crept up to his grandfather, and smoothed the wet and
wrinkled face with his pudgy hand.

"Don't cry, gran'pa," he said, "don't cry. You shall have my watch to be
cleaned, and the kind jeweler shall lend you the money to pay the taxman
while he cleans the watch--I don't mind, gran'pa. Let's go to the
jeweler, the jeweler in High street, you know, with golden balls painted
upon his door, to show that he comes from Lombar--Lombardshire," said
the boy, making a dash at the name. "Come, gran'pa."

The little fellow took the jeweled toy from his bosom and made for the
door, proud of being possessed of a talisman, which he had seen so often
made useful.

"There are wolves at Southampton," he said, with rather a triumphant nod
to Robert Audley. "My gran'pa says when he takes my watch that he does
it to keep the wolf from the door. Are there wolves where you live?"

The young barrister did not answer the child's question, but stopped him
as he was dragging his grandfather toward the door.

"Your grandpapa does not want the watch to-day, Georgey," he said,
gravely.

"Why is he sorry, then?" asked Georgey, naively; "when he wants the
watch he is always sorry, and beats his poor forehead so"--the boy
stopped to pantomime with his small fists--"and says that she--the pretty
lady, I think he means--uses him very hard, and that he can't keep the
wolf from the door; and then I say, 'Gran'pa, have the watch;' and then
he takes me in his arms, and says, 'Oh, my blessed angel! how can I rob
my blessed angel?' and then he cries, but not like to-day--not loud, you
know; only tears running down his poor cheeks, not so that you could
hear him in the passage."

Painful as the child's prattle was to Robert Audley, it seemed a relief
to the old man. He did not hear the boy's talk, but walked two or three
times up and down the little room and smoothed his rumpled hair and
suffered his cravat to be arranged by Mrs. Plowson, who seemed very
anxious to find out the cause of his agitation.

"Poor dear old gentleman," she said, looking at Robert.

"What has happened to upset him so?"

"His son-in-law is dead," answered Mr. Audley, fixing his eyes upon Mrs.
Plowson's sympathetic face. "He died, within a year and a half after the
death of Helen Talboys, who lies burried in Ventnor churchyard."

The face into which he was looking changed very slightly, but the eyes
that had been looking at him shifted away as he spoke, and Mrs. Plowson
was obliged to moisten her white lips with her tongue before she
answered him.

"Poor Mr. Talboys dead!" she said; "that is bad news indeed, sir."

Little George looked wistfully up at his guardian's face as this was
said.

"Who's dead?" he said. "George Talboys is my name. Who's dead?"

"Another person whose name is Talboys, Georgey."

"Poor person! Will he go to the pit-hole?"

The boy had that notion of death which is generally imparted to children
by their wise elders, and which always leads the infant mind to the open
grave and rarely carries it any higher.

"I should like to _see_ him put in the pit-hole," Georgey remarked,
after a pause. He had attended several infant funerals in the
neighborhood, and was considered valuable as a mourner on account of his
interesting appearance. He had come, therefore, to look upon the
ceremony of interment as a solemn festivity; in which cake and wine, and
a carriage drive were the leading features.

"You have no objection to my taking Georgey away with me, Mr. Maldon?"
asked Robert Audley.

The old man's agitation had very much subsided by this time. He had
found another pipe stuck behind the tawdry frame of the looking-glass,
and was trying to light it with a bit of twisted newspaper.

"You do not object, Mr. Maldon?"

"No, sir--no, sir; you are his guardian, and you have a right to take
him where you please. He has been a very great comfort to me in my
lonely old age, but I have been prepared to lose him. I--I may not have
always done my duty to him, sir, in--in the way of schooling, and--and
boots. The number of boots which boys of his age wear out, sir, is not
easily realized by the mind of a young man like yourself; he has been
kept away from school, perhaps, sometimes, and occasionally worn shabby
boots when our funds have got low; but he has not been unkindly treated.
No, sir; if you were to question him for a week, I don't think you'd
hear that his poor old grandfather ever said a harsh word to him."

Upon this, Georgie, perceiving the distress of his old protector, set up
a terrible howl, and declared that he would never leave him.

"Mr. Maldon," said Robert Audley, with a tone which was half-mournful,
half-compassionate, "when I looked at my position last night, I did not
believe that I could ever come to think it more painful than I thought
it then. I can only say--God have mercy upon us all. I feel it my duty
to take the child away, but I shall take him straight from your house to
the best school in Southampton; and I give you my honor that I will
extort nothing from his innocent simplicity which can in any manner--I
mean," he said, breaking off abruptly, "I mean this. I will not seek to
come one step nearer the secret through him. I--I am not a detective
officer, and I do not think the most accomplished detective would like
to get his information from a child."

The old man did not answer; he sat with his face shaded by his hand, and
with his extinguished pipe between the listless fingers of the other.

"Take the boy away, Mrs. Plowson," he said, after a pause; "take him
away and put his things on. He is going with Mr. Audley."

"Which I do say that it's not kind of the gentleman to take his poor
grandpa's pet away," Mrs. Plowson exclaimed, suddenly, with respectful
indignation.

"Hush, Mrs. Plowson," the old man answered, piteously; "Mr. Audley is
the best judge. I--I haven't many years to live; I sha'n't trouble
anybody long."

The tears oozed slowly through the dirty fingers with which he shaded
his blood-shot eyes, as he said this.

"God knows, I never injured your friend, sir," he said, by-and-by, when
Mrs. Plowson and Georgey had returned, "nor even wished him any ill. He
was a good son-in-law to me--better than many a son. I never did him any
wilful wrong, sir. I--I spent his money, perhaps, but I am sorry for
it--I am very sorry for it now. But I don't believe he is dead--no, sir;
no, I don't believe it!" exclaimed the old man, dropping his hand from
his eyes, and looking with new energy at Robert Audley. "I--I don't
believe it, sir! How--how should he be dead?"

Robert did not answer this eager questioning. He shook his head
mournfully, and, walking to the little window, looked out across a row
of straggling geraniums at the dreary patch of waste ground on which the
children were at play.

Mrs. Plowson returned with little Georgey muffled in a coat and
comforter, and Robert took the boy's hand.

The little fellow sprung toward the old man, and clinging about him,
kissed the dirty tears from his faded cheeks.

"Don't be sorry for me, gran'pa," he said; "I am going to school to
learn to be a clever man, and I shall come home to see you and Mrs.
Plowson, sha'n't I?" he added, turning to Robert.

"Yes, my dear, by-and-by."

"Take him away, sir--take him away," cried Mr. Maldon; "you are breaking
my heart."

The little fellow trotted away contentedly at Robert's side. He was very
well pleased at the idea of going to school, though he had been happy
enough with his drunken old grandfather, who had always displayed a
maudlin affection for the pretty child, and had done his best to spoil
Georgey, by letting him have his own way in everything; in consequence
of which indulgence, Master Talboys had acquired a taste for late hours,
hot suppers of the most indigestible nature, and sips of rum-and-water
from his grandfather's glass.

He communicated his sentiments upon many subjects to Robert Audley, as
they walked to the Dolphin Hotel; but the barrister did not encourage
him to talk.

It was no very difficult matter to find a good school in such a place as
Southampton. Robert Audley was directed to a pretty house between the
Bar and the Avenue, and leaving Georgey to the care of a good-natured
waiter, who seemed to have nothing to do but to look out of the window,
and whisk invisible dust off the brightly polished tables, the barrister
walked up the High street toward Mr. Marchmont's academy for young
gentlemen.

He found Mr. Marchmont a very sensible man, and he met a file of
orderly-looking young gentlemen walking townward under the escort of a
couple of ushers as he entered the house.

He told the schoolmaster that little George Talboys had been left in his
charge by a dear friend, who had sailed for Australia some months
before, and whom he believed to be dead. He confided him to Mr.
Marchmont's especial care, and he further requested that no visitors
should be admitted to see the boy unless accredited by a letter from
himself. Having arranged the matter in a very few business-like words,
he returned to the hotel to fetch Georgey.

He found the little man on intimate terms with the idle waiter, who had
been directing Master Georgey's attention to the different objects of
interest in the High street.

Poor Robert had about as much notion of the requirements of a child as
he had of those of a white elephant. He had catered for silkworms,
guinea-pigs, dormice, canary-birds, and dogs, without number, during his
boyhood, but he had never been called upon to provide for a young person
of five years old.

He looked back five-and-twenty years, and tried to remember his own diet
at the age of five.

"I've a vague recollection of getting a good deal of bread and milk and
boiled mutton," he thought; "and I've another vague recollection of not
liking them. I wonder if this boy likes bread and milk and boiled
mutton."

He stood pulling his thick mustache and staring thoughtfully at the
child for some minutes before he could get any further.

"I dare say you're hungry, Georgey?" he said, at last.

The boy nodded, and the waiter whisked some more invisible dust from the
nearest table as a preparatory step toward laying a cloth.

"Perhaps you'd like some lunch?" Mr. Audley suggested, still pulling his
mustache.

The boy burst out laughing.

"Lunch!" he cried. "Why, it's afternoon, and I've had my dinner."

Robert Audley felt himself brought to a standstill. What refreshment
could he possibly provide for a boy who called it afternoon at three
o'clock?

"You shall have some bread and milk, Georgey," he said, presently.
"Waiter, bread and milk, and a pint of hock."

Master Talboys made a wry face.

"I never have bread and milk," he said, "I don't like it. I like what
gran'pa calls something savory. I should like a veal cutlet. Gran'pa
told me he dined here once, and the veal cutlets were lovely, gran'pa
said. Please may I have a veal cutlet, with egg and bread-crumb, you
know, and lemon-juice you know?" he added to the waiter: "Gran'pa knows
the cook here. The cook's such a nice gentleman, and once gave me a
shilling, when gran'pa brought me here. The cook wears better clothes
than gran'pa--better than yours, even," said Master Georgey, pointing to
Robert's rough great-coat with a depreciating nod.

Robert Audley stared aghast. How was he to deal with this epicure of
five years old, who rejected bread and milk and asked for veal cutlets?

"I'll tell you what I'll do with you, little Georgey," he exclaimed,
after a pause--"_I'll give you a dinner!_"

The waiter nodded briskly.

"Upon my word, sir," he said, approvingly, "I think the little gentleman
will know how to eat it."

"I'll give you a dinner, Georgey," repeated Robert--"some stewed eels, a
little Julienne, a dish of cutlets, a bird, and a pudding. What do you
say to that, Georgey?"

"I don't think the young gentleman will object to it when he sees it,
sir," said the waiter. "Eels, Julienne, cutlets, bird, pudding--I'll go
and tell the cook, sir. What time, sir?"

"Well, we'll say six, and Master Georgey will get to his new school by
bedtime. You can contrive to amuse the child for this afternoon, I dare
say. I have some business to settle, and sha'n't be able to take him
out. I shall sleep here to-night. Good-by, Georgey; take care of
yourself and try and get your appetite in order against six o'clock."

Robert Audley left the boy in charge of the idle waiter, and strolled
down to the water side, choosing that lonely bank which leads away under
the moldering walls of the town toward the little villages beside the
narrowing river.

He had purposely avoided the society of the child, and he walked through
the light drifting snow till the early darkness closed upon him.

He went back to the town, and made inquiries at the station about the
trains for Dorsetshire.

"I shall start early to-morrow morning," he thought, "and see George's
father before nightfall. I will tell him all--all but the interest which
I take in--in the suspected person, and he shall decide what is next to
be done."

Master Georgey did very good justice to the dinner which Robert had
ordered. He drank Bass' pale ale to an extent which considerably alarmed
his entertainer, and enjoyed himself amazingly, showing an appreciation
of roast pheasant and bread-sauce which was beyond his years. At eight
o'clock a fly was brought out for his accommodation, and he departed in
the highest spirits, with a sovereign in his pocket, and a letter from
Robert to Mr. Marchmont, inclosing a check for the young gentleman's
outfit.

"I'm glad I'm going to have new clothes," he said, as he bade Robert
good-by; "for Mrs. Plowson has mended the old ones ever so many times.
She can have them now, for Billy."

"Who's Billy?" Robert asked, laughing at the boy's chatter.

"Billy is poor Matilda's little boy. He's a common boy, you know.
Matilda was common, but she--"

But the flyman snapping his whip at this moment, the old horse jogged
off, and Robert Audley heard no more of Matilda.




CHAPTER XXII.

COMING TO A STANDSTILL.


Mr. Harcourt Talboys lived in a prim, square, red-brick mansion, within
a mile of a little village called Grange Heath, in Dorsetshire. The
prim, square, red-brick mansion stood in the center of prim, square
grounds, scarcely large enough to be called a park, too large to be
called anything else--so neither the house nor the grounds had any name,
and the estate was simply designated Squire Talboys'.

Perhaps Mr. Harcourt Talboys was the last person in this world with whom
it was possible to associate the homely, hearty, rural old English title
of squire. He neither hunted nor farmed. He had never worn crimson,
pink, or top-boots in his life. A southerly wind and a cloudy sky were
matters of supreme indifference to him, so long as they did not in any
way interfere with his own prim comforts; and he only cared for the
state of the crops inasmuch as it involved the hazard of certain rents
which he received for the farms upon his estate. He was a man of about
fifty years of age, tall, straight, bony and angular, with a square,
pale face, light gray eyes, and scanty dark hair, brushed from either
ear across a bald crown, and thus imparting to his physiognomy some
faint resemblance to that of a terrier--a sharp, uncompromising,
hard-headed terrier--a terrier not to be taken in by the cleverest
dog-stealer who ever distinguished himself in his profession.

Nobody ever remembered getting upon what is popularly called the blind
side of Harcourt Talboys. He was like his own square-built,
northern-fronted, shelterless house. There were no shady nooks in his
character into which one could creep for shelter from his hard daylight.
He was all daylight. He looked at everything in the same broad glare of
intellectual sunlight, and would see no softening shadows that might
alter the sharp outlines of cruel facts, subduing them to beauty. I do
not know if I express what I mean, when I say that there were no curves
in his character--that his mind ran in straight lines, never diverging
to the right or the left to round off their pitiless angles. With him
right was right, and wrong was wrong. He had never in his merciless,
conscientious life admitted the idea that circumstances might mitigate
the blackness of wrong or weaken the force of right. He had cast off his
only son because his only son had disobeyed him, and he was ready to
cast off his only daughter at five minutes' notice for the same reason.

If this square-built, hard-headed man could be possessed of such a
weakness as vanity, he was certainly vain of his hardness. He was vain
of that inflexible squareness of intellect, which made him the
disagreeable creature that he was. He was vain of that unwavering
obstinacy which no influence of love or pity had ever been known to bend
from its remorseless purpose. He was vain of the negative force of a
nature which had never known the weakness of the affections, or the
strength which may be born of that very weakness.

If he had regretted his son's marriage, and the breach of his own
making, between himself and George, his vanity had been more powerful
than his regret, and had enabled him to conceal it. Indeed, unlikely as
it appears at the first glance that such a man as this could have been
vain, I have little doubt that vanity was the center from which radiated
all the disagreeable lines in the character of Mr. Harcourt Talboys. I
dare say Junius Brutus was vain, and enjoyed the approval of
awe-stricken Rome when he ordered his son off for execution. Harcourt
Talboys would have sent poor George from his presence between the
reversed fasces of the lictors, and grimly relished his own agony.
Heaven only knows how bitterly this hard man may have felt the
separation between himself and his only son, or how much the more
terrible the anguish might have been made by that unflinching
self-conceit which concealed the torture.

"My son did me an unpardonable wrong by marrying the daughter of a
drunken pauper," Mr. Talboys would answer to any one who had the
temerity to speak to him about George, "and from that hour I had no
longer a son. I wish him no ill. He is simply dead to me. I am sorry for
him, as I am sorry for his mother who died nineteen years ago. If you
talk to me of him as you would talk of the dead, I shall be ready to
hear you. If you speak of him as you would speak of the living, I must
decline to listen."

I believe that Harcourt Talboys hugged himself upon the gloomy Roman
grandeur of this speech, and that he would like to have worn a toga, and
wrapped himself sternly in its folds, as he turned his back upon poor
George's intercessor. George never in his own person made any effort to
soften his father's verdict. He knew his father well enough to know that
the case was hopeless.

"If I write to him, he will fold my letter with the envelope inside, and
indorse it with my name and the date of its arrival," the young man
would say, "and call everybody in the house to witness that it had not
moved him to one softening recollection or one pitiful thought. He will
stick to his resolution to his dying day. I dare say, if the truth was
known, he is glad that his only son has offended him and given him the
opportunity of parading his Roman virtues."

George had answered his wife thus when she and her father had urged him
to ask assistance from Harcourt Talboys.

"No my darling," he would say, conclusively. "It's very hard, perhaps,
to be poor, but we will bear it. We won't go with pitiful faces to the
stern father, and ask him to give us food and shelter, only to be
refused in long, Johnsonian sentences, and made a classical example for
the benefit of the neighborhood. No, my pretty one; it is easy to
starve, but it is difficult to stoop."

Perhaps poor Mrs. George did not agree very heartily to the first of
these two propositions. She had no great fancy for starving, and she
whimpered pitifully when the pretty pint bottles of champagne, with
Cliquot's and Moet's brands upon their corks, were exchanged for
sixpenny ale, procured by a slipshod attendant from the nearest
beer-shop. George had been obliged to carry his own burden and lend a
helping hand with that of his wife, who had no idea of keeping her
regrets or disappointments a secret.

"I thought dragoons were always rich," she used to say, peevishly.
"Girls always want to marry dragoons; and tradespeople always want to
serve dragoons; and hotel-keepers to entertain dragoons; and theatrical
managers to be patronized by dragoons. Who could have ever expected that
a dragoon would drink sixpenny ale, smoke horrid bird's-eye tobacco, and
let his wife wear a shabby bonnet?"

If there were any selfish feelings displayed in such speeches as these,
George Talboys had never discovered it. He had loved and believed in his
wife from the first to the last hour of his brief married life. The love
that is not blind is perhaps only a spurious divinity after all; for
when Cupid takes the fillet from his eyes it is a fatally certain
indication that he is preparing to spread his wings for a flight. George
never forgot the hour in which he had first become bewitched by
Lieutenant Maldon's pretty daughter, and however she might have changed,
the image which had charmed him then, unchanged and unchanging,
represented her in his heart.

Robert Audley left Southampton by a train which started before daybreak,
and reached Wareham station early in the day. He hired a vehicle at
Wareham to take him over to Grange Heath.

The snow had hardened upon the ground, and the day was clear and frosty,
every object in the landscape standing in sharp outline against the cold
blue sky. The horses' hoofs clattered upon the ice-bound road, the iron
shoes striking on the ground that was almost as iron as themselves. The
wintry day bore some resemblance to the man to whom Robert was going.
Like him, it was sharp, frigid, and uncompromising: like him, it was
merciless to distress and impregnable to the softening power of
sunshine. It would accept no sunshine but such January radiance as would
light up the bleak, bare country without brightening it; and thus
resembled Harcourt Talboys, who took the sternest side of every truth,
and declared loudly to the disbelieving world that there never had been,
and never could be, any other side.

Robert Audley's heart sunk within him as the shabby hired vehicle
stopped at a stern-looking barred fence, and the driver dismounted to
open a broad iron gate which swung back with a clanking noise and was
caught by a great iron tooth, planted in the ground, which snapped at
the lowest bar of the gate as if it wanted to bite.

This iron gate opened into a scanty plantation of straight-limbed
fir-trees, that grew in rows and shook their sturdy winter foliage
defiantly in the very teeth of the frosty breeze. A straight graveled
carriage-drive ran between these straight trees across a smoothly kept
lawn to a square red-brick mansion, every window of which winked and
glittered in the January sunlight as if it had been that moment cleaned
by some indefatigable housemaid.

