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Title: Lady Audley's Secret

Author: M. E. Braddon

Release date: September 1, 2005 [eBook #8954]
Most recently updated: January 2, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8954

Credits: Produced by Jonathan Ingram and Distributed Proofreaders

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LADY
AUDLEY'S SECRET ***

LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET

By 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 of 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; he 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 Shelly and Byron, and he had fairly laughed in her face, as if
poetry were 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 seize 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 clenched 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 ran 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 as 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
Alicia 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 he 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 some
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," thought
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 my 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 he 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 out 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 Alicia 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 pleasantér. 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 he 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 the 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 pleasantér 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 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 may be 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 height, 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 débris 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. Maldon—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 buried 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 he 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," he 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
pensée 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 à 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 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 Villas; 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