UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA CAUZ
3 2106 00721 5517











COLLECTION
OF
BRITISH AUTHOR S.
VOL. 635.
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET BY M. E. BRADDON.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.





LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
BY
M. E. BRADDON.
COPYRIGHT EDITION
IN TWO VOLUME S.
VOL. I.
LEIPZIG
BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ
1862.
The Right of Translation is reserved.


Univ. Library, Univ. Calif., Santa Cruz


PR
4989
M4
L3
1862,
vil
DEDICATED
TO THE
RIGHT HON. SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON, BART.
M.P., D.C.L., ETC., ETC.,
IN GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT
OF
LITERARY ADVICE MOST GENEROUSLY GIVEN
TO THE
AUTHOR.





CONTENTS
OF VOLUME 1.
Page
1
18
!!!!!!!!
···
· · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·
104
115
121
.....
CHAPTER 1. Lucy
- II. On Board the Argus .
III. Hidden Relics . . .
IV. In the First Page of the "Times” . . .
y. The Headstone at Ventnor
VI. Anywhere, Anywhere out of the World ..
VII. After a Year
VIII. Before the Storm
IX. After the Storm
X. Missing . . . . .
XI. The Mark upon my Lady's Wrist
XII. Still Missing . . .
XIII. Troubled Dreams
XIV. Phæbe's Suitor
XV. On the Watch .
XVI. Robert Audley gets his Congé .
XVII. At the Castle Inn . .
- XVIII. Robert receives a Visitor whom he had scarcely
expected
XIX. The Blacksmith's Mistake
. XX. The Writing in the Book
- XXI. Mrs. Plowson
. . . . .
- XXII. Little Georgey leaves his old Home
- XXIII. Coming to a Standstill . . . . . . .
- XXIV. Clara
- XXV. George's Letters
-- XXVI. Retrograde Investigation
130
······
138
148
160
176
189
· · · · · · ·
198
207
219
226
246
257
277
289
300





LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET.
CHAPTER I.
Lucy.
It lay low 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 every-
where over-grown with trailing ivy, yellow stonecrop,
Lady Audley's Secret. I.


2
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
walk, down was quiet nuns bad and shadowe
and dark moss. To the left there was a broad gravelled
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 darken-
ing 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 sup-
ported them. The principal door was squeezed into a
corner of a turret at one angle of the building, as if it
was 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 rang a clang-
ing bell that dangled in a corner amongst the ivy, lest
the noise of the knocking should never penetrate the
stronghold.
A glorious old place - a place that visitors fell


LUCY.
into raptures with; feeling a yearning wish to have
done with life, and to stay there for ever, 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 go about it 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 your-
self the farthest; 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 over now a chimney coeval with
the Plantagenets, and setting up one in the style of
the Tudors; shaking down a bit of Saxon wall there,
1*


LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
and 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 re-
fectory 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 through-
out 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, revealing 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 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 harboured a Roman Catholic priest, or to have
had 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
patterns 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


LUCY.
otwenty Palhis dark a amongst
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 amongst 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 with 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 dog at his
heels, and his pretty young wife dawdling by his side;
but in about ten minutes the baronet and his com-
panion 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 white
drawing-room, where my lady played dreamy melodies
by Beethoven and Mendelssohn till her husband fell
asleep in his easy chair.


LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 county. 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 child-
hood, 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 house.
But Miss Alicia's day was over; and now, when
she asked anything of the housekeeper, the house-
keeper 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 ploughboys, 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 be-


LUCY.
tween 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 in marrying Sir Michael Audley.
The truth was that Lady Audley had, in be-
coming 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 neighbourhood 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 the dull, out-of-the-way village to
the humble little church three times on Sunday, as
contentedly as if she had no higher aspiration in the
world than to do so all the rest of her life.


LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
People who observed this accounted for it by
saying that it was part of her amiable and gentle
nature always to be light-hearted, happy, and con-
tented 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 tooth-
less crone as if she had been listening to the compli-
ments 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, her
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


LUCY.
low, united in declaring that Lucy Graham was the
sweetest girl that ever lived.
Perhaps it was this cry which penetrated into the
quiet chambers 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 ex-
perienced a strong desire to be better acquainted with
Mr. Dawson's governess.
He had only to hint this 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, smouldering spark, too dull to be extinguished,
too feeble to burn? But this was love — this fever,
this longing, this restless, uncertain, miserable hesita-
tion; these cruel fears that his age was an insurmount-
able barrier to his happiness; this sick hatred of his


10
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
white beard; this frenzied wish to be young again,
with glistening raven hair, and a slim waist, such as
he had 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 a strong reason for his success. If he ever remem-
bered 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
alone 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 realised. Lucy Graham appeared
could moment. It pa
old titlenue herself any one so 100


LUCY.
11
by no means to dislike the baronet's attentions. There
was nothing whatever in her manner of the shallow
artifice employed by a woman who wishes to captivate
a rich man. She was so used 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 finish-
ing touches to some water-coloured 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


12
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 in-
come, 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
honourable 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,


LUCY.
13
- of
uure,
and
had
on's
bled
you
Only
ael's
cely
clutching at it with a half-angry gesture, and twisting
it backwards and forwards 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're 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 June 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 few but solemn words
an offer of his hand. There was something almost
ucy,
lon't
It
me."
fore
for
e a
it or
but
Iden
ntly
fore
bon,


LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 the 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 the dim land-
scape 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.


LUCY.
15
“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. 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,
generous, handsome — but poor. My mother – But
do not let me speak of her. Poverty, poverty, trials,
vexations, humiliations, deprivations! You cannot tell;
you, who are amongst 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 can-
not be disinterested; I cannot be blind to the advan-
tages of such an alliance. I cannot, I cannot!”
Beyond her agitation and her passionate vehemence,


16
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
glittering aming overe, dress clinuching rath
there was an undefined something in her manner which
filled the baronet with a vague alarm. She was still
on the ground at his feet, crouching rather than kneel-
ing, 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 strang-
ling 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, after quietly bidding her
good night, he walked straight out of the house.
He walked straight out of the house, this foolish


LUCY.
17
old man, because there was some strong emotion at
work in his heart — 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 round her.
“No more dependence, no more drudgery, no more
humiliations,” she said; "every trace of the old life
melted away – every clue to identity buried and for-
gotten — 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 printed, partly written, yellow with
age, and crumpled with much folding.
Lady Audley's Secret. I.


LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
CHAPTER II.
On Board the Argus.
e rather à not to wana miles of ed she
He threw the end of his cigar into the water, and
leaning his elbows upon the bulwarks, stared medita-
tively 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, and 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 a dark face, bronzed by exposure to the sun; he
had handsome brown eyes, with a feminine smile in
them, that sparkled through his black lashes, and a
bushy beard and moustache that covered the whole of
the lower part of his face. He was tall, and power-
fully built; he wore a loose grey suit and a felt hat,
thrown carelessly upon his black hair. His name was
George Talboys, and he was aft-cabin passenger on


ON BOARD THE ARGUS.
19
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
five-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 pas-
sengers 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 honours of the friendly meal. He opened
the champagne bottles, and took wine with every one
present; he told funny stories, and led the laugh him-
self 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 round games, which
kept the little circle round the cabin lampºso 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.
2*


20
SECRET.
LADY AUDLE
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!” and, "To be sure, ha!”
The sentimental young lady, going home to finish
her education, had tried him with Shelley and Byron,
and he had fairly laughed in her face, as if poetry
were a joke. The wool-stapler sounded him upon po-
litics, 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 every-
body in his own fashion. But when the Argus came
to be within about a fortnight's sail of England every-
body noticed a change in George Talboys. He grew
restless and fidgety; sometimes so merry that the cabin
rang with his laughter; sometimes moody and thought-
ful. Favourite as he was amongst the sailors, they
grew 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 favourable? 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;


ON BOARD THE ARGUS.
21
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 dropping 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 stand-
ing 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


22
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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
dead hours of the lonely night.
“See!” said George, suddenly pointing in another
direction from that towards 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."


ON BOARD THE ARGUS.
23
“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 this long 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 towards 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 an-
guish 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 into the water.
day!" she repeamenty times a day., and feel the an


24
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
“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 Eng-
land 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 colour
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 into 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 situa-


ON BOARD THE ARGUS.
25
my story nituence you. George, impathlthough Is
tion as governess in a rich Australian family, I per-
suaded 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 ardour, 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 hus-
band had deserted her?”.
“Deserted her!” exclaimed the governess.
“Yes. I was a cornet in a cavalry regiment when


26
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
I first met myt. town, where my
officer; a re
I first met my little darling. We were quartered at a
stupid sea-port 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 pitiful, contemptible, palpable traps he
set for 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 in 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 a pretty little wife
to keep, I sold out, thinking that before the money
that I got for my commission 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


ON BOARD THE ARGUS.
27
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 finely 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
'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 upon 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
into 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


28
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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, declaring that I would
never enter it again. 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 upwards 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 re-
quired, 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 sud-


ON BOARD THE ARGUS.
29
denly, 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 homewards. 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 his
little dining-room; and my wife was upstairs, 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 a
new world; and that if I succeeded I should come
back to bring her plenty and happiness, but that if
I feiled 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.