I don't know whether Junius Brutus was a nuisance in his own house, but
among other of his Roman virtues, Mr. Talboys owned an extreme aversion
to disorder, and was the terror of every domestic in his establishment.

The windows winked and the flight of stone steps glared in the sunlight,
the prim garden walks were so freshly graveled that they gave a sandy,
gingery aspect to the place, reminding one unpleasantly of red hair. The
lawn was chiefly ornamented with dark, wintry shrubs of a funereal
aspect which grew in beds that looked like problems in algebra; and the
flight of stone steps leading to the square half-glass door of the hall
was adorned with dark-green wooden tubs containing the same sturdy
evergreens.

"If the man is anything like his house," Robert thought, "I don't wonder
that poor George and he parted."

At the end of a scanty avenue the carriage-drive turned a sharp corner
(it would have been made to describe a curve in any other man's grounds)
and ran before the lower windows of the house. The flyman dismounted at
the steps, ascended them, and rang a brass-handled bell, which flew back
to its socket, with an angry, metallic snap, as if it had been insulted
by the plebeian touch of the man's hand.

A man in black trousers and a striped linen jacket, which was evidently
fresh from the hands of the laundress, opened the door. Mr. Talboys was
at home. Would the gentleman send in his card?

Robert waited in the hall while his card was taken to the master of the
house.

The hall was large and lofty, paved with stone. The panels of the oaken
wainscot shone with the same uncompromising polish which was on every
object within and without the red-bricked mansion.

Some people are so weak-minded as to affect pictures and statues. Mr.
Harcourt Talboys was far too practical to indulge in any foolish
fancies. A barometer and an umbrella-stand were the only adornments of
his entrance-hall.

Robert Audley looked at these while his name was being submitted to
George's father.

The linen-jacketed servant returned presently. He was a square,
pale-faced man of almost forty, and had the appearance of having
outlived every emotion to which humanity is subject.

"If you will step this way, sir," he said, "Mr. Talboys will see you,
although he is at breakfast. He begged me to state that everybody in
Dorsetshire was acquainted with his breakfast hour."

This was intended as a stately reproof to Mr. Robert Audley. It had,
however, very small effect upon the young barrister. He merely lifted
his eyebrows in placid deprecation of himself and everybody else.

"I don't belong to Dorsetshire," he said. "Mr. Talboys might have known
that, if he'd done me the honor to exercise his powers of ratiocination.
Drive on, my friend."

The emotionless man looked at Robert Audley with a vacant stare of
unmitigated horror, and opening one of the heavy oak doors, led the way
into a large dining-room furnished with the severe simplicity of an
apartment which is meant to be ate in, but never lived in; and at top of
a table which would have accommodated eighteen persons Robert beheld Mr.
Harcourt Talboys.

Mr. Talboys was robed in a dressing-gown of gray cloth, fastened about
his waist with a girdle. It was a severe looking garment, and was
perhaps the nearest approach to the toga to be obtained within the range
of modern costume. He wore a buff waistcoat, a stiffly starched cambric
cravat, and a faultless shirt collar. The cold gray of his dressing gown
was almost the same as the cold gray of his eyes, and the pale buff of
his waistcoat was the pale buff of his complexion.

Robert Audley had not expected to find Harcourt Talboys at all like
George in his manners or disposition, but he had expected to see some
family likeness between the father and the son. There was none. It would
have been impossible to imagine any one more unlike George than the
author of his existence. Robert scarcely wondered at the cruel letter he
received from Mr. Talboys when he saw the writer of it. Such a man could
scarcely have written otherwise.

There was a second person in the large room, toward whom Robert glanced
after saluting Harcourt Talboys, doubtful how to proceed. This second
person was a lady, who sat at the last of a range of four windows,
employed with some needlework, the kind which is generally called plain
work, and with a large wicker basket, filled with calicoes and flannels,
standing by her.

The whole length of the room divided this lady from Robert, but he could
see that she was young, and that she was like George Talboys.

"His sister!" he thought in that one moment, during which he ventured to
glance away from the master of the house toward the female figure at the
window. "His sister, no doubt. He was fond of her, I know. Surely, she
is not utterly indifferent as to his fate?"

The lady half rose from her seat, letting her work, which was large and
awkward, fall from her lap as she did so, and dropping a reel of cotton,
which rolled away upon the polished oaken flooring beyond the margin of
the Turkey carpet.

"Sit down, Clara," said the hard voice of Mr. Talboys.

That gentleman did not appear to address his daughter, nor had his face
been turned toward her when she rose. It seemed as if he had known it by
some social magnetism peculiar to himself; it seemed, as his servants
were apt disrespectfully to observe, as if he had eyes in the back of
his head.

"Sit down, Clara," he repeated, "and keep your cotton in your workbox."

The lady blushed at this reproof, and stooped to look for the cotton.
Mr. Robert Audley, who was unabashed by the stern presence of the master
of the house, knelt on the carpet, found the reel, and restored it to
its owner; Harcourt Talboys staring at the proceeding with an expression
of unmitigated astonishment.

"Perhaps, Mr. ----, Mr. Robert Audley!" he said, looking at the card
which he held between his finger and thumb, "perhaps when you have
finished looking for reels of cotton, you will be good enough to tell me
to what I owe the honor of this visit?"

He waved his well-shaped hand with a gesture which might have been
admired in the stately John Kemble; and the servant, understanding the
gesture, brought forward a ponderous red-morocco chair.

The proceeding was so slow and solemn, that Robert had at first thought
that something extraordinary was about to be done; but the truth dawned
upon him at last, and he dropped into the massive chair.

"You may remain, Wilson," said Mr. Talboys, as the servant was about to
withdraw; "Mr. Audley would perhaps like coffee."

Robert had eaten nothing that morning, but he glanced at the long
expanse of dreary table-cloth, the silver tea and coffee equipage, the
stiff splendor, and the very little appearance of any substantial
entertainment, and he declined Mr. Talboys' invitation.

"Mr. Audley will not take coffee, Wilson," said the master of the house.
"You may go."

The man bowed and retired, opening and shutting the door as cautiously
as if he were taking a liberty in doing it at all, or as if the respect
due to Mr. Talboys demanded his walking straight through the oaken panel
like a ghost in a German story.

Mr. Harcourt Talboys sat with his gray eyes fixed severely on his
visitor, his elbows on the red-morocco arms of his chair, and his
finger-tips joined. It was the attitude in which, had he been Junius
Brutus, he would have sat at the trial of his son. Had Robert Audley
been easily to be embarrassed, Mr. Talboys might have succeeded in
making him feel so: as he would have sat with perfect tranquility upon
an open gunpowder barrel lighting his cigar, he was not at all disturbed
upon this occasion. The father's dignity seemed a very small thing to
him when he thought of the possible causes of the son's disappearance.

"I wrote to you some time since, Mr. Talboys," he said quietly, when he
saw that he was expected to open the conversation.

Harcourt Talboys bowed. He knew that it was of his lost son that Robert
came to speak. Heaven grant that his icy stoicism was the paltry
affectation of a vain man, rather than the utter heartlessness which
Robert thought it. He bowed across his finger-tips at his visitor. The
trial had begun, and Junius Brutus was enjoying himself.

"I received your communication, Mr. Audley," he said. "It is among other
business letters: it was duly answered."

"That letter concerned your son."

There was a little rustling noise at the window where the lady sat, as
Robert said this: he looked at her almost instantaneously, but she did
not seem to have stirred. She was not working, but she was perfectly
quiet.

"She's as heartless as her father, I expect, though she is like George,"
thought Mr. Audley.

"If your letter concerned the person who was once my son, perhaps, sir,"
said Harcourt Talboys, "I must ask you to remember that I have no longer
a son."

"You have no reason to remind me of that, Mr. Talboys," answered Robert,
gravely; "I remember it only too well. I have fatal reason to believe
that you have no longer a son. I have bitter cause to think that he is
dead."

It may be that Mr. Talboys' complexion faded to a paler shade of buff as
Robert said this; but he only elevated his bristling gray eyebrows and
shook his head gently.

"No," he said, "no, I assure you, no."

"I believe that George Talboys died in the month of September."

The girl who had been addressed as Clara, sat with work primly folded
upon her lap, and her hands lying clasped together on her work, and
never stirred when Robert spoke of his friend's death. He could not
distinctly see her face, for she was seated at some distance from him,
and with her back to the window.

"No, no, I assure you," repeated Mr. Talboys, "you labor under a sad
mistake."

"You believe that I am mistaken in thinking your son dead?" asked
Robert.

"Most certainly," replied Mr. Talboys, with a smile, expressive of the
serenity of wisdom. "Most certainly, my dear sir. The disappearance was
a very clever trick, no doubt, but it was not sufficiently clever to
deceive me. You must permit me to understand this matter a little better
than you, Mr. Audley, and you must also permit me to assure you of three
things. In the first place, your friend is not dead. In the second
place, he is keeping out of the way for the purpose of alarming me, of
trifling with my feelings as a--as a man who was once his father, and of
ultimately obtaining my forgiveness. In the third place, he will not
obtain that forgiveness, however long he may please to keep out of the
way; and he would therefore act wisely by returning to his ordinary
residence and avocations without delay."

"Then you imagine him to purposely hide himself from all who know him,
for the purpose of--"

"For the purpose of influencing _me_," exclaimed Mr. Talboys, who,
taking a stand upon his own vanity, traced every event in life from that
one center, and resolutely declined to look at it from any other point
of view. "For the purpose of influencing me. He knew the inflexibility
of my character; to a certain degree he was acquainted with me, and knew
that all attempts at softening my decision, or moving me from the fixed
purpose of my life, would fail. He therefore tried extraordinary means;
he has kept out of the way in order to alarm me, and when after due time
he discovers that he has not alarmed me, he will return to his old
haunts. When he does so," said Mr. Talboys, rising to sublimity, "I will
forgive him. Yes, sir, I will forgive him. I shall say to him: You have
attempted to deceive me, and I have shown you that I am not to be
deceived; you have tried to frighten me, and I have convinced you that I
am not to be frightened; you did not believe in my generosity, I will
show you that I can be generous."

Harcourt Talboys delivered himself of these superb periods with a
studied manner, that showed they had been carefully composed long ago.

Robert Audley sighed as he heard them.

"Heaven grant that you may have an opportunity of saying this to your
son, sir," he answered sadly. "I am very glad to find that you are
willing to forgive him, but I fear that you will never see him again
upon this earth. I have a great deal to say to you upon this--this sad
subject, Mr. Talboys; but I would rather say it to you alone," he added,
glancing at the lady in the window.

"My daughter knows my ideas upon this subject, Mr. Audley," said
Harcourt Talboys; "there is no reason why she should not hear all you
have to say. Miss Clara Talboys, Mr. Robert Audley," he added, waving
his hand majestically.

The young lady bent her head in recognition of Robert's bow.

"Let her hear it," he thought. "If she has so little feeling as to show
no emotion upon such a subject, let her hear the worst I have to tell."

There was a few minutes' pause, during which Robert took some papers
from his pocket; among them the document which he had written
immediately after George's disappearance.

"I shall require all your attention, Mr. Talboys," he said, "for that
which I have to disclose to you is of a very painful nature. Your son
was my very dear friend--dear to me for many reasons. Perhaps most of
all dear, because I had known him and been with him through the great
trouble of his life; and because he stood comparatively alone in the
world--cast off by you who should have been his best friend, bereft of
the only woman he had ever loved."

"The daughter of a drunken pauper," Mr. Talboys remarked,
parenthetically.

"Had he died in his bed, as I sometimes thought be would," continued
Robert Audley, "of a broken heart, I should have mourned for him very
sincerely, even though I had closed his eyes with my own hands, and had
seen him laid in his quiet resting-place. I should have grieved for my
old schoolfellow, and for the companion who had been dear to me. But
this grief would have been a very small one compared to that which I
feel now, believing, as I do only too firmly, that my poor friend has
been murdered."

"Murdered!"

The father and daughter simultaneously repeated the horrible word. The
father's face changed to a ghastly duskiness of hue; the daughter's face
dropped upon her clasped hands, and was never lifted again throughout
the interview.

"Mr. Audley, you are mad!" exclaimed Harcourt Talboys; "you are mad, or
else you are commissioned by your friend to play upon my feelings. I
protest against this proceeding as a conspiracy, and I--I revoke my
intended forgiveness of the person who was once my son!"

He was himself again as he said this. The blow had been a sharp one, but
its effect had been momentary.

"It is far from my wish to alarm you unnecessarily, sir," answered
Robert. "Heaven grant that you may be right and I wrong. I pray for it,
but I cannot think it--I cannot even hope it. I come to you for advice.
I will state to you plainly and dispassionately the circumstances which
have aroused my suspicions. If you say those suspicions are foolish and
unfounded I am ready to submit to your better judgment. I will leave
England; and I abandon my search for the evidence wanting to--to confirm
my fears. If you say go on, I will go on."

Nothing could be more gratifying to the vanity of Mr. Harcourt Talboys
than this appeal. He declared himself ready to listen to all that Robert
might have to say, and ready to assist him to the uttermost of his
power.

He laid some stress upon this last assurance, deprecating the value of
his advice with an affectation that was as transparent as his vanity
itself.

Robert Audley drew his chair nearer to that of Mr. Talboys, and
commenced a minutely detailed account of all that had occurred to George
from the time of his arrival in England to the hour of his
disappearance, as well as all that had occurred since his disappearance
in any way touching upon that particular subject. Harcourt Talboys
listened with demonstrative attention, now and then interrupting the
speaker to ask some magisterial kind of question. Clara Talboys never
once lifted her face from her clasped hands.

The hands of the clock pointed to a quarter past eleven when Robert
began his story. The clock struck twelve as he finished.

He had carefully suppressed the names of his uncle and his uncle's wife
in relating the circumstances in which they had been concerned.

"Now, sir," he said, when the story had been told, "I await your
decision. You have heard my reasons for coming to this terrible
conclusion. In what manner do these reasons influence you?"

"They don't in any way turn me from my previous opinion," answered Mr.
Harcourt Talboys, with the unreasoning pride of an obstinate man. "I
still think, as I thought before, that my son is alive, and that his
disappearance is a conspiracy against myself. I decline to become the
victim of that conspiracy,"

"And you tell me to stop?" asked Robert, solemnly.

"I tell you only this: If you go on, you go on for your own
satisfaction, not for mine. I see nothing in what you have told me to
alarm me for the safety of--your friend."

"So be it, then!" exclaimed Robert, suddenly; "from this moment I wash
my hands of this business. From this moment the purpose of my life shall
be to forget it."

He rose as he spoke, and took his hat from the table on which he had
placed it. He looked at Clara Talboys. Her attitude had never changed
since she had dropped her face upon her hands. "Good morning, Mr.
Talboys," he said, gravely. "God grant that you are right. God grant
that I am wrong. But I fear a day will come when you will have reason to
regret your apathy respecting the untimely fate of your only son."

He bowed gravely to Mr. Harcourt Talboys and to the lady, whose face was
hidden by her hands.

He lingered for a moment looking at Miss Talboys, thinking that she
would look up, that she would make some sign, or show some desire to
detain him.

Mr. Talboys rang for the emotionless servant, who led Robert off to the
hall-door with the solemnity of manner which would have been in perfect
keeping had he been leading him to execution.

"She is like her father," thought Mr. Audley, as he glanced for the last
time at the drooping head. "Poor George, you had need of one friend in
this world, for you have had very few to love you."




CHAPTER XXIII

CLARA.


Robert Audley found the driver asleep upon the box of his lumbering
vehicle. He had been entertained with beer of so hard a nature as to
induce temporary strangulation in the daring imbiber thereof, and he was
very glad to welcome the return of his fare. The old white horse, who
looked as if he had been foaled in the year in which the carriage had
been built, and seemed, like the carriage, to have outlived the fashion,
was as fast asleep as his master, and woke up with a jerk as Robert came
down the stony flight of steps, attended by his executioner, who waited
respectfully till Mr. Audley had entered the vehicle and been turned
off.

The horse, roused by a smack of his driver's whip and a shake of the
shabby reins, crawled off in a semi-somnambulent state; and Robert, with
his hat very much over his eyes, thought of his missing friend.

He had played in these stiff gardens, and under these dreary firs, years
ago, perhaps--if it were possible for the most frolicsome youth to be
playful within the range of Mr. Harcourt Talboys' hard gray eyes. He had
played beneath these dark trees, perhaps, with the sister who had heard
of his fate to day without a tear. Robert Audley looked at the rigid
primness of the orderly grounds, wondering how George could have grown
up in such a place to be the frank, generous, careless friend whom he
had known. How was it that with his father perpetually before his eyes,
he had not grown up after the father's disagreeable model, to be a
nuisance to his fellow-men? How was it? Because we have Some One higher
than our parents to thank for the souls which make us great or small;
and because, while family noses and family chins may descend in orderly
sequence from father to son, from grandsire to grandchild, as the
fashion of the fading flowers of one year is reproduced in the budding
blossoms of the next, the spirit, more subtle than the wind which blows
among those flowers, independent of all earthly rule, owns no order but
the harmonious law of God.

"Thank God!" thought Robert Audley; "thank God! it is over. My poor
friend must rest in his unknown grave; and I shall not be the means of
bringing disgrace upon those I love. It will come, perhaps, sooner or
later, but it will not come through me. The crisis is past, and I am
free."

He felt an unutterable relief in this thought. His generous nature
revolted at the office into which he had found himself drawn--the office
of spy, the collector of damning facts that led on to horrible
deductions.

He drew a long breath--a sigh of relief at his release. It was all over
now.

The fly was crawling out of the gate of the plantation as he thought
this, and he stood up in the vehicle to look back at the dreary
fir-trees, the gravel paths, the smooth grass, and the great
desolate-looking, red-brick mansion.

He was startled by the appearance of a woman running, almost flying,
along the carriage-drive by which he had come, and waving a handkerchief
in her uplifted hand.

He stared at this singular apparition for some moments in silent wonder
before he was able to reduce his stupefaction into words.

"Is it _me_ the flying female wants?" he exclaimed, at last. "You'd
better stop, perhaps" he added, to the flyman. "It is an age of
eccentricity, an abnormal era of the world's history. She may want me.
Very likely I left my pocket-handkerchief behind me, and Mr. Talboys has
sent this person with it. Perhaps I'd better get out and go and meet
her. It's civil to send my handkerchief."

Mr. Robert Audley deliberately descended from the fly and walked slowly
toward the hurrying female figure, which gained upon him rapidly.

He was rather short sighted, and it was not until she came very near to
him that he saw who she was.

"Good Heaven!" he exclaimed, "it's Miss Talboys."

It was Miss Talboys, flushed and breathless, with a woolen shawl thrown
over her head.

Robert Audley now saw her face clearly for the first time, and he saw
that she was very handsome. She had brown eyes, like George's, a pale
complexion (she had been flushed when she approached him, but the color
faded away as she recovered her breath), regular features, with a
mobility of expression which bore record of every change of feeling. He
saw all this in a few moments, and he wondered only the more at the
stoicism of her manner during his interview with Mr. Talboys. There were
no tears in her eyes, but they were bright with a feverish
luster--terribly bright and dry--and he could see that her lips trembled
as she spoke to him.

"Miss Talboys," he said, "what can I--why--"

She interrupted him suddenly, catching at his wrist with her disengaged
hand--she was holding her shawl in the other.

"Oh, let me speak to you," she cried--"let me speak to you, or I shall
go mad. I heard it all. I believe what you believe, and I shall go mad
unless I can do something--something toward avenging his death."

For a few moments Robert Audley was too much bewildered to answer her.
Of all things possible upon earth he had least expected to behold her
thus.

"Take my arm, Miss Talboys," he said. "Pray calm yourself. Let us walk a
little way back toward the house, and talk quietly. I would not have
spoken as I did before you had I known--"

"Had you known that I loved my brother?" she said, quickly. "How should
you know that I loved him? How should any one think that I loved him,
when I have never had power to give him a welcome beneath that roof, or
a kindly word from his father? How should I dare to betray my love for
him in that house when I knew that even a sister's affection would be
turned to his disadvantage? You do not know my father, Mr. Audley. I do.
I knew that to intercede for George would have been to ruin his cause. I
knew that to leave matters in my father's hands, and to trust to time,
was my only chance of ever seeing that dear brother again. And I
waited--waited patiently, always hoping for the best; for I knew that my
father loved his only son. I see your contemptuous smile, Mr. Audley,
and I dare say it is difficult for a stranger to believe that underneath
his affected stoicism my father conceals some degree of affection for
his children--no very warm attachment perhaps, for he has always ruled
his life by the strict law of duty. Stop," she said, suddenly, laying
her hand upon his arm, and looking back through the straight avenue of
pines; "I ran out of the house by the back way. Papa must not see me
talking to you, Mr. Audley, and he must not see the fly standing at the
gate. Will you go into the high-road and tell the man to drive on a
little way? I will come out of the plantation by a little gate further
on, and meet you in the road."

"But you will catch cold, Miss Talboys," remonstrated Robert, looking at
her anxiously, for he saw that she was trembling. "You are shivering
now."

"Not with cold," she answered. "I am thinking of my brother George. If
you have any pity for the only sister of your lost friend, do what I ask
you, Mr. Audley. I must speak to you--I must speak to you--calmly, if I
can."

She put her hand to her head as if trying to collect her thoughts, and
then pointed to the gate. Robert bowed and left her. He told the man to
drive slowly toward the station, and walked on by the side of the tarred
fence surrounding Mr. Talboys' grounds. About a hundred yards beyond the
principal entrance he came to a little wooden gate in the fence, and
waited at it for Miss Talboys.

She joined him presently, with her shawl still over her head, and her
eyes still bright and tearless.

"Will you walk with me inside the plantation?" she said. "We might be
observed on the high-road."

He bowed, passed through the gate, and shut it behind him.

When she took his offered arm he found that she was still
trembling--trembling very violently.

"Pray, pray calm yourself, Miss Talboys," he said; "I may have been
deceived in the opinion which I have formed; I may--"

"No, no, no," she exclaimed, "you are not deceived. My brother has been
murdered. Tell me the name of that woman--the woman whom you suspect of
being concerned in his disappearance--in his murder."

"That I cannot do until--"

"Until when?"

"Until I know that she is guilty."

"You told my father that you would abandon all idea of discovering the
truth--that you would rest satisfied to leave my brother's fate a
horrible mystery never to be solved upon this earth; but you will not do
so, Mr. Audley--you will not be false to the memory of your friend. You
will see vengeance done upon those who have destroyed him. You will do
this, will you not?"

A gloomy shadow spread itself like a dark veil over Robert Audley's
handsome face.

He remembered what he had said the day before at Southampton:

"A hand that is stronger than my own is beckoning me onward, upon the
dark road."

A quarter of an hour before, he had believed that all was over, and that
he was released from the dreadful duty of discovering the secret of
George's death. Now this girl, this apparently passionless girl, had
found a voice, and was urging him on toward his fate.

"If you knew what misery to me may be involved in discovering the truth,
Miss Talboys," he said, "you would scarcely ask me to pursue this
business any farther?"

"But I do ask you," she answered, with suppressed passion--I do ask you.
I ask you to avenge my brother's untimely death. Will you do so? Yes or
no?"

"What if I answer no?"

"Then I will do it myself," she exclaimed, looking at him with her
bright brown eyes. "I myself will follow up the clew to this mystery; I
will find this woman--though you refuse to tell me in what part of
England my brother disappeared. I will travel from one end of the world
to the other to find the secret of his fate, if you refuse to find it
for me. I am of age; my own mistress; rich, for I have money left me by
one of my aunts; I shall be able to employ those who will help me in my
search, and I will make it to their interest to serve me well. Choose
between the two alternatives, Mr. Audley. Shall you or I find my
brother's murderer?"

He looked in her face, and saw that her resolution was the fruit of no
transient womanish enthusiasm which would give way under the iron hand
of difficulty. Her beautiful features, naturally statuesque in their
noble outlines, seemed transformed into marble by the rigidity of her
expression. The face in which he looked was the face of a woman whom
death only could turn from her purpose.

"I have grown up in an atmosphere of suppression," she said, quietly; "I
have stifled and dwarfed the natural feelings of my heart, until they
have become unnatural in their intensity; I have been allowed neither
friends nor lovers. My mother died when I was very young. My father has
always been to me what you saw him to-day. I have had no one but my
brother. All the love that my heart can hold has been centered upon him.
Do you wonder, then, that when I hear that his young life has been ended
by the hand of treachery, that I wish to see vengeance done upon the
traitor? Oh, my God," she cried, suddenly clasping her hands, and
looking up at the cold winter sky, "lead me to the murderer of my
brother, and let mine be the hand to avenge his untimely death."

Robert Audley stood looking at her with awe-stricken admiration. Her
beauty was elevated into sublimity by the intensity of her suppressed
passion. She was different to all other women that he had ever seen. His
cousin was pretty, his uncle's wife was lovely, but Clara Talboys was
beautiful. Niobe's face, sublimated by sorrow, could scarcely have been
more purely classical than hers. Even her dress, puritan in its gray
simplicity, became her beauty better than a more beautiful dress would
have become a less beautiful woman.

"Miss Talboys," said Robert, after a pause, "your brother shall not be
unavenged. He shall not be forgotten. I do not think that any
professional aid which you could procure would lead you as surely to the
secret of this mystery as I can lead you, if you are patient and trust
me."

"I will trust you," she answered, "for I see that you will help me."

"I believe that it is my destiny to do so," she said, solemnly.

In the whole course of his conversation with Harcourt Talboys, Robert
Audley had carefully avoided making any deductions from the
circumstances which he had submitted to George's father. He had simply
told the story of the missing man's life, from the hour of his arriving
in London to that of his disappearance; but he saw that Clara Talboys
had arrived at the same conclusion as himself, and that it was tacitly
understood between them.

"Have you any letters of your brother's, Miss Talboys?" he asked.

"Two. One written soon after his marriage, the other written at
Liverpool, the night before he sailed for Australia."

"Will you let me see them?"

"Yes, I will send them to you if you will give me your address You will
write to me from time to time, will you not, to tell me whether you are
approaching the truth. I shall be obliged to act secretly here, but I am
going to leave home in two or three months, and I shall be perfectly
free then to act as I please."

"You are not going to leave England?" Robert asked.

"Oh no! I am only going to pay a long-promised visit to some friends in
Essex."

Robert started so violently as Clara Talboys said this, that she looked
suddenly at his face. The agitation visible there, betrayed a part of
his secret.

"My brother George disappeared in Essex," she said.

He could not contradict her.

"I am sorry you have discovered so much," he replied. "My position
becomes every day more complicated, every day more painful. Good-bye."

She gave him her hand mechanically, when he held out his; but it was
cold as marble, and lay listlessly in his own, and fell like a log at
her side when he released it.

"Pray lose no time in returning to the house," he said earnestly. "I
fear you will suffer from this morning's work."

"Suffer!" she exclaimed, scornfully. "You talk to me of suffering, when
the only creature in this world who ever loved me has been taken from it
in the bloom of youth. What can there be for me henceforth but
suffering? What is the cold to me?" she said, flinging back her shawl
and baring her beautiful head to the bitter wind. "I would walk from
here to London barefoot through the snow, and never stop by the way, if
I could bring him back to life. What would I not do to bring him back?
What would I not do?"

The words broke from her in a wail of passionate sorrow; and clasping
her hands before her face, she wept for the first time that day. The
violence of her sobs shook her slender frame, and she was obliged to
lean against the trunk of a tree for support.

Robert looked at her with a tender compassion in his face; she was so
like the friend whom he had loved and lost, that it was impossible for
him to think of her as a stranger; impossible to remember that they had
met that morning for the first time.

"Pray, pray be calm," he said: "hope even against hope. We may both be
deceived; your brother may still live."

"Oh! if it were so," she murmured, passionately; "if it could be so."

"Let us try and hope that it may be so."

"No," she answered, looking at him through her tears, "let us hope for
nothing but revenge. Good-by, Mr. Audley. Stop; your address."

He gave her a card, which she put into the pocket of her dress.

"I will send you George's letters," she said; "they may help you.
Good-by."

She left him half bewildered by the passionate energy of her manner, and
the noble beauty of her face. He watched her as she disappeared among
the straight trunks of the fir-trees, and then walked slowly out of the
plantation.

"Heaven help those who stand between me and the secret," he thought,
"for they will be sacrificed to the memory of George Talboys."




CHAPTER XXIV.

GEORGE'S LETTERS.


Robert Audley did not return to Southampton, but took a ticket for the
first up town train that left Wareham, and reached Waterloo Bridge an
hour or two after dark. The snow, which had been hard and crisp in
Dorsetshire, was a black and greasy slush in the Waterloo Road, thawed
by the flaring lamps of the gin-palaces and the glaring gas in the
butchers' shops.

Robert Audley shrugged his shoulders as he looked at the dingy streets
through which the Hansom carried him, the cab-man choosing--with that
delicious instinct which seems innate in the drivers of hackney
vehicles--all those dark and hideous thoroughfares utterly unknown to
the ordinary pedestrian.

"What a pleasant thing life is," thought the barrister. "What an
unspeakable boon--what an overpowering blessing! Let any man make a
calculation of his existence, subtracting the hours in which he has been
_thoroughly_ happy--really and entirely at his ease, without one
_arriere pensee_ to mar his enjoyment--without the most infinitesimal
cloud to overshadow the brightness of his horizon. Let him do this, and
surely he will laugh in utter bitterness of soul when he sets down the
sum of his felicity, and discovers the pitiful smallness of the amount.
He will have enjoyed himself for a week or ten days in thirty years,
perhaps. In thirty years of dull December, and blustering March, and
showery April, and dark November weather, there may have been seven or
eight glorious August days, through which the sun has blazed in
cloudless radiance, and the summer breezes have breathed perpetual balm.
How fondly we recollect these solitary days of pleasure, and hope for
their recurrence, and try to plan the circumstances that made them
bright; and arrange, and predestinate, and diplomatize with fate for a
renewal of the remembered joy. As if any joy could ever be built up out
of such and such constituent parts! As if happiness were not essentially
accidental--a bright and wandering bird, utterly irregular in its
migrations; with us one summer's day, and forever gone from us on the
next! Look at marriages, for instance," mused Robert, who was as
meditative in the jolting vehicle, for whose occupation he was to pay
sixpence a mile, as if he had been riding a mustang on the wild
loneliness of the prairies. "Look at marriage! Who is to say which shall
be the one judicious selection out of nine hundred and ninety-nine
mistakes! Who shall decide from the first aspect of the slimy creature,
which is to be the one eel out of the colossal bag of snakes? That girl
on the curbstone yonder, waiting to cross the street when my chariot
shall have passed, may be the one woman out of every female creature in
this vast universe who could make me a happy man. Yet I pass her
by--bespatter her with the mud from my wheels, in my helpless ignorance,
in my blind submission to the awful hand of fatality. If that girl,
Clara Talboys, had been five minutes later, I should have left
Dorsetshire thinking her cold, hard, and unwomanly, and should have gone
to my grave with that mistake part and parcel of my mind. I took her for
a stately and heartless automaton; I know her now to be a noble and
beautiful woman. What an incalculable difference this may make in my
life. When I left that house, I went out into the winter day with the
determination of abandoning all further thought of the secret of
George's death. I see her, and she forces me onward upon the loathsome
path--the crooked by-way of watchfulness and suspicion. How can I say to
this sister of my dead friend, 'I believe that your brother has been
murdered! I believe that I know by whom, but I will take no step to set
my doubts at rest, or to confirm my fears'? I cannot say this. This
woman knows half my secret; she will soon possess herself of the rest,
and then--and then--"

The cab stopped in the midst of Robert Audley's meditation, and he had
to pay the cabman, and submit to all the dreary mechanism of life, which
is the same whether we are glad or sorry--whether we are to be married
or hung, elevated to the woolsack, or disbarred by our brother benchers
on some mysterious technical tangle of wrong-doing, which is a social
enigma to those outside the _forum domesticum_ of the Middle Temple.

We are apt to be angry with this cruel hardness in our life--this
unflinching regularity in the smaller wheels and meaner mechanism of the
human machine, which knows no stoppage or cessation, though the
mainspring be forever hollow, and the hands pointing to purposeless
figures on a shattered dial.

Who has not felt, in the first madness of sorrow, an unreasoning rage
against the mute propriety of chairs and tables, the stiff squareness of
Turkey carpets, the unbending obstinacy of the outward apparatus of
existence? We want to root up gigantic trees in a primeval forest, and
to tear their huge branches asunder in our convulsive grasp; and the
utmost that we can do for the relief of our passion is to knock over an
easy-chair, or smash a few shillings' worth of Mr. Copeland's
manufacture.

Madhouses are large and only too numerous; yet surely it is strange they
are not larger, when we think of how many helpless wretches must beat
their brains against this hopeless persistency of the orderly outward
world, as compared with the storm and tempest, the riot and confusion
within--when we remember how many minds must tremble upon the narrow
boundary between reason and unreason, mad to-day and sane to-morrow, mad
yesterday and sane to-day.

Robert Audley had directed the cabman to drop him at the corner of
Chancery Lane, and he ascended the brilliantly-lighted staircase leading
to the dining-saloon of The London, and seated himself at one of the
snug tables with a confused sense of emptiness and weariness, rather
than any agreeable sensation of healthy hunger. He had come to the
luxurious eating-house to dine, because it was absolutely necessary to
eat something somewhere, and a great deal easier to get a very good
dinner from Mr. Sawyer than a very bad one from Mrs. Maloney, whose mind
ran in one narrow channel of chops and steaks, only variable by small
creeks and outlets in the way of "broiled sole" or "boiled
mack'-_rill_." The solicitous waiter tried in vain to rouse poor Robert
to a proper sense of the solemnity of the dinner question. He muttered
something to the effect that the man might bring him anything he liked,
and the friendly waiter, who knew Robert as a frequent guest at the
little tables, went back to his master with a doleful face, to say that
Mr. Audley, from Figtree Court, was evidently out of spirits. Robert ate
his dinner, and drank a pint of Moselle; but he had poor appreciation of
the excellence of the viands or the delicate fragrance of the wine. The
mental monologue still went on, and the young philosopher of the modern
school was arguing the favorite modern question of the nothingness of
everything, and the folly of taking too much trouble to walk upon a road
that went nowhere, or to compass a work that meant nothing.

"I accept the dominion of that pale girl, with the statuesque features
and the calm brown eyes," he thought. "I recognize the power of a mind
superior to my own, and I yield to it, and bow down to it. I've been
acting for myself, and thinking for myself, for the last few months, and
I'm tired of the unnatural business. I've been false to the leading
principle of my life, and I've suffered for the folly. I found two gray
hairs in my head the week before last, and an impertinent crow has
planted a delicate impression of his foot under my right eye. Yes, I'm
getting old upon the right side; and why--why should it be so?"

He pushed away his plate and lifted his eyebrows, staring at the crumbs
upon the glistening damask, as he pondered the question.

"What the devil am I doing in this _galere_?" he asked. "But I am in it,
and I can't get out of it; so I better submit myself to the brown-eyed
girl, and do what she tells me patiently and faithfully. What a
wonderful solution to life's enigma there is in petticoat government!
Man might lie in the sunshine, and eat lotuses, and fancy it 'always
afternoon,' if his wife would let him! But she won't, bless her
impulsive heart and active mind! She knows better than that. Who ever
heard of a woman taking life as it ought to be taken? Instead of
supporting it as an unavoidable nuisance, only redeemable by its
brevity, she goes through it as if it were a pageant or a procession.
She dresses for it, and simpers and grins, and gesticulates for it. She
pushes her neighbors, and struggles for a good place in the dismal
march; she elbows, and writhes, and tramples, and prances to the one end
of making the most of the misery. She gets up early and sits up late,
and is loud, and restless, and noisy, and unpitying. She drags her
husband on to the woolsack, or pushes him into Parliament. She drives
him full butt at the dear, lazy machinery of government, and knocks and
buffets him about the wheels, and cranks, and screws, and pulleys; until
somebody, for quiet's sake, makes him something that she wanted him to
be made. That's why incompetent men sometimes sit in high places, and
interpose their poor, muddled intellects between the things to be done
and the people that can do them, making universal confusion in the
helpless innocence of well-placed incapacity. The square men in the
round holes are pushed into them by their wives. The Eastern potentate
who declared that women were at the bottom of all mischief, should have
gone a little further and seen why it is so. It is because women are
_never lazy_. They don't know what it is to be quiet. They are
Semiramides, and Cleopatras, and Joans of Arc, Queen Elizabeths, and
Catharines the Second, and they riot in battle, and murder, and clamor
and desperation. If they can't agitate the universe and play at ball
with hemispheres, they'll make mountains of warfare and vexation out of
domestic molehills, and social storms in household teacups. Forbid them
to hold forth upon the freedom of nations and the wrongs of mankind, and
they'll quarrel with Mrs. Jones about the shape of a mantle or the
character of a small maid-servant. To call them the weaker sex is to
utter a hideous mockery. They are the stronger sex, the noisier, the
more persevering, the most self-assertive sex. They want freedom of
opinion, variety of occupation, do they? Let them have it. Let them be
lawyers, doctors, preachers, teachers, soldiers, legislators--anything
they like--but let them be quiet--if they can."

Mr. Audley pushed his hands through the thick luxuriance of his straight
brown hair, and uplifted the dark mass in his despair.

"I hate women," he thought, savagely. "They're bold, brazen, abominable
creatures, invented for the annoyance and destruction of their
superiors. Look at this business of poor George's! It's all woman's work
from one end to the other. He marries a woman, and his father casts him
off penniless and professionless. He hears of the woman's death and he
breaks his heart--his good honest, manly heart, worth a million of the
treacherous lumps of self-interest and mercenary calculation which beats
in women's breasts. He goes to a woman's house and he is never seen
alive again. And now I find myself driven into a corner by another
woman, of whose existence I had never thought until this day. And--and
then," mused Mr. Audley, rather irrelevantly, "there's Alicia, too;
_she's_ another nuisance. She'd like me to marry her I know; and she'll
make me do it, I dare say, before she's done with me. But I'd much
rather not; though she is a dear, bouncing, generous thing, bless her
poor little heart."

Robert paid his bill and rewarded the waiter liberally. The young
barrister was very willing to distribute his comfortable little income
among the people who served him, for he carried his indifference to all
things in the universe, even to the matter of pounds, shillings and
pence. Perhaps he was rather exceptional in this, as you may frequently
find that the philosopher who calls life an empty delusion is pretty
sharp in the investment of his moneys, and recognizes the tangible
nature of India bonds, Spanish certificates, and Egyptian scrip--as
contrasted with the painful uncertainty of an Ego or a non-Ego in
metaphysics.

The snug rooms in Figtree Court seemed dreary in their orderly quiet to
Robert Audley upon this particular evening. He had no inclination for
his French novels, though there was a packet of uncut romances, comic
and sentimental, ordered a month before, waiting his pleasure upon one
of the tables. He took his favorite meerschaum and dropped into his
favorite chair with a sigh.