30
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 this
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
bedfellows, that, looking back at my past life, I won-
dered whether that dashing, reckless, extravagant,
luxurious, champagne-drinking dragoon could have
really been the same man who sat on the damp ground
gnawing a mouldy 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, as 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
centre 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 of my own face.
But I toiled on through all; through disappointment


ON BOARD THE ARGUS.
31
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 ad-
miration.
“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
beckoning me onwards 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 came
upon a gold deposit of some magnitude. A fortnight
afterwards I was the richest man in all the little colony
about me. I travelled post-haste to Sydney, realised
my gold findings which were worth upwards of £20,000,
and a fortnight afterwards took my passage for Eng-
land 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?"


32
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
"Never till a week before this vessel set sail. 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 medi-
tatively at his cigar. His companion did not disturb
him. The last ray of the 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
perhaps, in a power of endin us; He will


ON BOARD THE ARGUS.
33
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 her-
self by the side of the vessel, looking over into the
water.
Lady Audley's Secrel. I.


LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
CHAPTER III.
Hidden Relics.
The same August sun which had gone down be-
hind 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 the 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 briar 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 waggon-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 still-
ness. The very repose of the place grew painful from
its intensity, and you felt as if a corpse must be lying
somewhere within that grey and ivy-covered pile of
ou.


HIDDEN RELICS.
35
n be
on the
Overed
Hudley
aindows
he red
of the
11 fish
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 under 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 grey 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 colour. 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
grey, 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
en into
amidst
htness
end the
if they
25 of 2
on the
evening
1 more
at still
Lul from
e lying
pile of
3*


36
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
country girl, called Phæbe 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 for-
tune for Phæbe, who found her wages trebled and her
work light in the well-ordered household at the Court;
and who was therefore quite as much the object of
envy amongst her particular friends as my lady her-
self in 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 amongst
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,
Phæbe," said the man, shutting a clasp-knife with
which he had been stripping the bark from a black-
thorn 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 bed-room 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


HIDDEN RELICS.
37
here than in the house were there's always somebody
listening."
The man was a big, broad-shouldered, stupid-
looking clodhopper 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 grey 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 un-
like 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, boor-
ishly, opening his knife again, and scraping away at
the hedge-stake.
They were first cousins, and had been playfellows
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 colour 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 travelling makes people genteel,
Luke. I've been on the Continent with my lady,


38
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 horse laugh;
“who wants you to be genteel, I wonder? Not me
for one; when you're my wife you won't have over-
much time for gentility, my girl. French, too! Dang
me, Phæbe, I suppose when we've saved money
enough between us to buy a bit of a farm, you'll be
parlyvooing 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, Phæbe, to have lots of
money,” answered Luke, "and I hope you'll be warned
by that, my lass, to save up your wages agen we get
married.”
“Why, what was she in Mr. Dawson's house only
three months ago?” continued the girl, as if she had


HIDDEN RELICS.
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 parlour 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, Phæbe; 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 grey eyes fixed upon the last low streak of crim-
son dying out behind the trunks of the trees.
“You should see the inside of the house, Luke,"
she said; "it's a tumble-down 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
me, and all done for her.”
“She's a lucky one,” muttered Luke, with lazy
indifference.
“You should have seen her while we were abroad,


40
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
with a crowd of gentlemen always 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 every body
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 show-
ing you some of the best rooms.”
It was almost dark when the cousins left the shrub-
bery 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. Phæbe
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


HIDDEN RELICS.
41
ghostly twilight --- the light carried by Phoebe looking
only a poor speck of flame in the broad passages
through which the girl led her cousin. Luke looked
suspiciously over his shoulder now and then, half
frightened of the creaking of his own hob-nailed boots.
"It's a mortal dull place, Phæbe,” 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 power of money."
“Look at the pictures on the walls,” said Phæbe,
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
Come Cuyps with class of the


42
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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
occupant had left it.
"I've 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 round in gawky embarrassment,
bewildered by the splendour 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 Phæbe, 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 jewellery if you like, Luke.”
“Well, I may as well have a look at it, my girl,"


HIDDEN RELICS.
43
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, Phæbe,” 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 framework 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 dis-
covery.
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


LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
hair, evidently taken from a baby's head. Phæbe's
grey 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 lips 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 never 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.”