"It's comfortable, but it seems so deuced lonely to-night. If poor
George were sitting opposite to me, or--or even George's sister--she's
very like him--existence might be a little more endurable. But when a
fellow's lived by himself for eight or ten years he begins to be bad
company."

He burst out laughing presently as he finished his first pipe.

"The idea of my thinking of George's sister," he thought; "what a
preposterous idiot I am!"

The next day's post brought him a letter in a firm but feminine hand,
which was strange to him. He found the little packet lying on his
breakfast-table, beside the warm French roll wrapped in a napkin by Mrs.
Maloney's careful but rather dirty hands. He contemplated the envelope
for some minutes before opening it--not in any wonder as to his
correspondent, for the letter bore the postmark of Grange Heath, and he
knew that there was only one person who was likely to write to him from
that obscure village, but in that lazy dreaminess which was a part of
his character.

"From Clara Talboys," he murmured slowly, as he looked critically at the
clearly-shaped letters of his name and address. "Yes, from Clara
Talboys, most decidedly; I recognized a feminine resemblance to poor
George's hand; neater than his, and more decided than his, but very
like, very like."

He turned the letter over and examined the seal, which bore his friend's
familiar crest.

"I wonder what she says to me?" he thought. "It's a long letter, I dare
say; she's the kind of woman who would write a long letter--a letter
that will urge me on, drive me forward, wrench me out of myself, I've no
doubt. But that can't be helped--so here goes!"

He tore open the envelope with a sigh of resignation. It contained
nothing but George's two letters, and a few words written on the flap:
"I send the letters; please preserve and return them--C.T."

The letter, written from Liverpool, told nothing of the writer's life
except his sudden determination of starting for a new world, to redeem
the fortunes that had been ruined in the old. The letter written almost
immediately after George's marriage, contained a full description of his
wife--such a description as a man could only write within three weeks of
a love match--a description in which every feature was minutely
catalogued, every grace of form or beauty of expression fondly dwelt
upon, every charm of manner lovingly depicted.

Robert Audley read the letter three times before he laid it down.

"If George could have known for what a purpose this description would
serve when he wrote it," thought the young barrister, "surely his hand
would have fallen paralyzed by horror, and powerless to shape one
syllable of these tender words."




CHAPTER XXV.

RETROGRADE INVESTIGATION.


The dreary London January dragged its dull length slowly out. The last
slender records of Christmas time were swept away, and Robert Audley
still lingered in town--still spent his lonely evenings in his quiet
sitting-room in Figtree Court--still wandered listlessly in the Temple
Gardens on sunny mornings, absently listening to the children's babble,
idly watching their play. He had many friends among the inhabitants of
the quaint old buildings round him; he had other friends far away in
pleasant country places, whose spare bedrooms were always at Bob's
service, whose cheerful firesides had snugly luxurious chairs specially
allotted to him. But he seemed to have lost all taste for companionship,
all sympathy with the pleasures and occupations of his class, since the
disappearance of George Talboys. Elderly benchers indulged in facetious
observations upon the young man's pale face and moody manner. They
suggested the probability of some unhappy attachment, some feminine
ill-usage as the secret cause of the change. They told him to be of good
cheer, and invited him to supper-parties, at which "lovely woman, with
all her faults, God bless her," was drunk by gentlemen who shed tears as
they proposed the toast, and were maudlin and unhappy in their cups
toward the close of the entertainment. Robert had no inclination for the
wine-bibbing and the punch-making. The one idea of his life had become
his master. He was the bonden slave of one gloomy thought--one horrible
presentiment. A dark cloud was brooding above his uncle's house, and it
was his hand which was to give the signal for the thunder-clap, and the
tempest that was to ruin that noble life.

"If she would only take warning and run away," he said to himself
sometimes. "Heaven knows, I have given her a fair chance. Why doesn't
she take it and run away?"

He heard sometimes from Sir Michael, sometimes from Alicia. The young
lady's letter rarely contained more than a few curt lines informing him
that her papa was well; and that Lady Audley was in very high spirits,
amusing herself in her usual frivolous manner, and with her usual
disregard for other people.

A letter from Mr. Marchmont, the Southampton schoolmaster, informed
Robert that little Georgey was going on very well, but that he was
behindhand in his education, and had not yet passed the intellectual
Rubicon of words of two syllables. Captain Maldon had called to see his
grandson, but that privilege had been withheld from him, in accordance
with Mr. Audley's instructions. The old man had furthermore sent a
parcel of pastry and sweetmeats to the little boy, which had also been
rejected on the ground of indigestible and bilious tendencies in the
edibles.

Toward the close of February, Robert received a letter from his cousin
Alicia, which hurried him one step further forward toward his destiny,
by causing him to return to the house from which he had become in a
manner exiled at the instigation of his uncle's wife,

"Papa is very ill," Alicia wrote; "not dangerously ill, thank God; but
confined to his room by an attack of low fever which has succeeded a
violent cold. Come and see him, Robert, if you have any regard for your
nearest relations. He has spoken about you several times; and I know he
will be glad to have you with him. Come at once, but say nothing about
this letter.

"From your affectionate cousin, ALICIA."

A sick and deadly terror chilled Robert Audley's heart, as he read this
letter--a vague yet hideous fear, which he dared not shape into any
definite form.

"Have I done right?" he thought, in the first agony of this new
horror--"have I done right to tamper with justice; and to keep the
secret of my doubts in the hope that I was shielding those I love from
sorrow and disgrace? What shall I do if I find him ill, very ill, dying
perhaps, dying upon her breast! What shall I do?"

One course lay clear before him; and the first step of that course was a
rapid journey to Audley Court. He packed his portmanteau, jumped into a
cab, and reached the railway station within an hour of his receipt of
Alicia's letter, which had come by the afternoon post.

The dim village lights flickered faintly through the growing dusk when
Robert reached Audley. He left his portmanteau with the station-master,
and walked at a leisurely pace through the quiet lanes that led away to
the still loneliness of the Court. The over-arching trees stretched
their leafless branches above his head, bare and weird in the dusky
light. A low moaning wind swept across the flat meadow land, and tossed
those rugged branches hither and thither against the dark gray sky. They
looked like the ghostly arms of shrunken and withered giants, beckoning
Robert to his uncle's house. They looked like threatening phantoms in
the chill winter twilight, gesticulating to him to hasten upon his
journey. The long avenue so bright and pleasant when the perfumed limes
scattered their light bloom upon the pathway, and the dog-rose leaves
floated on the summer air, was terribly bleak and desolate in the
cheerless interregnum that divides the homely joys of Christmas from the
pale blush of coming spring--a dead pause in the year, in which Nature
seems to lie in a tranced sleep, awaiting the wondrous signal for the
budding of the flower.

A mournful presentiment crept into Robert Audley's heart as he drew
nearer to his uncle's house. Every changing outline in the landscape was
familiar to him; every bend of the trees; every caprice of the
untrammeled branches; every undulation in the bare hawthorn hedge,
broken by dwarf horse-chestnuts, stunted willows, blackberry and hazel
bushes.

Sir Michael had been a second father to the young man, a generous and
noble friend, a grave and earnest adviser; and perhaps the strongest
sentiment of Robert's heart was his love for the gray-bearded baronet.
But the grateful affection was so much a part of himself, that it seldom
found an outlet in words, and a stranger would never have fathomed the
depth of feeling which lay, a deep and powerful current, beneath the
stagnant surface of the barrister's character.

"What would become of this place if my uncle were to die?" he thought,
and he drew nearer to the ivied archway, and the still water-pools,
coldly gray in the twilight. "Would other people live in the old house,
and sit under the low oak ceilings in the homely familiar rooms?"

That wonderful faculty of association, so interwoven with the inmost
fibers of even the hardest nature, filled the young man's breast with a
prophetic pain as he remembered that, however long or late, the day must
come on which the oaken shutters would be closed for awhile, and the
sunshine shut out of the house he loved. It was painful to him even to
remember this; as it must always be painful to think of the narrow lease
the greatest upon this earth can ever hold of its grandeurs. Is it so
wonderful that some wayfarers drop asleep under the hedges, scarcely
caring to toil onward on a journey that leads to no abiding habitation?
Is it wonderful that there have been quietists in the world ever since
Christ's religion was first preached upon earth. Is it strange that
there is a patient endurance and tranquil resignation, calm expectation
of that which is to come on the further shore of the dark flowing river?
Is it not rather to be wondered that anybody should ever care to be
great for greatness' sake; for any other reason than pure
conscientiousness; the simple fidelity of the servant who fears to lay
his talents by in a napkin, knowing that indifference is near akin to
dishonesty? If Robert Audley had lived in the time of Thomas a'Kempis,
he would very likely have built himself a narrow hermitage amid some
forest loneliness, and spent his life in tranquil imitation of the
reputed author of _The Imitation_. As it was, Figtree Court was a
pleasant hermitage in its way, and for breviaries and Books of Hours, I
am ashamed to say the young barrister substituted Paul de Kock and
Dumas, fils. But his sins were of so simply negative an order, that it
would have been very easy for him to have abandoned them for negative
virtues.

Only one solitary light was visible in the long irregular range of
windows facing the archway, as Robert passed under the gloomy shade of
the rustling ivy, restless in the chill moaning of the wind. He
recognized that lighted window as the large oriel in his uncle's room.
When last he had looked at the old house it had been gay with visitors,
every window glittering like a low star in the dusk; now, dark and
silent, it faced the winter's night like some dismal baronial
habitation, deep in a woodland solitude.

The man who opened the door to the unlooked-for visitor, brightened as
he recognized his master's nephew.

"Sir Michael will be cheered up a bit, sir, by the sight of you," he
said, as he ushered Robert Audley into the fire-lit library, which
seemed desolate by reason of the baronet's easy-chair standing empty on
the broad hearth-rug. "Shall I bring you some dinner here, sir, before
you go up-stairs?" the servant asked. "My lady and Miss Audley have
dined early during my master's illness, but I can bring you anything you
would please to take, sir."

"I'll take nothing until I have seen my uncle," Robert answered,
hurriedly; "that is to say, if I can see him at once. He is not too ill
to receive me, I suppose?" he added, anxiously.

"Oh, no, sir--not too ill; only a little low, sir. This way, if you
please."

He conducted Robert up the short flight of shallow oaken stairs to the
octagon chamber in which George Talboys had sat long five months before,
staring absently at my lady's portrait. The picture was finished now,
and hung in the post of honor opposite the window, amidst Claudes,
Poussins and Wouvermans, whose less brilliant hues were killed by the
vivid coloring of the modern artist. The bright face looked out of that
tangled glitter of golden hair, in which the Pre-Raphaelites delight,
with a mocking smile, as Robert paused for a moment to glance at the
well-remembered picture. Two or three moments afterward he had passed
through my lady's boudoir and dressing-room and stood upon the threshold
of Sir Michael's room. The baronet lay in a quiet sleep, his arm laying
outside the bed, and his strong hand clasped in his young wife's
delicate fingers. Alicia sat in a low chair beside the broad open
hearth, on which the huge logs burned fiercely in the frosty atmosphere.
The interior of this luxurious bedchamber might have made a striking
picture for an artist's pencil. The massive furniture, dark and somber,
yet broken up and relieved here and there by scraps of gilding, and
masses of glowing color; the elegance of every detail, in which wealth
was subservient to purity of taste; and last, but greatest in
importance, the graceful figures of the two women, and the noble form of
the old man would have formed a worthy study for any painter.

Lucy Audley, with her disordered hair in a pale haze of yellow gold
about her thoughtful face, the flowing lines of her soft muslin
dressing-gown falling in straight folds to her feet, and clasped at the
waist by a narrow circlet of agate links might have served as a model
for a mediaeval saint, in one of the tiny chapels hidden away in the
nooks and corners of a gray old cathedral, unchanged by Reformation or
Cromwell; and what saintly martyr of the Middle Ages could have borne a
holier aspect than the man whose gray beard lay upon the dark silken
coverlet of the stately bed?

Robert paused upon the threshold, fearful of awaking his uncle. The two
ladies had heard his step, cautious though he had been, and lifted their
heads to look at him. My lady's face, quietly watching the sick man, had
worn an anxious earnestness which made it only more beautiful; but the
same face recognizing Robert Audley, faded from its delicate brightness,
and looked scared and wan in the lamplight.

"Mr. Audley!" she cried, in a faint, tremulous voice.

"Hush!" whispered Alicia, with a warning gesture; "you will wake papa.
How good of you to come, Robert," she added, in the same whispered
tones, beckoning to her cousin to take an empty chair near the bed.

The young man seated himself in the indicated seat at the bottom of the
bed, and opposite to my lady, who sat close beside the pillows. He
looked long and earnestly at the face of the sleeper; still longer,
still more earnestly at the face of Lady Audley, which was slowly
recovering its natural hues.

"He has not been very ill, has he?" Robert asked, in the same key as
that in which Alicia had spoken.

My lady answered the question.

"Oh, no, not dangerously ill," she said, without taking her eyes from
her husband's face; "but still we have been anxious, very, very
anxious."

Robert never relaxed his scrutiny of that pale face.

"She shall look at me," he thought; "I will make her meet my eyes, and I
will read her as I have read her before. She shall know how useless her
artifices are with me."

He paused for a few minutes before he spoke again. The regular breathing
of the sleeper the ticking of a gold hunting-watch at the head of the
bed, and the crackling of the burning logs, were the only sounds that
broke the stillness.

"I have no doubt you have been anxious, Lady Audley," Robert said, after
a pause, fixing my lady's eyes as they wandered furtively to his face.
"There is no one to whom my uncle's life I can be of more value than to
you. Your happiness, your prosperity, your _safety_ depend alike upon
his existence."

The whisper in which he uttered these words was too low to reach the
other side of the room, where Alicia sat.

Lucy Audley's eyes met those of the speaker with some gleam of triumph
in their light.

"I know that," she said. "Those who strike me must strike through him."

She pointed to the sleeper as she spoke, still looking at Robert Audley.
She defied him with her blue eyes, their brightness intensified by the
triumph in their glance. She defied him with her quiet smile--a smile of
fatal beauty, full of lurking significance and mysterious meaning--the
smile which the artist had exaggerated in his portrait of Sir Michael's
wife.

Robert turned away from the lovely face, and shaded his eyes with his
hand; putting a barrier between my lady and himself; a screen which
baffled her penetration and provoked her curiosity. Was he still
watching her or was he thinking? and of what was he thinking?

Robert had been seated at the bedside for upward of an hour before his
uncle awoke. The baronet was delighted at his nephew's coming.

"It was very good of you to come to me, Bob," he said. "I have been
thinking of you a good deal since I have been ill. You and Lucy must be
good friends, you know, Bob; and you must learn to think of her as your
aunt, sir; though she is young and beautiful; and--and--you understand,
eh?"

Robert grasped his uncle's hand, but he looked down as he answered: "I
do understand you, sir," he said, quietly; "and I give you my word of
honor that I am steeled against my lady's fascinations. She knows that
as well as I do."

Lucy Audley made a little grimace with her pretty little lips. "Bah, you
silly Robert," she exclaimed; "you take everything _au serieux_. If I
thought you were rather too young for a nephew, it was only in my fear
of other people's foolish gossip; not from any--"

She hesitated for a moment, and escaped any conclusion to her sentence
by the timely intervention of Mr. Dawson, her late employer, who entered
the room upon his evening visit while she was speaking.

He felt the patient's pulse; asked two or three questions; pronounced
the baronet to be steadily improving; exchanged a few commonplace
remarks with Alicia and Lady Audley, and prepared to leave the room.
Robert rose and accompanied him to the door.

"I will light you to the staircase," he said, taking a candle from one
of the tables, and lighting it at the lamp.

"No, no, Mr. Audley, pray do not trouble yourself," expostulated the
surgeon; "I know my way very well indeed."

Robert insisted, and the two men left the room together. As they entered
the octagon ante-chamber the barrister paused and shut the door behind
him.

"Will you see that the door is closed, Mr. Dawson?" he said, pointing to
that which opened upon the staircase. "I wish to have a few moments'
private conversation with you."

"With much pleasure," replied the surgeon, complying with Robert's
request; "but if you are at all alarmed about your uncle, Mr. Audley, I
can set your mind at rest. There is no occasion for the least
uneasiness. Had his illness been at all serious I should have
telegraphed immediately for the family physician."

"I am sure that you would have done your duty, sir," answered Robert,
gravely. "But I am not going to speak of my uncle. I wish to ask you two
or three questions about another person."

"Indeed."

"The person who once lived in your family as Miss Lucy Graham; the
person who is now Lady Audley."

Mr. Dawson looked up with an expression of surprise upon his quiet face.

"Pardon me, Mr. Audley," he answered; "you can scarcely expect me to
answer any questions about your uncle's wife without Sir Michael's
express permission. I can understand no motive which can prompt you to
ask such questions--no worthy motive, at least." He looked severely at
the young man, as much as to say: "You have been falling in love with
your uncle's pretty wife, sir, and you want to make me a go-between in
some treacherous flirtation; but it won't do, sir, it won't do."

"I always respected the lady as Miss Graham, sir," he said, "and I
esteem her doubly as Lady Audley--not on account of her altered
position, but because she is the wife of one of the noblest men in
Christendom."

"You cannot respect my uncle or my uncle's honor more sincerely than I
do," answered Robert. "I have no unworthy motive for the questions I am
about to ask; and you must answer them."

"_Must!_" echoed Mr. Dawson, indignantly.

"Yes, you are my uncle's friend. It was at your house he met the woman
who is now his wife. She called herself an orphan, I believe, and
enlisted his pity as well as his admiration in her behalf. She told him
that she stood alone in the world, did she not?--without a friend or
relative. This was all I could ever learn of her antecedents."

"What reason have you to wish to know more?" asked the surgeon.

"A very terrible reason," answered Robert Audley. "For some months past
I have struggled with doubts and suspicions which have embittered my
life. They have grown stronger every day; and they will not be set at
rest by the commonplace sophistries and the shallow arguments with which
men try to deceive themselves rather than believe that which of all
things upon earth they most fear to believe. I do not think that the
woman who bears my uncle's name, is worthy to be his wife. I may wrong
her. Heaven grant that it is so. But if I do, the fatal chain of
circumstantial evidence never yet linked itself so closely about an
innocent person. I wish to set my doubts at rest or--or to confirm my
fears. There is but one manner in which I can do this. I must trace the
life of my uncle's wife backward, minutely and carefully, from this
night to a period of six years ago. This is the twenty-fourth of
February, fifty-nine. I want to know every record of her life between
to-night and the February of the year fifty-three."

"And your motive is a worthy one?"

"Yes, I wish to clear her from a very dreadful suspicion."

"Which exists only in your mind?"

"And in the mind of one other person."

"May I ask who that person is?"

"No, Mr. Dawson," answered Robert, decisively; "I cannot reveal anything
more than what I have already told you. I am a very irresolute,
vacillating man in most things. In this matter I am compelled to be
decided. I repeat once more that I _must_ know the history of Lucy
Graham's life. If you refuse to help me to the small extent in your
power, I will find others who will help me. Painful as it would become,
I will ask my uncle for the information which you would withhold, rather
than be baffled in the first step of my investigation."

Mr. Dawson was silent for some minutes.

"I cannot express how much you have astonished and alarmed me, Mr.
Audley." he said. "I can tell you so little about Lady Audley's
antecedents, that it would be mere obstinacy to withhold the small
amount of information I possess. I have always considered your uncle's
wife one of the most amiable of women. I _cannot_ bring myself to think
her otherwise. It would be an uprooting of one of the strongest
convictions of my life were I compelled to think her otherwise. You wish
to follow her life backward from the present hour to the year
fifty-three?"

"I do."

"She was married to your uncle last June twelvemonth, in the midsummer
of fifty-seven. She had lived in my house a little more than thirteen
months. She became a member of my household upon the fourteenth of May,
in the year fifty-six."

"And she came to you--"

"From a school at Brompton, a school kept by a lady of the name of
Vincent. It was Mrs. Vincent's strong recommendation that induced me to
receive Miss Graham into my family without any more special knowledge of
her antecedents."

"Did you see this Mrs. Vincent?"

"I did not. I advertised for a governess, and Miss Graham answered my
advertisement. In her letter she referred me to Mrs. Vincent, the
proprietress of a school in which she was then residing as junior
teacher. My time is always so fully occupied, that I was glad to escape
the necessity of a day's loss in going from Audley to London to inquire
about the young lady's qualifications. I looked for Mrs. Vincent's name
in the directory, found it, and concluded that she was a responsible
person, and wrote to her. Her reply was perfectly satisfactory;--Miss
Lucy Graham was assiduous and conscientious; as well as fully qualified
for the situation I offered. I accepted this reference, and I had no
cause to regret what may have been an indiscretion. And now, Mr. Audley,
I have told you all that I have the power to tell."

"Will you be so kind as to give me the address of this Mrs. Vincent?"
asked Robert, taking out his pocketbook.

"Certainly; she was then living at No. 9 Crescent Villas, Brompton."

"Ah, to be sure," muttered Mr. Audley, a recollection of last September
flashing suddenly back upon him as the surgeon spoke.

"Crescent Villas--yes, I have heard the address before from Lady Audley
herself. This Mrs. Vincent telegraphed to my uncle's wife early in last
September. She was ill--dying, I believe--and sent for my lady; but had
removed from her old house and was not to be found."

"Indeed! I never heard Lady Audley mention the circumstance."

"Perhaps not. It occurred while I was down here. Thank you, Mr. Dawson,
for the information you have so kindly and honestly given me. It takes
me back two and a-half years in the history of my lady's life; but I
have still a blank of three years to fill up before I can exonerate her
from my terrible suspicion. Good evening."

Robert shook hands with the surgeon and returned to his uncle's room. He
had been away about a quarter of an hour. Sir Michael had fallen asleep
once more, and my lady's loving hands had lowered the heavy curtains and
shaded the lamp by the bedside. Alicia and her father's wife were taking
tea in Lady Audley's boudoir, the room next to the antechamber in which
Robert and Mr. Dawson had been seated.

Lucy Audley looked up from her occupation among the fragile china cups
and watched Robert rather anxiously as he walked softly to his uncle's
room and back again to the boudoir. She looked very pretty and innocent,
seated behind the graceful group of delicate opal china and glittering
silver. Surely a pretty woman never looks prettier than when making tea.
The most feminine and most domestic of all occupations imparts a magic
harmony to her every movement, a witchery to her every glance. The
floating mists from the boiling liquid in which she infuses the soothing
herbs; whose secrets are known to her alone, envelope her in a cloud of
scented vapor, through which she seems a social fairy, weaving potent
spells with Gunpowder and Bohea. At the tea-table she reigns omnipotent,
unapproachable. What do men know of the mysterious beverage? Read how
poor Hazlitt made his tea, and shudder at the dreadful barbarism. How
clumsily the wretched creatures attempt to assist the witch president of
the tea-tray; how hopelessly they hold the kettle, how continually they
imperil the frail cups and saucers, or the taper hands of the priestess.
To do away with the tea-table is to rob woman of her legitimate empire.
To send a couple of hulking men about among your visitors, distributing
a mixture made in the housekeeper's room, is to reduce the most social
and friendly of ceremonies to a formal giving out of rations. Better the
pretty influence of the tea cups and saucers gracefully wielded in a
woman's hand than all the inappropriate power snatched at the point of
the pen from the unwilling sterner sex. Imagine all the women of England
elevated to the high level of masculine intellectuality, superior to
crinoline; above pearl powder and Mrs. Rachael Levison; above taking the
pains to be pretty; above tea-tables and that cruelly scandalous and
rather satirical gossip which even strong men delight in; and what a
drear, utilitarian, ugly life the sterner sex must lead.

My lady was by no means strong-minded. The starry diamonds upon her
white fingers flashed hither and thither among the tea-things, and she
bent her pretty head over the marvelous Indian tea-caddy of sandal-wood
and silver, with as much earnestness as if life held no higher purpose
than the infusion of Bohea.

"You'll take a cup of tea with us, Mr. Audley?" she asked, pausing with
the teapot in her hand to look up at Robert, who was standing near the
door.

"If you please."

"But you have not dined, perhaps? Shall I ring and tell them to bring
you something a little more substantial than biscuits and transparent
bread and butter?"

"No, thank you, Lady Audley. I took some lunch before I left town. I'll
trouble you for nothing but a cup of tea."

He seated himself at the little table and looked across it at his Cousin
Alicia, who sat with a book in her lap, and had the air of being very
much absorbed by its pages. The bright brunette complexion had lost its
glowing crimson, and the animation of the young lady's manner was
suppressed--on account of her father's illness, no doubt, Robert
thought.

"Alicia, my dear," the barrister said, after a very leisurely
contemplation of his cousin, "you're not looking well."

Miss Audley shrugged her shoulders, but did not condescend to lift her
eyes from her book.

"Perhaps not," she answered, contemptuously. "What does it matter? I'm
growing a philosopher of your school, Robert Audley. What does it
matter? Who cares whether I am well or ill?"

"What a spitfire she is," thought the barrister. He always knew his
cousin was angry with him when she addressed him as "Robert Audley."

"You needn't pitch into a fellow because he asks you a civil question,
Alicia," he said, reproachfully. "As to nobody caring about your health,
that's nonsense. _I_ care." Miss Audley looked up with a bright smile.
"Sir Harry Towers cares." Miss Audley returned to her book with a frown.

"What are you reading there, Alicia?" Robert asked, after a pause,
during which he had sat thoughtfully stirring his tea.

"_Changes and Chances_."

"A novel?"

"Yes."

"Who is it by?"

"The author of _Follies and Faults_," answered Alicia, still pursuing
her study of the romance upon her lap.

"Is it interesting?"

Miss Audley pursed up her mouth and shrugged her shoulders.

"Not particularly," she said.

"Then I think you might have better manners than to read it while your
first cousin is sitting opposite you," observed Mr. Audley, with some
gravity, "especially as he has only come to pay you a flying visit, and
will be off to-morrow morning."

"To-morrow morning!" exclaimed my lady, looking up suddenly.

Though the look of joy upon Lady Audley's face was as brief as a flash
of lightning on a summer sky, it was not unperceived by Robert.

"Yes," he said; "I shall be obliged to run up to London to-morrow on
business, but I shall return the next day, if you will allow me, Lady
Audley, and stay here till my uncle recovers."

"But you are not seriously alarmed about him, are you?" asked my lady,
anxiously.

"You do not think him very ill?"

"No," answered Robert. "Thank Heaven, I think there is not the slightest
cause for apprehension."

My lady sat silent for a few moments, looking at the empty teacups with
a prettily thoughtful face--a face grave with the innocent seriousness
of a musing child.

"But you were closeted such a long time with Mr. Dawson, just now," she
said, after this brief pause. "I was quite alarmed at the length of your
conversation. Were you talking of Sir Michael all the time?"

"No; not all the time?"

My lady looked down at the teacups once more.

"Why, what could you find to say to Mr. Dawson, or he to say to you?"
she asked, after another pause. "You are almost strangers to each
other."

"Suppose Mr. Dawson wished to consult me about some law business."

"Was it that?" cried Lady Audley, eagerly.

"It would be rather unprofessional to tell you if it were so, my lady,"
answered Robert, gravely.

My lady bit her lip, and relapsed into silence. Alicia threw down her
book, and watched her cousin's preoccupied face. He talked to her now
and then for a few minutes, but it was evidently an effort to him to
arouse himself from his revery.

"Upon my word, Robert Audley, you are a very agreeable companion,"
exclaimed Alicia at length, her rather limited stock of patience quite
exhausted by two or three of these abortive attempts at conversation.
"Perhaps the next time you come to the Court you will be good enough to
bring your _mind_ with you. By your present inanimate appearance, I
should imagine that you had left your intellect, such as it is,
somewhere in the Temple. You were never one of the liveliest of people,
but latterly you have really grown almost unendurable. I suppose you are
in love, Mr. Audley, and are thinking of the honored object of your
affections."

He was thinking of Clara Talboys' uplifted face, sublime in its
unutterable grief; of her impassioned words still ringing in his ears as
clearly as when they were first spoken. Again he saw her looking at him
with her bright brown eyes. Again he heard that solemn question: "Shall
you or I find my brother's murderer?" And he was in Essex; in the little
village from which he firmly believed George Talboys had never departed.
He was on the spot at which all record of his friend's life ended as
suddenly as a story ends when the reader shuts the book. And could he
withdraw now from the investigation in which he found himself involved?
Could he stop now? For any consideration? No; a thousand times no! Not
with the image of that grief-stricken face imprinted on his mind. Not
with the accents of that earnest appeal ringing on his ear.




CHAPTER XXVI.

SO FAR AND NO FARTHER.


Robert left Audley the next morning by an early train, and reached
Shoreditch a little after nine o'clock. He did not return to his
chambers, but called a cab and drove straight to Crescent Villas, West
Brompton. He knew that he should fail in finding the lady he went to
seek at this address, as his uncle had failed a few months before, but
he thought it possible to obtain some clew to the schoolmistress' new
residence, in spite of Sir Michael's ill-success.

"Mrs. Vincent was in a dying state, according to the telegraphic
message," Robert thought. "If I do find her, I shall at least succeed in
discovering whether that message was genuine."

He found Crescent Villas after some difficulty. The houses were large,
but they lay half imbedded among the chaos of brick and rising mortar
around them. New terraces, new streets, new squares led away into
hopeless masses of stone and plaster on every side. The roads were
sticky with damp clay, which clogged the wheels of the cab and buried
the fetlocks of the horse. The desolations--that awful aspect of
incompleteness and discomfort which pervades a new and unfinished
neighborhood--had set its dismal seal upon the surrounding streets which
had arisen about and intrenched Crescent Villas; and Robert wasted forty
minutes by his watch, and an hour and a quarter by the cabman's
reckoning, in driving up and down uninhabited streets and terraces,
trying to find the Villase; whose chimney-tops were frowning down upon
him black and venerable, amid groves of virgin plaster, undimmed by time
or smoke.

But having at last succeeded in reaching his destination, Mr. Audley
alighted from the cab, directed the driver to wait for him at a certain
corner, and set out upon his voyage of discovery.

"If I were a distinguished Q.C., I could not do this sort of thing," he
thought; "my time would be worth a guinea or so a minute, and I should
be retained in the great case of Hoggs vs. Boggs, going forward this
very day before a special jury at Westminster Hall. As it is, I can
afford to be patient."

He inquired for Mrs. Vincent at the number which Mr. Dawson had given
him. The maid who opened the door had never heard that lady's name; but
after going to inquire of her mistress, she returned to tell Robert that
Mrs. Vincent had lived there, but that she had left two months before
the present occupants had entered the house, "and missus has been here
fifteen months," the girl added emphatically.

"But you cannot tell where she went on leaving here?" Robert asked,
despondingly.

"No, sir; missus says she believes the lady failed, and that she left
sudden like, and didn't want her address to be known in the
neighborhood."

Mr. Audley felt himself at a standstill once more. If Mrs. Vincent had
left the place in debt, she had no doubt scrupulously concealed her
whereabouts. There was little hope, then, of learning her address from
the tradespeople; and yet, on the other hand, it was just possible that
some of her sharpest creditors might have made it their business to
discover the defaulter's retreat.

He looked about him for the nearest shops, and found a baker's, a
stationer's, and a fruiterer's a few paces from the Crescent. Three
empty-looking, pretentious shops, with plate-glass windows, and a
hopeless air of gentility.

He stopped at the baker's, who called himself a pastrycook and
confectioner, and exhibited some specimens of petrified sponge-cake in
glass bottles, and some highly-glazed tarts, covered with green gauze.

"She _must_ have bought bread," Robert thought, as he deliberated before
the baker's shop; "and she is likely to have bought it at the handiest
place. I'll try the baker."

The baker was standing behind his counter, disputing the items of a bill
with a shabby-genteel young woman. He did not trouble himself to attend
to Robert Audley until he had settled the dispute, but he looked up as
he was receipting the bill, and asked the barrister what he pleased to
want.

"Can you tell me the address of a Mrs. Vincent, who lived at No. 9
Crescent Villas a year and a half ago?" Mr. Audley inquired, mildly.

"No, I can't," answered the baker, growing very red in the face, and
speaking in an unnecessarily loud voice; "and what's more, I wish I
could. That lady owes me upward of eleven pound for bread, and it's
rather more than I can afford to lose. If anybody can tell me where she
lives, I shall be much obliged to 'em for so doing."

Robert Audley shrugged his shoulders and wished the man good-morning. He
felt that his discovery of the lady's whereabouts would involve more
trouble than he had expected. He might have looked for Mrs. Vincent's
name in the Post-Office directory, but he thought it scarcely likely
that a lady who was on such uncomfortable terms with her creditors,
would afford them so easy a means of ascertaining her residence.

"If the baker can't find her, how should I find her?" he thought,
despairingly. "If a resolute, sanguine, active and energetic creature,
such as the baker, fail to achieve this business, how can a lymphatic
wretch like me hope to accomplish it? Where the baker has been defeated,
what preposterous folly it would be for me to try to succeed."

Mr. Audley abandoned himself to these gloomy reflections as he walked
slowly back toward the corner at which he had left the cab. About
half-way between the baker's shop and this corner he was arrested by
hearing a woman's step close at his side, and a woman's voice asking him
to stop. He turned and found himself face to face with the
shabbily-dressed woman whom he had left settling her account with the
baker.

"Eh, what?" he asked, vaguely. "Can I do anything for you, ma'am? Does
Mrs. Vincent owe _you_ money, too?"

"Yes, sir," the woman answered, with a semi-genteel manner which
corresponded with the shabby gentility of her dress. "Mrs. Vincent is in
my debt; but it isn't that, sir. I--I want to know, please, what your
business may be with her--because--because--"

"You can give me her address if you choose, ma'am. That's what you mean
to say, isn't it?"

The woman hesitated a little, looking rather suspiciously at Robert.

"You're not connected with--with the tally business, are you, sir?" she
asked, after considering Mr. Audley's personal appearance for a few
moments.

"The _what_, ma'am?" asked the young barrister, staring aghast at his
questioner.

"I'm sure I beg your pardon, sir," exclaimed the little woman, seeing
that she had made some awful mistake. "I thought you might have been,
you know. Some of the gentlemen who collect for the tally shops do dress
so very handsome; and I know Mrs. Vincent owes a good deal of money."

Robert Audley laid his hand upon the speaker's arm.

"My dear madam," he said, "I want to know nothing of Mrs. Vincent's
affairs. So far from being concerned in what you call _the tally
business_, I have not the remotest idea what you mean by that
expression. You may mean a political conspiracy; you may mean some new
species of taxes. Mrs. Vincent does not owe _me_ any money, however
badly she may stand with that awful-looking baker. I never saw her in my
life; but I wish to see her to-day for the simple purpose of asking her
a few very plain questions about a young lady who once resided in her
house. If you know where Mrs. Vincent lives and will give me her
address, you will be doing me a great favor."

He took out his card-case and handed a card to the woman, who examined
the slip of pasteboard anxiously before she spoke again.

"I'm sure you look and speak like a gentleman, sir," she said, after a
brief pause, "and I hope you will excuse me if I've seemed mistrustful
like; but poor Mrs. Vincent has had dreadful difficulties, and I'm the
only person hereabouts that she's trusted with her addresses. I'm a
dressmaker, sir, and I've worked for her for upward of six years, and
though she doesn't pay me regular, you know, sir, she gives me a little
money on account now and then, and I get on as well as I can. I may tell
you where she lives, then, sir? You haven't deceived me, have you?"

"On my honor, no."

"Well, then sir," said the dressmaker, dropping her voice as if she
thought the pavement beneath her feet, or the iron railings before the
houses by her side, might have ears to hear her, "it's Acacia Cottage,
Peckham Grove. I took a dress there yesterday for Mrs. Vincent."

"Thank you," said Robert, writing the address in his pocketbook. "I am
very much obliged to you, and you may rely upon it, Mrs. Vincent shall
not suffer any inconvenience through me."

He lifted his hat, bowed to the little dressmaker, and turned back to
the cab.

"I have beaten the baker, at any rate," he thought. "Now for the second
stage, traveling backward, in my lady's life."

The drive from Brompton to the Peckham Road was a very long one, and
between Crescent Villas and Acacia Cottage, Robert Audley had ample
leisure for reflection. He thought of his uncle lying weak and ill in
the oak-room at Audley Court. He thought of the beautiful blue eyes
watching Sir Michael's slumbers; the soft, white hands tending on his
waking moments; the low musical voice soothing his loneliness, cheering
and consoling his declining years. What a pleasant picture it might have
been, had he been able to look upon it ignorantly, seeing no more than
others saw, looking no further than a stranger could look. But with the
black cloud which he saw brooding over it, what an arch mockery, what a
diabolical delusion it seemed.

Peckham Grove--pleasant enough in the summer-time--has rather a dismal
aspect upon a dull February day, when the trees are bare and leafless,
and the little gardens desolate. Acacia Cottage bore small token of the
fitness of its nomenclature, and faced the road with its stuccoed walls
sheltered only by a couple of attenuated poplars. But it announced that
it was Acacia Cottage by means of a small brass plate upon one of the
gate-posts, which was sufficient indication for the sharp-sighted
cabman, who dropped Mr. Audley upon the pavement before the little gate.

Acacia Cottage was much lower in the social scale than Crescent Villas,
and the small maid-servant who came to the low wooden gate and parleyed
with Mr. Audley, was evidently well used to the encounter of relentless
creditors across the same feeble barricade.

She murmured the familiar domestic fiction of the uncertainty regarding
her mistress's whereabouts; and told Robert that if he would please to
state his name and business, she would go and see if Mrs. Vincent was at
home.

Mr. Audley produced a card, and wrote in pencil under his own name: "a
connection of the late Miss Graham."

He directed the small servant to carry his card to her mistress, and
quietly awaited the result.

The servant returned in about five minutes with the key of the gate. Her
mistress was at home, she told Robert as she admitted him, and would be
happy to see the gentleman.

The square parlor into which Robert was ushered bore in every scrap of
ornament, in every article of furniture, the unmistakable stamp of that
species of poverty which is most comfortless because it is never
stationary. The mechanic who furnishes his tiny sitting-room with
half-a-dozen cane chairs, a Pembroke table, a Dutch clock, a tiny
looking-glass, a crockery shepherd and shepherdess, and a set of
gaudily-japanned iron tea-trays, makes the most of his limited
possessions, and generally contrives to get some degree of comfort out
of them; but the lady who loses the handsome furniture of the house she
is compelled to abandon and encamps in some smaller habitation with the
shabby remainder--bought in by some merciful friend at the sale of her
effects--carries with her an aspect of genteel desolation and tawdry
misery not easily to be paralleled in wretchedness by any other phase
which poverty can assume.

The room which Robert Audley surveyed was furnished with the shabbier
scraps snatched from the ruin which had overtaken the imprudent
schoolmistress in Crescent Villas. A cottage piano, a chiffonier, six
sizes too large for the room, and dismally gorgeous in gilded moldings
that were chipped and broken; a slim-legged card-table, placed in the
post of honor, formed the principal pieces of furniture. A threadbare
patch of Brussels carpet covered the center of the room, and formed an
oasis of roses and lilies upon a desert of shabby green drugget. Knitted
curtains shaded the windows, in which hung wire baskets of
horrible-looking plants of the cactus species, that grew downward, like
some demented class of vegetation, whose prickly and spider-like members
had a fancy for standing on their heads.

The green-baize covered card-table was adorned with gaudily-bound
annuals or books of beauty, placed at right angles; but Robert Audley
did not avail himself of these literary distractions. He seated himself
upon one of the rickety chairs, and waited patiently for the advent of
the schoolmistress. He could hear the hum of half-a-dozen voices in a
room near him, and the jingling harmonies of a set of variations in _Deh
Conte_, upon a piano, whose every wire was evidently in the last stage
of attenuation.

He had waited for about a quarter of an hour, when the door was opened,
and a lady, very much dressed, and with the setting sunlight of faded
beauty upon her face, entered the room.

"Mr. Audley, I presume," she said, motioning to Robert to reseat
himself, and placing herself in an easy-chair opposite to him. "You will
pardon me, I hope, for detaining you so long; my duties--"

"It is I who should apologize for intruding upon you," Robert answered,
politely; "but my motive for calling upon you is a very serious one, and
must plead my excuse. You remember the lady whose name I wrote upon my
card?"

"Perfectly."

"May I ask how much you know of that lady's history since her departure
from your house?"

"Very little. In point of fact, scarcely anything at all. Miss Graham, I
believe, obtained a situation in the family of a surgeon resident in
Essex. Indeed, it was I who recommended her to that gentleman. I have
never heard from her since she left me."

"But you have communicated with her?" Robert asked, eagerly.

"No, indeed."

Mr. Audley was silent for a few moments, the shadow of gloomy thoughts
gathering darkly on his face.

"May I ask if you sent a telegraphic dispatch to Miss Graham early in
last September, stating that you were dangerously ill, and that you
wished to see her?"

Mrs. Vincent smiled at her visitor's question.

"I had no occasion to send such a message," she said; "I have never been
seriously ill in my life."

Robert Audley paused before he asked any further questions, and scrawled
a few penciled words in his note-book.

"If I ask you a few straightforward questions about Miss Lucy Graham,
madam," he said. "Will you do me the favor to answer them without asking
my motive in making such inquiries?"

"Most certainly," replied Mrs. Vincent. "I know nothing to Miss Graham's
disadvantage, and have no justification for making a mystery of the
little I do know."

"Then will you tell me at what date the young lady first came to you?"

Mrs. Vincent smiled and shook her head. She had a pretty smile--the
frank smile of a woman who had been admired, and who has too long felt
the certainty of being able to please, to be utterly subjugated by any
worldly misfortune.

"It's not the least use to ask me, Mr. Audley," she said. "I'm the most
careless creature in the world; I never did, and never could remember
dates, though I do all in my power to impress upon my girls how
important it is for their future welfare that they should know when
William the Conqueror began to reign, and all that kind of thing. But I
haven't the remotest idea when Miss Graham came to me, although I know
it was ages ago, for it was the very summer I had my peach-colored silk.
But we must consult Tonks--Tonks is sure to be right."

Robert Audley wondered who or what Tonks could be; a diary, perhaps, or
a memorandum-book--some obscure rival of Letsome.

Mrs. Vincent rung the bell, which was answered by the maid-servant who
had admitted Robert.

"Ask Miss Tonks to come to me," she said. "I want to see her
particularly."

In less than five minutes Miss Tonks made her appearance. She was wintry
and rather frost-bitten in aspect, and seemed to bring cold air in the
scanty folds of her somber merino dress. She was no age in particular,
and looked as if she had never been younger, and would never grow older,
but would remain forever working backward and forward in her narrow
groove, like some self-feeding machine for the instruction of young
ladies.

"Tonks, my dear," said Mrs. Vincent, without ceremony, "this gentleman
is a relative of Miss Graham's. Do you remember how long it is since she
came to us at Crescent Villas?"

"She came in August, 1854," answered Miss Tonks; "I think it was the
eighteenth of August, but I'm not quite sure that it wasn't the
seventeenth. I know it was on a Tuesday."

"Thank you, Tonks; you are a most invaluable darling," exclaimed Mrs.
Vincent, with her sweetest smile. It was, perhaps, because of the
invaluable nature of Miss Tonks' services that she had received no
remuneration whatever from her employer for the last three or four
years. Mrs. Vincent might have hesitated to pay from very contempt for
the pitiful nature of the stipend as compared with the merits of the
teacher.

"Is there anything else that Tonks or I can tell you, Mr. Audley?" asked
the schoolmistress. "Tonks has a far better memory than I have."

"Can you tell me where Miss Graham came from when she entered your
household?" Robert inquired.

"Not very precisely," answered Mrs. Vincent. "I have a vague notion that
Miss Graham said something about coming from the seaside, but she didn't
say where, or if she did I have forgotten it. Tonks, did Miss Graham
tell you where she came from?"

"Oh, no!" replied Miss Tonks, shaking her grim little head
significantly. "Miss Graham told me nothing; she was too clever for
that. She knows how to keep her own secrets, in spite of her innocent
ways and her curly hair," Miss Tonks added, spitefully.

"You think she had secrets?" Robert asked, rather eagerly.

"I know she had," replied Miss Tonks, with frosty decision; "all manner
of secrets. I wouldn't have engaged such a person as junior teacher in a
respectable school, without so much as one word of recommendation from
any living creature."

"You had no reference, then, from Miss Graham?" asked Robert, addressing
Mrs. Vincent.

"No," the lady answered, with some little embarrassment; "I waived that.
Miss Graham waived the question of salary; I could not do less than
waive the question of reference. She quarreled with her papa, she told
me, and she wanted to find a home away from all the people she had ever
known. She wished to keep herself quite separate from these people. She
had endured so much, she said, young as she was, and she wanted to
escape from her troubles. How could I press her for a reference under
these circumstances, especially when I saw that she was a perfect lady.
You know that Lucy Graham was a perfect lady, Tonks, and it is very
unkind for you to say such cruel things about my taking her without a
reference."

"When people make favorites, they are apt to be deceived in them," Miss
Tonks answered, with icy sententiousness, and with no very perceptible
relevance to the point in discussion.

"I never made her a favorite, you jealous Tonks," Mrs. Vincent answered,
reproachfully. "I never said she was as useful as you, dear. You know I
never did."

"Oh, no!" replied Miss Tonks, with a chilling accent, "you never said
she was useful. She was only ornamental; a person to be shown off to
visitors, and to play fantasias on the drawing-room piano."

"Then you can give me no clew to Miss Graham's previous history?" Robert
asked, looking from the schoolmistress to her teacher. He saw very
clearly that Miss Tonks bore an envious grudge against Lucy Graham--a
grudge which even the lapse of time had not healed.

"If this woman knows anything to my lady's detriment, she will tell it,"
he thought. "She will tell it only too willingly."

But Miss Tonks appeared to know nothing whatever; except that Miss
Graham had sometimes declared herself an ill-used creature, deceived by
the baseness of mankind, and the victim of unmerited sufferings, in the
way of poverty and deprivation. Beyond this, Miss Tonks could tell
nothing; and although she made the most of what she did know, Robert
soon sounded the depth of her small stock of information.

"I have only one more question to ask," he said at last. "It is this:
Did Miss Graham leave any books or knick-knacks, or any other kind of
property whatever, behind her, when she left your establishment?"

"Not to my knowledge," Mrs. Vincent replied.

"Yes," cried Miss Tonks, sharply. "She did leave something. She left a
box. It's up-stairs in my room. I've got an old bonnet in it. Would you
like to see the box?" she asked, addressing Robert.

"If you will be so good as to allow me," he answered, "I should very
much like to see it."

"I'll fetch it down," said Miss Tonks. "It's not very big."

She ran out of the room before Mr. Audley had time to utter any polite
remonstrance.

"How pitiless these women are to each other," he thought, while the
teacher was absent. "This one knows intuitively that there is some
danger to the other lurking beneath my questions. She sniffs the coming
trouble to her fellow female creature, and rejoices in it, and would
take any pains to help me. What a world it is, and how these women take
life out of her hands. Helen Maldon, Lady Audley, Clara Talboys, and now
Miss Tonks--all womankind from beginning to end."

Miss Tonks re-entered while the young barrister was meditating upon the
infamy of her sex. She carried a dilapidated paper-covered bonnet-box,
which she submitted to Robert's inspection.

Mr. Audley knelt down to examine the scraps of railway labels and
addresses which were pasted here and there upon the box. It had been
battered upon a great many different lines of railway, and had evidently
traveled considerably. Many of the labels had been torn off, but
fragments of some of them remained, and upon one yellow scrap of paper
Robert read the letters, TURI.

"The box has been to Italy," he thought. "Those are the first four
letters of the word Turin, and the label is a foreign one."

The only direction which had not been either defaced or torn away was
the last, which bore the name of Miss Graham, passenger to London.
Looking very closely at this label, Mr. Audley discovered that it had
been pasted over another.

"Will you be so good as to let me have a little water and a piece of
sponge?" he said. "I want to get off this upper label. Believe me that I
am justified in what I am doing."

Miss Tonks ran out of the room and returned immediately with a basin of
water and a sponge.

"Shall I take off the label?" she asked.

"No, thank you," Robert answered, coldly. "I can do it very well
myself."

He damped the upper label several times before he could loosen the edges
of the paper; but after two or three careful attempts the moistened
surface peeled off, without injury to the underneath address.

Miss Tonks could not contrive to read this address across Robert's
shoulder, though she exhibited considerable dexterity in her endeavors
to accomplish that object.

Mr. Audley repeated his operations upon the lower label, which he
removed from the box, and placed very carefully between two blank leaves
of his pocket-book.

"I need intrude upon you no longer, ladies," he said, when he had done
this. "I am extremely obliged to you for having afforded me all the
information in your power. I wish you good-morning."

Mrs. Vincent smiled and bowed, murmuring some complacent conventionality
about the delight she had felt in Mr. Audley's visit. Miss Tonks, more
observant, stared at the white change, which had come over the young
man's face since he had removed the upper label from the box.

Robert walked slowly away from Acacia Cottage. "If that which I have
found to-day is no evidence for a jury," he thought, "it is surely
enough to convince my uncle that he has married a designing and infamous
woman."




CHAPTER XXVII.

BEGINNING AT THE OTHER END.


Robert Audley walked slowly through the leafless grove, under the bare
and shadowless trees in the gray February atmosphere, thinking as he
went of the discovery he had just made.

"I have that in my pocket-book," he pondered, "which forms the
connecting link between the woman whose death George Talboys read of in
the _Times_ newspaper and the woman who rules in my uncle's house. The
history of Lucy Graham ends abruptly on the threshold of Mrs. Vincent's
school. She entered that establishment in August, 1854. The
schoolmistress and her assistant can tell me this but they cannot tell
me whence she came. They cannot give me one clew to the secrets of her
life from the day of her birth until the day she entered that house. I
can go no further in this backward investigation of my lady's
antecedents. What am I to do, then, if I mean to keep my promise to
Clara Talboys?"

He walked on for a few paces revolving this question in his mind, with a
darker shadow than the shadows of the gathering winter twilight on his
face, and a heavy oppression of mingled sorrow and dread weighing down
his heart.

"My duty is clear enough," he thought--"not the less clear because it
leads me step by step, carrying ruin and desolation with me, to the home
I love. I must begin at the other end--I must begin at the other end,
and discover the history of Helen Talboys from the hour of George's
departure until the day of the funeral in the churchyard at Ventnor."

Mr. Audley hailed a passing hansom, and drove back to his chambers.

He reached Figtree Court in time to write a few lines to Miss Talboys,
and to post his letter at St. Martin's-le-Grand off before six o'clock.

"It will save me a day," he thought, as he drove to the General Post
Office with this brief epistle.

He had written to Clara Talboys to inquire the name of the little
seaport town in which George had met Captain Maldon and his daughter:
for in spite of the intimacy between the two young men, Robert Audley
knew very few particulars of his friend's brief married life.

From the hour in which George Talboys had read the announcement of his
wife's death in the columns of the _Times_, he had avoided all mention
of the tender history which had been so cruelly broken, the familiar
record which had been so darkly blotted out.

There was so much that was painful in that brief story! There was such
bitter self-reproach involved in the recollection of that desertion
which must have seemed so cruel to her who waited and watched at home!
Robert Audley comprehended this, and he did not wonder at his friend's
silence. The sorrowful story had been tacitly avoided by both, and
Robert was as ignorant of the unhappy history of this one year in his
schoolfellow's life as if they had never lived together in friendly
companionship in those snug Temple chambers.

The letter, written to Miss Talboys by her brother George, within a
month of his marriage, was dated Harrowgate. It was at Harrowgate,
therefore, Robert concluded, the young couple spent their honeymoon.

Robert Audley had requested Clara Talboys to telegraph an answer to his
question, in order to avoid the loss of a day in the accomplishment of
the investigation he had promised to perform.

The telegraphic answer reached Figtree Court before twelve o'clock the
next day.

The name of the seaport town was Wildernsea, Yorkshire.

Within an hour of the receipt of this message, Mr. Audley arrived at the
King's-cross station, and took his ticket for Wildernsea by an express
train that started at a quarter before two.

The shrieking engine bore him on the dreary northward journey, whirling
him over desert wastes of flat meadow-land and bare cornfields, faintly
tinted with fresh sprouting green. This northern road was strange and
unfamiliar to the young barrister, and the wide expanse of the wintry
landscape chilled him by its aspect of bare loneliness. The knowledge of
the purpose of his journey blighted every object upon which his absent
glances fixed themselves for a moment, only to wander wearily away; only
to turn inward upon that far darker picture always presenting itself to
his anxious mind.

It was dark when the train reached the Hull terminus, but Mr. Audley's
journey was not ended. Amidst a crowd of porters and scattered heaps of
that incongruous and heterogeneous luggage with which travelers incumber
themselves, he was led, bewildered and half asleep, to another train
which was to convey him along the branch line that swept past
Wildernsea, and skirted the border of the German Ocean.

Half an hour after leaving Hull, Robert felt the briny freshness of the
sea upon the breeze that blew in at the open window of the carriage, and
an hour afterward the train stopped at a melancholy station, built amid
a sandy desert, and inhabited by two or three gloomy officials, one of
whom rung a terrific peal upon a harshly clanging bell as the train
approached.

Mr. Audley was the only passenger who alighted at the dismal station.
The train swept on to the gayer scenes before the barrister had time to
collect his senses, or to pick up the portmanteau which had been
discovered with some difficulty amid a black cavern of baggage only
illuminated by one lantern.

"I wonder whether settlers in the backwoods of America feel as solitary
and strange as I feel to-night?" he thought, as he stared hopelessly
about him in the darkness.

He called to one of the officials, and pointed to his portmanteau.

"Will you carry that to the nearest hotel for me?" he asked--"that is to
say, if I can get a good bed there."

The man laughed as he shouldered the portmanteau.

"You can get thirty beds, I dare say, sir, if you wanted 'em," he said.
"We ain't over busy at Wildernsea at this time o' year. This way, sir."

The porter opened a wooden door in the station wall, and Robert Audley
found himself upon a wide bowling-green of smooth grass, which
surrounded a huge, square building, that loomed darkly on him through
the winter's night, its black solidity only relieved by two lighted
windows, far apart from each other, and glimmering redly like beacons on
the darkness.

"This is the Victoria Hotel, sir," said the porter. "You wouldn't
believe the crowds of company we have down here in the summer."

In the face of the bare grass-plat, the tenantless wooden alcoves, and
the dark windows of the hotel, it was indeed rather difficult to imagine
that the place was ever gay with merry people taking pleasure in the
bright summer weather; but Robert Audley declared himself willing to
believe anything the porter pleased to tell him, and followed his guide
meekly to a little door at the side of the big hotel, which led into a
comfortable bar, where the humbler classes of summer visitors were
accommodated with such refreshments as they pleased to pay for, without
running the gantlet of the prim, white-waistcoated waiters on guard at
the principal entrance.

But there were very few attendants retained at the hotel in the bleak
February season, and it was the landlord himself who ushered Robert into
a dreary wilderness of polished mahogany tables and horsehair cushioned
chairs, which he called the coffee-room.

Mr. Audley seated himself close to the wide steel fender, and stretched
his cramped legs upon the hearth-rug, while the landlord drove the poker
into the vast pile of coal, and sent a ruddy blaze roaring upward
through the chimney.

"If you would prefer a private room, sir--" the man began.

"No, thank you," said Robert, indifferently; "this room seems quite
private enough just now. If you will order me a mutton chop and a pint
of sherry, I shall be obliged."

"Certainly, sir."

"And I shall be still more obliged if you will favor me with a few
minutes' conversation before you do so."

"With very great pleasure, sir," the landlord answered, good-naturedly.
"We see so very little company at this season of the year, that we are
only too glad to oblige those gentlemen who do visit us. Any information
which I can afford you respecting the neighborhood of Wildernsea and its
attractions," added the landlord, unconsciously quoting a small
hand-book of the watering-place which he sold in the bar, "I shall be
most happy to--"

"But I don't want to know anything about the neighborhood of
Wildernsea," interrupted Robert, with a feeble protest against the
landlord's volubility. "I want to ask you a few questions about some
people who once lived here."

The landlord bowed and smiled, with an air which implied his readiness
to recite the biographies of all the inhabitants of the little seaport,
if required by Mr. Audley to do so.

"How many years have you lived here?" Robert asked, taking his
memorandum book from his pocket. "Will it annoy you if I make notes of
your replies to my questions?"

"Not at all, sir," replied the landlord, with a pompous enjoyment of the
air of solemnity and importance which pervaded this business. "Any
information which I can afford that is likely to be of ultimate value--"

"Yes, thank you," Robert murmured, interrupting the flow of words. "You
have lived here--"

"Six years, sir."

"Since the year fifty-three?"

"Since November, in the year fifty-two, sir. I was in business at Hull
prior to that time. This house was only completed in the October before
I entered it."

"Do you remember a lieutenant in the navy, on half-pay, I believe, at
that time, called Maldon?"

"Captain Maldon, sir?"

"Yes, commonly called Captain Maldon. I see you do remember him."

"Yes, sir. Captain Maldon was one of our best customers. He used to
spend his evenings in this very room, though the walls were damp at that
time, and we weren't able to paper the place for nearly a twelvemonth
afterward. His daughter married a young officer that came here with his
regiment, at Christmas time in fifty-two. They were married here, sir,
and they traveled on the Continent for six months, and came back here
again. But the gentleman ran away to Australia, and left the lady, a
week or two after her baby was born. The business made quite a sensation
in Wildernsea, sir, and Mrs.--Mrs.--I forgot the name--"

"Mrs. Talboys," suggested Robert.

"To be sure, sir, Mrs. Talboys. Mrs. Talboys was very much pitied by the
Wildernsea folks, sir, I was going to say, for she was very pretty, and
had such nice winning ways that she was a favorite with everybody who
knew her."

"Can you tell me how long Mr. Maldon and his daughter remained at
Wildernsea after Mr. Talboys left them?" Robert asked.

"Well--no, sir," answered the landlord, after a few moments'
deliberation. "I can't say exactly how long it was. I know Mr. Maldon
used to sit here in this very parlor, and tell people how badly his
daughter had been treated, and how he'd been deceived by a young man
he'd put so much confidence in; but I can't say how long it was before
he left Wildernsea. But Mrs. Barkamb could tell you, sir," added the
landlord, briskly.

"Mrs. Barkamb."

"Yes, Mrs. Barkamb is the person who owns No. 17 North Cottages, the
house in which Mr. Maldon and his daughter lived. She's a nice, civil
spoken, motherly woman, sir, and I'm sure she'll tell you anything you
may want to know."

"Thank you, I will call upon Mrs. Barkamb to-morrow. Stay--one more
question. Should you recognize Mrs. Talboys if you were to see her?"

"Certainly, sir. As sure as I should recognize one of my own daughters."

Robert Audley wrote Mrs. Barkamb's address in his pocket-book, ate his
solitary dinner, drank a couple of glasses of sherry, smoked a cigar,
and then retired to the apartment in which a fire had been lighted for
his comfort.

He soon fell asleep, worn out with the fatigue of hurrying from place to
place during the last two days; but his slumber was not a heavy one, and
he heard the disconsolate moaning of the wind upon the sandy wastes, and
the long waves rolling in monotonously upon the flat shore. Mingling
with these dismal sounds, the melancholy thoughts engendered by his
joyless journey repeated themselves in never-varying succession in the
chaos of his slumbering brain, and made themselves into visions of
things that never had been and never could be upon this earth, but which
had some vague relation to real events remembered by the sleeper.

In those troublesome dreams he saw Audley Court, rooted up from amidst
the green pastures and the shady hedgerows of Essex, standing bare and
unprotected upon that desolate northern shore, threatened by the rapid
rising of a boisterous sea, whose waves seemed gathering upward to
descend and crush the house he loved. As the hurrying waves rolled
nearer and nearer to the stately mansion, the sleeper saw a pale, starry
face looking out of the silvery foam, and knew that it was my lady,
transformed into a mermaid, beckoning his uncle to destruction. Beyond
that rising sea great masses of cloud, blacker than the blackest ink,
more dense than the darkest night, lowered upon the dreamer's eye; but
as he looked at the dismal horizon the storm-clouds slowly parted, and
from a narrow rent in the darkness a ray of light streamed out upon the
hideous waves, which slowly, very slowly, receded, leaving the old
mansion safe and firmly rooted on the shore.

Robert awoke with the memory of this dream in his mind, and a sensation
of physical relief, as if some heavy weight, which had oppressed him all
the night, had been lifted from his breast.

He fell asleep again, and did not awake until the broad winter sunlight
shone upon the window-blind, and the shrill voice of the chambermaid at
his door announced that it was half-past eight o'clock. At a
quarter-before ten he had left Victoria Hotel, and was making his way
along the lonely platform in front of a row of shadowless houses that
faced the sea.

This row of hard, uncompromising, square-built habitations stretched
away to the little harbor, in which two or three merchant vessels and a
couple of colliers were anchored. Beyond the harbor there loomed, gray
and cold upon the wintry horizon, a dismal barrack, parted from the
Wildernsea houses by a narrow creek, spanned by an iron drawbridge. The
scarlet coat of the sentinel who walked backward and forward between two
cannons, placed at remote angles before the barrack wall, was the only
scrap of color that relieved the neutral-tinted picture of the gray
stone houses and the leaden sea.

On one side of the harbor a long stone pier stretched out far away into
the cruel loneliness of the sea, as if built for the especial
accommodation of some modern Timon, too misanthropical to be satisfied
even with the solitude of Wildernsea, and anxious to get still further
away from his fellow-creatures.

It was on that pier George Talboys had first met his wife, under the
blazing glory of a midsummer sky, and to the music of a braying band. It
was there that the young cornet had first yielded to that sweet
delusion, that fatal infatuation which had exercised so dark an
influence upon his after-life.

Robert looked savagely at this solitary watering-place--the shabby
seaport.

"It is such a place as this," he thought, "that works a strong man's
ruin. He comes here, heart whole and happy, with no better experience of
women than is to be learned at a flower-show or in a ball-room; with no
more familiar knowledge of the creature than he has of the far-away
satellites or the remoter planets; with a vague notion that she is a
whirling teetotum in pink or blue gauze, or a graceful automaton for the
display of milliners' manufacture. He comes to some place of this kind,
and the universe is suddenly narrowed into about half a dozen acres; the
mighty scheme of creation is crushed into a bandbox. The far-away
creatures whom he had seen floating about him, beautiful and indistinct,
are brought under his very nose; and before he has time to recover his
bewilderment, hey presto, the witchcraft has begun; the magic circle is
drawn around him! the spells are at work, the whole formula of sorcery
is in full play, and the victim is as powerless to escape as the
marble-legged prince in the Eastern story."

Ruminating in this wise, Robert Audley reached the house to which he had
been directed as the residence of Mrs. Barkamb. He was admitted
immediately by a prim, elderly servant, who ushered him into a
sitting-room as prim and elderly-looking as herself. Mrs. Barkamb, a
comfortable matron of about sixty years of age, was sitting in an
arm-chair before a bright handful of fire in the shining grate. An
elderly terrier, whose black-and-tan coat was thickly sprinkled with
gray, reposed in Mrs. Barkamb's lap. Every object in the quiet
sitting-room had an elderly aspect of simple comfort and precision,
which is the evidence of outward repose.

"I should like to live here," Robert thought, "and watch the gray sea
slowly rolling over the gray sand under the still, gray sky. I should
like to live here, and tell the beads upon my rosary, and repent and
rest."

He seated himself in the arm-chair opposite Mrs. Barkamb, at that lady's
invitation, and placed his hat upon the ground. The elderly terrier
descended from his mistress' lap to bark at and otherwise take objection
to this hat.

"You were wishing, I suppose, sir, to take one--be quiet, Dash--one of
the cottages," suggested Mrs. Barkamb, whose mind ran in one narrow
groove, and whose life during the last twenty years had been an
unvarying round of house-letting.

Robert Audley explained the purpose of his visit.

"I come to ask one simple question," he said, in conclusion, "I wish to
discover the exact date of Mrs. Talboys' departure from Wildernsea. The
proprietor of the Victoria Hotel informed me that you were the most
likely person to afford me that information."

Mrs. Barkamb deliberated for some moments.

"I can give you the date of Captain Maldon's departure," she said, "for
he left No. 17 considerably in my debt, and I have the whole business in
black and white; but with regard to Mrs. Talboys--"

Mrs. Barkamb paused for a few moments before resuming.

"You are aware that Mrs. Talboys left rather abruptly?" she asked.

"I was not aware of that fact."

"Indeed! Yes, she left abruptly, poor little woman! She tried to support
herself after her husband's desertion by giving music lessons; she was a
very brilliant pianist, and succeeded pretty well, I believe. But I
suppose her father took her money from her, and spent it in public
houses. However that might be, they had a very serious misunderstanding
one night; and the next morning Mrs. Talboys left Wildernsea, leaving
her little boy, who was out at nurse in the neighborhood."

"But you cannot tell me the date of her leaving?"

"I'm afraid not," answered Mrs. Barkamb; "and yet, stay. Captain Maldon
wrote to me upon the day his daughter left. He was in very great
distress, poor old gentleman, and he always came to me in his troubles.
If I could find that letter, it might be dated, you know--mightn't it,
now?"

Mr. Audley said that it was only probable the letter was dated.

Mrs. Barkamb retired to a table in the window on which stood an
old-fashioned mahogany desk, lined with green baize, and suffering from
a plethora of documents, which oozed out of it in every direction.
Letters, receipts, bills, inventories and tax-papers were mingled in
hopeless confusion; and among these Mrs. Barkamb set to work to search
for Captain Maldon's letter.

Mr. Audley waited very patiently, watching the gray clouds sailing
across the gray sky, the gray vessels gliding past upon the gray sea.

After about ten minutes' search, and a great deal of rustling,
crackling, folding and unfolding of the papers, Mrs. Barkamb uttered an
exclamation of triumph.

"I've got the letter," she said; "and there's a note inside it from Mrs.
Talboys."

Robert Audley's pale face flushed a vivid crimson as he stretched out
his hand to receive the papers.

"The persons who stole Helen Maldon's love-letters from George's trunk
in my chambers might have saved themselves the trouble," he thought.

The letter from the old lieutenant was not long, but almost every other
word was underscored.

"My generous friend," the writer began--Mr. Maldon had tried the lady's
generosity pretty severely during his residence in her house, rarely
paying his rent until threatened with the intruding presence of the
broker's man--"I am in the depths of despair. My daughter has left me!
You may imagine my feelings! We had a few words last night upon the
subject of money matters, which subject has always been a disagreeable
one between us, and on rising this morning I found I was deserted! The
enclosed from Helen was waiting for me on the parlor table.

"Yours in distraction and despair,

"HENRY MALDON.

"NORTH COTTAGES, August 16th, 1854."

The note from Mrs. Talboys was still more brief. It began abruptly thus:

"I am weary of my life here, and wish, if I can, to find a new one. I go
out into the world, dissevered from every link which binds me to the
hateful past, to seek another home and another fortune. Forgive me if I
have been fretful, capricious, changeable. You should forgive me, for
you know why I have been so. You know the secret which is the key to my
life.

"HELEN TALBOYS."

These lines were written in a hand that Robert Audley knew only too
well.

He sat for a long time pondering silently over the letter written by
Helen Talboys.

What was the meaning of those two last sentences--"You should forgive
me, for you know _why_ I have been so. You know the _secret_ which is
the key to my life?"

He wearied his brain in endeavoring to find a clew to the signification
of these two sentences. He could remember nothing, nor could he imagine
anything that would throw a light upon their meaning. The date of
Helen's departure, according to Mr. Maldon's letter, was the 16th of
August, 1854. Miss Tonks had declared that Lucy Graham entered the
school at Crescent Villas upon the 17th or 18th of August in the same
year. Between the departure of Helen Talboys from the Yorkshire
watering-place and the arrival of Lucy Graham at the Brompton school,
not more than eight-and-forty hours could have elapsed. This made a very
small link in the chain of circumstantial evidence, perhaps; but it was
a link, nevertheless, and it fitted neatly into its place.

"Did Mr. Maldon hear from his daughter after she had left Wildernsea?"
Robert asked.

"Well, I believe he did hear from her," Mrs. Barkamb answered; "but I
didn't see much of the old gentleman after that August. I was obliged to
sell him up in November, poor fellow, for he owed me fifteen months'
rent; and it was only by selling his poor little bits of furniture that
I could get him out of my place. We parted very good friends, in spite
of my sending in the brokers; and the old gentleman went to London with
the child, who was scarcely a twelvemonth old."

Mrs. Barkamb had nothing more to tell, and Robert had no further
questions to ask. He requested permission to retain the two letters
written by the lieutenant and his daughter, and left the house with them
in his pocket-book.

He walked straight back to the hotel, where he called for a time-table.
An express for London left Wildernsea at a quarter past one. Robert sent
his portmanteau to the station, paid his bill, and walked up and down
the stone terrace fronting the sea, waiting for the starting of the
train.

"I have traced the histories of Lucy Graham and Helen Talboys to a
vanishing point," he thought; "my next business is to discover the
history of the woman who lies buried in Ventnor churchyard."




CHAPTER XXVIII.

HIDDEN IN THE GRAVE.


Upon his return from Wildernsea, Robert Audley found a letter from his
Cousin Alicia, awaiting him at his chambers.

"Papa is much better," the young lady wrote, "and is very anxious to
have you at the Court. For some inexplicable reason, my stepmother has
taken it into her head that your presence is extremely desirable, and
worries me with her frivolous questions about your movements. So pray
come without delay, and set these people at rest. Your affectionate
cousin, A.A."

"So my lady is anxious to know my movements," thought Robert Audley, as
he sat brooding and smoking by his lonely fireside. "She is anxious; and
she questions her step-daughter in that pretty, childlike manner which
has such a bewitching air of innocent frivolity. Poor little creature;
poor unhappy little golden-haired sinner; the battle between us seems
terribly unfair. Why doesn't she run away while there is still time? I
have given her fair warning, I have shown her my cards, and worked
openly enough in this business, Heaven knows. Why doesn't she run away?"

He repeated this question again and again as he filled and emptied his
meerschaum, surrounding himself with the blue vapor from his pipe until
he looked like some modern magician seated in his laboratory.

"Why doesn't she run away? I would bring no needless shame upon that
house, of all other houses upon this wide earth. I would only do my duty
to my missing friend, and to that brave and generous man who has pledged
his faith to a worthless woman. Heaven knows I have no wish to punish.
Heaven knows I was never born to be the avenger of guilt or the
persecutor of the guilty. I only wish to do my duty. I will give her one
more warning, a full and fair one, and then--"

His thoughts wandered away to that gloomy prospect in which he saw no
gleam of brightness to relieve the dull, black obscurity that
encompassed the future, shutting in his pathway on every side, and
spreading a dense curtain around and about him, which Hope was powerless
to penetrate. He was forever haunted by the vision of his uncle's
anguish, forever tortured by the thought of that ruin and desolation
which, being brought about by his instrumentality, would seem in a
manner his handiwork. But amid all, and through all, Clara Talboys, with
an imperious gesture, beckoned him onward to her brother's unknown
grave.

"Shall I go down to Southampton," he thought, "and endeavor to discover
the history of the woman who died at Ventnor? Shall I work underground,
bribing the paltry assistants in that foul conspiracy, until I find my
way to the thrice guilty principal? No! not till I have tried other
means of discovering the truth. Shall I go to that miserable old man,
and charge him with his share in the shameful trick which I believe to
have been played upon my poor friend? No; I will not torture that
terror-stricken wretch as I tortured him a few weeks ago. I will go
straight to that arch-conspirator, and will tear away the beautiful veil
under which she hides her wickedness, and will wring from her the secret
of my friend's fate, and banish her forever from the house which her
presence has polluted."

He started early the next morning for Essex, and reached Audley before
eleven o'clock.

Early as it was, my lady was out. She had driven to Chelmsford upon a
shopping expedition with her step-daughter. She had several calls to
make in the neighborhood of the town, and was not likely to return until
dinner-time. Sir Michael's health was very much improved, and he would
come down stairs in the afternoon. Would Mr. Audley go to his uncle's
room?

No; Robert had no wish to meet that generous kinsman. What could he say
to him? How could he smooth the way to the trouble that was to
come?--how soften the cruel blow of the great grief that was preparing
for that noble and trusting heart?

"If I could forgive her the wrong done to my friend," Robert thought, "I
should still abhor her for the misery her guilt must bring upon the man
who has believed in her."

He told his uncle's servant that he would stroll into the village, and
return before dinner. He walked slowly away from the Court, wandering
across the meadows between his uncle's house and the village,
purposeless and indifferent, with the great trouble and perplexity of
his life stamped upon his face and reflected in his manner.

"I will go into the churchyard," he thought, "and stare at the
tombstones. There is nothing I can do that will make me more gloomy than
I am."

He was in those very meadows through which he had hurried from Audley
Court to the station upon the September day in which George Talboys had
disappeared. He looked at the pathway by which he had gone upon that
day, and remembered his unaccustomed hurry, and the vague feeling of
terror which had taken possession of him immediately upon losing sight
of his friend.

"Why did that unaccountable terror seize upon me," he thought. "Why was
it that I saw some strange mystery in my friend's disappearance? Was it
a monition, or a monomania? What if I am wrong after all? What if this
chain of evidence which I have constructed link by link, is woven out of
my own folly? What if this edifice of horror and suspicion is a mere
collection of crotchets--the nervous fancies of a hypochondriacal
bachelor? Mr. Harcourt Talboys sees no meaning in the events out of
which I have made myself a horrible mystery. I lay the separate links of
the chain before him, and he cannot recognize their fitness. He is
unable to put them together. Oh, my God, if it should be in myself all
this time that the misery lies; if--" he smiled bitterly, and shook his
head. "I have the handwriting in my pocket-book which is the evidence of
the conspiracy," he thought. "It remains for me to discover the darker
half of my lady's secret."

He avoided the village, still keeping to the meadows. The church lay a
little way back from the straggling High street, and a rough wooden gate
opened from the churchyard into a broad meadow, that was bordered by a
running stream, and sloped down into a grassy valley dotted by groups of
cattle.

Robert slowly ascended the narrow hillside pathway leading up to the
gate in the churchyard. The quiet dullness of the lonely landscape
harmonized with his own gloom. The solitary figure of an old man
hobbling toward a stile at the further end of the wide meadow was the
only human creature visible upon the area over which the young barrister
looked. The smoke slowly ascending from the scattered houses in the long
High street was the only evidence of human life. The slow progress of
the hands of the old clock in the church steeple was the only token by
which a traveler could perceive that a sluggish course of rustic life
had not come to a full stop in the village of Audley.

Yes, there was one other sign. As Robert opened the gate of the
churchyard, and strolled listessly into the little inclosure, he became
aware of the solemn music of an organ, audible through a half-open
window in the steeple.

He stopped and listened to the slow harmonies of a dreamy melody that
sounded like an extempore composition of an accomplished player.

"Who would have believed that Audley church could boast such an organ?"
thought Robert. "When last I was here, the national schoolmaster used to
accompany his children by a primitive performance of common chords. I
didn't think the old organ had such music in it."

He lingered at the gate, not caring to break the lazy spell woven about
him by the monotonous melancholy of the organist's performance. The
tones of the instrument, now swelling to their fullest power, now
sinking to a low, whispering softness, floated toward him upon the misty
winter atmosphere, and had a soothing influence, that seemed to comfort
him in his trouble.

He closed the gate softly, and crossed the little patch of gravel before
the door of the church. The door had been left ajar--by the organist,
perhaps. Robert Audley pushed it open, and walked into the square porch,
from which a flight of narrow stone steps wound upward to the organ-loft
and the belfry. Mr. Audley took off his hat, and opened the door between
the porch and the body of the church. He stepped softly into the holy
edifice, which had a damp, moldy smell upon week-days. He walked down
the narrow aisle to the altar-rails, and from that point of observation
took a survey of the church. The little gallery was exactly opposite to
him, but the scanty green curtains before the organ were closely drawn,
and he could not get a glimpse of the player.

The music, still rolled on. The organist had wandered into a melody of
Mendelssohn's, a strain whose dreamy sadness went straight to Robert's
heart. He loitered in the nooks and corners of the church, examining the
dilapidated memorials of the well-nigh forgotten dead, and listening to
the music.

"If my poor friend, George Talboys, had died in my arms, and I had
buried him in this quiet church, in one corner of the vaults over which
I tread to-day, how much anguish of mind, vacillation and torment I
might have escaped," thought Robert Audley, as he read the faded
inscriptions upon tablets of discolored marble; "I should have known his
fate--I should have known his fate! Ah, how much there would have been
in that. It is this miserable uncertainty, this horrible suspicion which
has poisoned my very life."

He looked at his watch.

"Half-past one," he muttered. "I shall have to wait four or five dreary
hours before my lady comes home from her morning calls--her pretty
visits of ceremony or friendliness. Good Heaven! what an actress this
woman is. What an arch trickster--what an all-accomplished deceiver. But
she shall play her pretty comedy no longer under my uncle's roof. I have
diplomatized long enough. She has refused to accept an indirect warning.
To-night I will speak plainly."

The music of the organ ceased, and Robert heard the closing of the
instrument.

"I'll have a look at this new organist," he thought, "who can afford to
bury his talents at Audley, and play Mendelssohn's finest fugues for a
stipend of sixteen pounds a year." He lingered in the porch, waiting for
the organist to descend the awkward little stair-case. In the weary
trouble of his mind, and with the prospect of getting through the five
hours in the best way he could, Mr. Audley was glad to cultivate any
diversion of thought, however idle. He therefore freely indulged his
curiosity about the new organist.

The first person who appeared upon the steep stone steps was a boy in
corduroy trousers and a dark linen smock-frock, who shambled down the
stairs with a good deal of unnecessary clatter of his hobnailed shoes,
and who was red in the face from the exertion of blowing the bellows of
the old organ. Close behind this boy came a young lady, very plainly
dressed in a black silk gown and a large gray shawl, who started and
turned pale at sight of Mr. Audley.

This young lady was Clara Talboys.

Of all people in the world she was the last whom Robert either expected
or wished to see. She had told him that she was going to pay a visit to
some friends who lived in Essex; but the county is a wide one, and the
village of Audley one of the most obscure and least frequented spots in
the whole of its extent. That the sister of his lost friend should be
here--here where she could watch his every action, and from those
actions deduce the secret workings of his mind, tracing his doubts home
to their object, made a complication of his difficulties that he could
never have anticipated. It brought him back to that consciousness of his
own helplessness, in which he had exclaimed:

"A hand that is stronger than my own is beckoning me onward on the dark
road that leads to my lost friend's unknown grave."

Clara Talboys was the first to speak.

"You are surprised to see me here, Mr. Audley," she said.

"Very much surprised."

"I told you that I was coming to Essex. I left home day before
yesterday. I was leaving home when I received your telegraphic message.
The friend with whom I am staying is Mrs. Martyn, the wife of the new
rector of Mount Stanning. I came down this morning to see the village
and church, and as Mrs. Martyn had to pay a visit to the school with the
curate and his wife, I stopped here and amused myself by trying the old
organ. I was not aware till I came here that there was a village called
Audley. The place takes its name from your family, I suppose?"

"I believe so," Robert answered, wondering at the lady's calmness, in
contradistinction to his own embarrassment. "I have a vague recollection
of hearing the story of some ancestor who was called Audley of Audley in
the reign of Edward the Fourth. The tomb inside the rails near the altar
belongs to one of the knights of Audley, but I have never taken the
trouble to remember his achievements. Are you going to wait here for
your friends, Miss Talboys?"

"Yes; they are to return here for me after they have finished their
rounds."

"And you go back to Mount Stanning with them this afternoon?"

"Yes."

Robert stood with his hat in his hand, looking absently out at the
tombstones and the low wall of the church yard. Clara Talboys watched
his pale face, haggard under the deepening shadow that had rested upon
it so long.

"You have been ill since I saw you last, Mr. Audley," she said, in a low
voice, that had the same melodious sadness as the notes of the old organ
under her touch.

"No, I have not been ill; I have been only harassed, wearied by a
hundred doubts and perplexities."

He was thinking as he spoke to her:

"How much does she guess? How much does she suspect?"

He had told the story of George's disappearance and of his own
suspicions, suppressing only the names of those concerned in the
mystery; but what if this girl should fathom this slender disguise, and
discover for herself that which he had chosen to withhold.

Her grave eyes were fixed upon his face, and he knew that she was trying
to read the innermost secrets of his mind.

"What am I in her hands?" he thought. "What am I in the hands of this
woman, who has my lost friend's face and the manner of Pallas Athene.
She reads my pitiful, vacillating soul, and plucks the thoughts out of
my heart with the magic of her solemn brown eyes. How unequal the fight
must be between us, and how can I ever hope to conquer against the
strength of her beauty and her wisdom?"

Mr. Audley was clearing his throat preparatory to bidding his beautiful
companion good-morning, and making his escape from the thraldom of her
presence into the lonely meadow outside the churchyard, when Clare
Talboys arrested him by speaking upon that very subject which he was
most anxious to avoid.

"You promised to write to me, Mr. Audley," she said, "if you made any
discovery which carried you nearer to the mystery of my brother's
disappearance. You have not written to me, and I imagine, therefore,
that you have discovered nothing."

Robert Audley was silent for some moments. How could he answer this
direct question?

"The chain of circumstantial evidence which unites the mystery of your
brother's fate with the person whom I suspect," he said, after a pause,
"is formed of very slight links. I think that I have added another link
to that chain since I saw you in Dorsetshire."

"And you refuse to tell me what it is that you have discovered?"

"Only until I have discovered more."

"I thought from your message that you were going to Wildernsea."

"I have been there."

"Indeed! It was there that you made some discovery, then?"

"It was," answered Robert. "You must remember, Miss Talboys that the
sole ground upon which my suspicions rest is the identity of two
individuals who have no apparent connection--the identity of a person
who is supposed to be dead with one who is living. The conspiracy of
which I believe your brother to have been the victim hinges upon this.
If his wife, Helen Talboys, died when the papers recorded her death--if
the woman who lies buried in Ventnor churchyard was indeed the woman
whose name is inscribed on the headstone of the grave--I have no case, I
have no clew to the mystery of your brother's fate. I am about to put
this to the test. I believe that I am now in a position to play a bold
game, and I believe that I shall soon arrive at the truth."

He spoke in a low voice, and with a solemn emphasis that betrayed the
intensity of his feeling. Miss Talboys stretched out her ungloved hand,
and laid it in his own. The cold touch of that slender hand sent a
shivering thrill through his frame.

"You will not suffer my brother's fate to remain a mystery, Mr. Audley,"
she said, quietly. "I know that you will do your duty to your friend."

The rector's wife and her two companions entered the churchyard as Clara
Talboys said this. Robert Audley pressed the hand that rested in his
own, and raised it to his lips.

"I am a lazy, good-for-nothing fellow, Miss Talboys," he said; "but if I
could restore your brother George to life and happiness, I should care
very little for any sacrifice of my own feeling, fear that the most I
can do is to fathom the secret of his fate and in doing that I must
sacrifice those who are dearer to me than myself."

He put on his hat, and hurried through the gateway leading into the
field as Mrs. Martyn came up to the porch.

"Who is that handsome young man I caught _tete-a-tete_ with you, Clara?"
she asked, laughing.

"He is a Mr. Audley, a friend of my poor brother's."

"Indeed! He is some relation of Sir Michael Audley, I suppose?"

"Sir Michael Audley!"

"Yes, my dear; the most important personage in the parish of Audley. But
we'll call at the Court in a day or two, and you shall see the baronet
and his pretty young wife."

"His young wife!" replied Clara Talboys, looking earnestly at her
friend. "Has Sir Michael Audley lately married, then?"

"Yes. He was a widower for sixteen years, and married a penniless young
governess about a year and a half ago. The story is quite romantic, and
Lady Audley is considered the belle of the county. But come, my dear
Clara, the pony is tired of waiting for us, and we've a long drive
before dinner."

Clara Talboys took her seat in the little basket-carriage which was
waiting at the principal gate of the churchyard, in the care of the boy
who had blown the organ-bellows. Mrs. Martyn shook the reins, and the
sturdy chestnut cob trotted off in the direction of Mount Stanning.

"Will you tell me more about this Lady Audley, Fanny?" Miss Talboys
said, after a long pause. "I want to know all about her. Have you heard
her maiden name?"

"Yes; she was a Miss Graham."

"And she is very pretty?"

"Yes, very, very pretty. Rather a childish beauty though, with large,
clear blue eyes, and pale golden ringlets, that fall in a feathery
shower over her throat and shoulders."

Clara Talboys was silent. She did not ask any further questions about my
lady.

She was thinking of a passage in that letter which George had written to
her during his honeymoon--a passage in which he said: "My childish
little wife is watching me as I write this--Ah! how I wish you could
see her, Clara! Her eyes are as blue and as clear as the skies on a
bright summer's day, and her hair falls about her face like the pale
golden halo you see round the head of a Madonna in an Italian picture."




CHAPTER XXIX.

IN THE LIME-WALK.


Robert Audley was loitering upon the broad grass-plat in front of the
Court as the carriage containing my lady and Alicia drove under the
archway, and drew up at the low turret-door. Mr. Audley presented
himself in time to hand the ladies out of the vehicle.

My lady looked very pretty in a delicate blue bonnet and the sables
which her nephew had bought for her at St. Petersburg. She seemed very
well pleased to see Robert, and smiled most bewitchingly as she gave him
her exquisitely gloved little hand.

"So you have come back to us, truant?" she said, laughing. "And now that
you have returned, we shall keep you prisoner. We won't let him run away
again, will we, Alicia?"

Miss Audley gave her head a scornful toss that shook the heavy curls
under her cavalier hat.

"I have nothing to do with the movements of so erratic an individual,"
she said. "Since Robert Audley has taken it into his head to conduct
himself like some ghost-haunted hero in a German story, I have given up
attempting to understand him."

Mr. Audley looked at his cousin with an expression of serio-comic
perplexity. "She's a nice girl," he thought, "but she's a nuisance. I
don't know how it is, but she seems more a nuisance than she used to
be."

He pulled his mustaches reflectively as he considered this question. His
mind wandered away for a few moments from the great trouble of his life
to dwell upon this minor perplexity.

"She's a dear girl," he thought; "a generous-hearted, bouncing, noble
English lassie; and yet--" He lost himself in a quagmire of doubt and
difficulty. There was some hitch in his mind which he could not
understand; some change in himself, beyond the change made in him by his
anxiety about George Talboys, which mystified and bewildered him.

"And pray where have you been wandering during the last day or two, Mr.
Audley?" asked my lady, as she lingered with her step-daughter upon the
threshold of the turret-door, waiting until Robert should be pleased to
stand aside and allow them to pass. The young man started as she asked
this question and looked up at her suddenly. Something in the aspect of
her bright young beauty, something in the childish innocence of her
expression, seemed to smite him to the heart, and his face grew ghastly
pale as he looked at her.

"I have been--in Yorkshire," he said; "at the little watering place
where my poor friend George Talboys lived at the time of his marriage."

The white change in my lady's face was the only sign of her having heard
these words. She smiled, a faint, sickly smile, and tried to pass her
husband's nephew.

"I must dress for dinner," she said. "I am going to a dinner-party, Mr.
Audley; please let me go in."

"I must ask you to spare me half an hour, Lady Audley," Robert answered,
in a low voice. "I came down to Essex on purpose to speak to you."

"What about?" asked my lady.

She had recovered herself from any shock which she might have sustained
a few moments before, and it was in her usual manner that she asked this
question. Her face expressed the mingled bewilderment and curiosity of a
puzzled child, rather than the serious surprise of a woman.

"What can you want to talk to me about, Mr. Audley?" she repeated.

"I will tell you when we are alone," Robert said, glancing at his
cousin, who stood a little way behind my lady, watching this
confidential little dialogue.

"He is in love with my step-mother's wax-doll beauty," thought Alicia,
"and it is for her sake he has become such a disconsolate object. He's
just the sort of person to fall in love with his aunt."

Miss Audley walked away to the grass-plat, turning her back upon Robert
and my lady.

"The absurd creature turned as white as a sheet when he saw her," she
thought. "So he can be in love, after all. That slow lump of torpidity
he calls his heart can beat, I suppose, once in a quarter of a century;
but it seems that nothing but a blue-eyed wax-doll can set it going. I
should have given him up long ago if I'd known that his idea of beauty
was to be found in a toy-shop."

Poor Alicia crossed the grass-plat and disappeared upon the opposite
side of the quadrangle, where there was a Gothic gate that communicated
with the stables. I am sorry to say that Sir Michael Audley's daughter
went to seek consolation from her dog Caesar and her chestnut mare
Atalanta, whose loose box the young lady was in the habit of visiting
every day.

"Will you come into the lime-walk, Lady Audley?" said Robert, as his
cousin left the garden. "I wish to talk to you without fear of
interruption or observation. I think we could choose no safer place than
that. Will you come there with me?"

"If you please," answered my lady. Mr. Audley could see that she was
trembling, and that she glanced from side to side as if looking for some
outlet by which she might escape him.

"You are shivering, Lady Audley," he said.

"Yes, I am very cold. I would rather speak to you some other day,
please. Let it be to-morrow, if you will. I have to dress for dinner,
and I want to see Sir Michael; I have not seen him since ten o'clock
this morning. Please let it be to-morrow."

There was a painful piteousness in her tone. Heaven knows how painful to
Robert's heart. Heaven knows what horrible images arose in his mind as
he looked down at that fair young face and thought of the task that lay
before him.

"I _must_ speak to you, Lady Audley," he said. "If I am cruel, it is you
who have made me cruel. You might have escaped this ordeal. You might
have avoided me. I gave you fair warning. But you have chosen to defy
me, and it is your own folly which is to blame if I no longer spare you.
Come with me. I tell you again I must speak to you."

There was a cold determination in his tone which silenced my lady's
objections. She followed him submissively to the little iron gate which
communicated with the long garden behind the house--the garden in which
a little rustic wooden bridge led across the quiet fish-pond into the
lime-walk.

The early winter twilight was closing in, and the intricate tracery of
the leafless branches that overarched the lonely pathway looked black
against the cold gray of the evening sky. The lime-walk seemed like some
cloister in this uncertain light.

"Why do you bring me to this horrible place to frighten me out of my
poor wits?" cried my lady, peevishly. "You ought to know how nervous I
am."

"You are nervous, my lady?"

"Yes, dreadfully nervous. I am worth a fortune to poor Mr. Dawson. He is
always sending me camphor, and sal volatile, and red lavender, and all
kinds of abominable mixtures, but he can't cure me."

"Do you remember what Macbeth tells his physician, my lady?" asked
Robert, gravely. "Mr. Dawson may be very much more clever than the
Scottish leech, but I doubt if even _he_ can minister to the mind that
is diseased."

"Who said that my mind was diseased?" exclaimed Lady Audley.

"I say so, my lady," answered Robert. "You tell me that you are nervous,
and that all the medicines your doctor can prescribe are only so much
physic that might as well be thrown to the dogs. Let me be the physician
to strike to the root of your malady, Lady Audley. Heaven knows that I
wish to be merciful--that I would spare you as far as it is in my power
to spare you in doing justice to others--but justice must be done. Shall
I tell you why you are nervous in this house, my lady?"

"If you can," she answered, with a little laugh.

"Because for you this house is haunted."

"Haunted?"

"Yes, haunted by the ghost of George Talboys."

Robert Audley heard my lady's quickened breathing, he fancied he could
almost hear the loud beating of her heart as she walked by his side,
shivering now and then, and with her sable cloak wrapped tightly around
her.

"What do you mean?" she cried suddenly, after a pause of some moments.
"Why do you torment me about this George Talboys, who happens to have
taken it into his head to keep out of your way for a few months? Are you
going mad, Mr. Audley, and do you select me as the victim of your
monomania? What is George Talboys to me that you should worry me about
him?"

"He was a stranger to you, my lady, was he not?"

"Of course!" answered Lady Audley. "What should he be but a stranger?"

"Shall I tell you the story of my friend's disappearance as I read that
story, my lady?" asked Robert.

"No," cried Lady Audley; "I wish to know nothing of your friend. If he
is dead, I am sorry for him. If he lives, I have no wish either to see
him or to hear of him. Let me go in to see my husband, if you please,
Mr. Audley, unless you wish to detain me in this gloomy place until I
catch my death of cold."

"I wish to detain you until you have heard what I have to say, Lady
Audley," answered Robert, resolutely. "I will detain you no longer than
is necessary, and when you have heard me you shall take your own course
of action."

"Very well, then; pray lose no time in saying what you have to say,"
replied my lady, carelessly. "I promise you to attend very patiently."

"When my friend, George Talboys, returned to England," Robert began,
gravely, "the thought which was uppermost in his mind was the thought of
his wife."

"Whom he had deserted," said my lady, quickly. "At least," she added,
more deliberately, "I remember your telling us something to that effect
when you first told us your friend's story."

Robert Audley did not notice this observation.

"The thought that was uppermost in his mind was the thought of his wife,"
he repeated. "His fairest hope in the future was the hope of making her
happy, and lavishing upon her the pittance which he had won by the force
of his own strong arm in the gold-fields of Australia. I saw him within
a few hours of his reaching England, and I was a witness to the joyful
pride with which he looked forward to his re-union with his wife. I was
also a witness to the blow which struck him to the very heart--which
changed him from the man he had been to a creature as unlike that former
self as one human being can be unlike another. The blow which made that
cruel change was the announcement of his wife's death in the _Times_
newspaper. I now believe that that announcement was a black and bitter
lie."

"Indeed!" said my lady; "and what reason could any one have for
announcing the death of Mrs. Talboys, if Mrs. Talboys had been alive?"

"The lady herself might have had a reason," Robert answered, quietly.

"What reason?"

"How if she had taken advantage of George's absence to win a richer
husband? How if she had married again, and wished to throw my poor
friend off the scent by this false announcement?"

Lady Audley shrugged her shoulders.

"Your suppositions are rather ridiculous, Mr. Audley," she said; "it is
to be hoped that you have some reasonable grounds for them."

"I have examined a file of each of the newspapers published in
Chelmsford and Colchester," continued Robert, without replying to my
lady's last observation, "and I find in one of the Colchester papers,
dated July the 2d, 1850, a brief paragraph among numerous miscellaneous
scraps of information copied from other newspapers, to the effect that a
Mr. George Talboys, an English gentleman, had arrived at Sydney from the
gold-fields, carrying with him nuggets and gold-dust to the amount of
twenty thousand pounds, and that he had realized his property and sailed
for Liverpool in the fast-sailing clipper _Argus_. This is a very small
fact, of course, Lady Audley, but it is enough to prove that any person
residing in Essex in the July of the year fifty-seven, was likely to
become aware of George Talboys' return from Australia. Do you follow
me?"

"Not very clearly," said my lady. "What have the Essex papers to do with
the death of Mrs. Talboys?"

"We will come to that by-and-by, Lady Audley. I say that I believe the
announcement in the _Times_ to have been a false announcement, and a
part of the conspiracy which was carried out by Helen Talboys and
Lieutenant Maldon against my poor friend."

"A conspiracy!"

"Yes, a conspiracy concocted by an artful woman, who had speculated upon
the chances of her husband's death, and had secured a splendid position
at the risk of committing a crime; a bold woman, my lady, who thought to
play her comedy out to the end without fear of detection; a wicked
woman, who did not care what misery she might inflict upon the honest
heart of the man she betrayed; but a foolish woman, who looked at life
as a game of chance, in which the best player was likely to hold the
winning cards, forgetting that there is a Providence above the pitiful
speculators, and that wicked secrets are never permitted to remain long
hidden. If this woman of whom I speak had never been guilty of any
blacker sin than the publication of that lying announcement in the
_Times_ newspaper, I should still hold her as the most detestable and
despicable of her sex--the most pitiless and calculating of human
creatures. That cruel lie was a base and cowardly blow in the dark; it
was the treacherous dagger-thrust of an infamous assassin."

"But how do you know that the announcement was a false one?" asked my
lady. "You told us that you had been to Ventnor with Mr. Talboys to see
his wife's grave. Who was it who died at Ventnor if it was not Mrs.
Talboys?"

"Ah, Lady Audley," said Robert, "that is a question which only two or
three people can answer, and one or other of those persons shall answer
it to me before long. I tell you, my lady, that I am determined to
unravel the mystery of George Talboy's death. Do you think I am to be
put off by feminine prevarication--by womanly trickery? No! Link by link
I have put together the chain of evidence, which wants but a link here
and there to be complete in its terrible strength. Do you think I will
suffer myself to be baffled? Do you think I shall fail to discover those
missing links? No, Lady Audley, I shall not fail, for _I know where to
look for them!_ There is a fair-haired woman at Southampton--a woman
called Plowson, who has some share in the secrets of the father of my
friend's wife. I have an idea that she can help me to discover the
history of the woman who lies buried in Ventnor churchyard, and I will
spare no trouble in making that discovery, unless--"

"Unless what?" asked my lady, eagerly.

"Unless the woman I wish to save from degradation and punishment accepts
the