IN THE FIRST PAGE OF THE "TIMES."
be's
ecret
said
CHAPTER IV.
In the First Page of the “Times.”
his,"
ch a
celet
'you
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 Fig-tree Court,
Temple; as a barrister he had eaten the allotted num-
ber of dinners, which form the sublime ordeal through
which the forensic aspirant wades on to fame and for-
tune. 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 Fig-tree 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 un-
blushingly 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


46
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 pleasing 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 humour,
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 favourite with his
ancle, 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
with abbert alway he was


IN THE FIRST PAGE OF THE “TIMES.”
47
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 so
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 mouthpiece of his German pipe
from his moustachioed lips. When he had finished the
perusal of the epistle, which he read with his dark
eyebrows elevated to the centre 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, pre-


48
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
pared 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 reverie. “Alicia
and my lady, the step-mother, 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 met
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 arrange-
ments 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


IN THE FIRST PAGE OF THE "TIMES.”
49
passengers; "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 scrutinising the ani-
mated 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 a bundle of
Australian notes in his pocket, and that he wanted to
bank them at Messrs. —, who had been his bankers
many years before.
“If you'll believe me, I've only just left their count-
ing-house,” said Robert. "I'll go back with you, and
we'll settle that matter in five minutes."
Lady Audley's Secret. I.
4


50
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 Sceptre, or the Castle,
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 cer-
tain coffee-house in Bridge Street, Westminster, where
he expected to find a letter from his wife.
“Then I'll go there with you,” said Robert. "The
idea of your having a wife, George; what a preposterous
joke."
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


IN THE FIRST PAGE OF THE "TIMES.”
51
T of
stle,
and
ther
e be
t, or
i'ney
cer
-here
crous
treet
boys
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 fireplace. 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 Pinch-
beck; only three letters altogether.
The young man drank his soda water in silence,
and then leaning his elbows upon the table, covered
his face with his hands. There was something in his
manner which told Robert Audley that this disappoint-
ment, trifling as it might 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
and
r his
_mes,
and
e on
5 her
vorld
r old
-hose
tared
lothes
; but
4*


52
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 amongst the list of deaths, before his
dazed brain took in its full meaning; but after a con-
siderable pause he pushed the newspaper over to Robert
Audley, and with a face that had changed from its
dark bronze to a sickly, chalky, greyish 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 twenty-two."


THE HEADSTONE AT VENTNOR.
53
efore
antly
& at
CHAPTER V.
e his
con
The Headstone at Ventnor.
obert
ma its
and
with
Fight;
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
his 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 flyblown play-
bills fastened to the wall; the blank and empty fire-
place; a bald-headed old man nodding over the Mor-
ning Advertiser; the slipshod 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


54
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
by one, melted into dark blots that '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 in-
differently. 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 mantel-
piece, 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 HEADSTONE AT VENTNOR.
55
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, my 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 him-
self 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 re-
member 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.”


56
LADY
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 grey, 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 towards
Portsmouth.
They rode from Ryde to Ventnor under the burning
heat of the mid-day sun. As the two young men
alighted from the coach, the people standing about
stared at George's white face and untrimmed beard.
“What are we to do, George?” Robert Audley
asked. “We have no clue to finding the people you
want to see.”
The young man looked at him with a pitiful, be-
wildered 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 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."


THE HEADSTONE AT VENTNOR.
57
They said nothing more, but Robert walked straight
to an 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 hall.
George Talboys leaned against the door-post with
much the same look in his face as that which had
frightened his friend in the Westminster 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 Landsdowne
Cottages, No. 4.
They easily found the house, a shabby bow-
windowed cottage, looking towards the water.
Was Captain Maldon at home? No, the landlady
said; he had gone out to the beach with his little
grandson. Would the gentlemen walk in and sit down
a bit?
George mechanically followed his friend into the
little front parlour - 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 mantel-piece.
e over


58
SECRET.
LADY AUDLI
It was his own portrait, paiuted in the old
dragooning days. A pretty good likeness, repre-
senting him in uniform, with his charger in the back-
ground.
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 knicknacks lying here and there.
Her work-box, 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 half-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, used 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 a week before her
death in the last stage of decline; and how day by


THE HEADSTONE AT VENTNOR.
59
day she had gradually but surely sunk under the
fatal malady. “Was the gentleman any relative?”
she asked of Robert Andley, 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 have 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 bed-room 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


60
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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. Tal-
boys, 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 new-
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 stonemason'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: -


THE HEADSTONE AT VENTNOR.
61
Sacred to the Memory of
HELEN,
THE BELOVED WIFE OF GEORGE TALBOYS,
Who departed this life
August 24th, 1857, aged 22,
Deeply regretted by her sorrowing Husband.


LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
CHAPTER VI.
Anywhere, Anywhere out of the World.
When they returned to Landsdowne 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 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 news-
paper, rose from the pebbles with a ceremonious bow.
His faded, light hair was tinged with grey; 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.
“Good heavens!” cried George, “don't you know
me?"
Mr. Maldon started and coloured violently, with
something of a frightened look, as he recognised his
son-in-law.


ANYWHERE, ANYWHERE OUT OF THE WORLD. 63
“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 Heaven!” 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
blood-shot 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! - O 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.”


64
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET. -
George Talboys turned at the sound of the
babyish voice, and long and earnestly looked at the
boy.
Tou," he said, ellow pushes you love;
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 be-
fore. 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.”


ANYWHERE, ANYWHERE OUT OF THE WORLD. 65
“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 civilised 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
Lady Audley's Secret. I.


66
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 land-
lady, 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 cap-
tain 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


ANYWHERE, ANYWHERE OUT OF THE WORLD. 67
outlines 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 George'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
5*


68
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 favour-
able 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 of post, and ran
thus: -
.“MY DEAR ROBERT, -- How cruel of you to run
thing so won his young merying


ANYWHERE, ANYWHERE OUT OF THE WORLD. 69
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
young 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."


LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
CHAPTER VII.
After a Year.
The first year of George Talboys' widowhood
passed away; the deep band of crape about his hat
grew brown and rusty, and as the last burning day of
another August faded out, he sat smoking cigars in
the quiet chambers in Fig Tree 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 inner change may have been worked by
that bitter disappointment! 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


AFTER A YEAR.
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 atmo-
sphere, 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 travellers returned from St. Petersburg in the
spring, and George again took up his quarters in 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
about 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 mourning
garments in a trunk in which he kept a packet of his


72
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
wife's letters, and that lock of hair which had been cut
from her head after death. Robert Audley had nerer
seen either the letters 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 Fig Tree Court, with no com-
pany 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 naïveté. "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 hit 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 which his grief had taken after its


AFTER A YEAR.
first brief violence left him as submissive as a child to
the will of his friend; ready to go anywhere or do any-
thing; never enjoying himself, or originating any
enjoyment, but joining in the pleasures of others with
a hopeless, quiet, uncomplaining, unobtrusive resigna-
tion 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
apologise to your friend Mr. Talboys, and tell him
that papa hopes 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 neighbourhood:
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


74
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 letters so cavalierly – I'll
keep it;" upon which Mr. Robert Audley put the note
back into its envelope, and afterwards 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 afterwards to be slowly forged in the
one 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
a 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 dreary 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


AFTER A YEAR.
interior of the grey 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 de-
pendence, wherever she went she seemed to take sun-
shine and gladness with her. In spite of Miss Alicia's
undisguised contempt for her stepmother'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 candour 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 but 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 Phæbe
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 trea-
sures.


76
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
She had appeared at several public balls at Chelms-
ford 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 waggons 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


AFTER A YEAR.
77
“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 reconnoitred the streams in which they
were to fish the next day, and by such means beguiled
the time till 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, pro-
tracted 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 very 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


78
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
him; and yet, even now, with the stain of that foul
deed upon it, the aspect of the spot is – peace. No
crime has ever been committed in the worst rookeries
about Seven Dials that has not been also done in the
face of that sweet 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, dogcarts 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 postilion 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.


AFTER A YEAR.
"Essex is my native county, you know, and about
this time of year I generally have a touch of home
sickness; so George and I have come down to the inn
for two or three days' 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 expres-
sion of weariness and terror, to make her husband
aware that she did not want to be bored by an intro-
duction 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.


80
SECRET.
LADY AUDLE
“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 leant 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 peculiar 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 too preposterous. If all
the divinities upon earth were ranged before him, wait-
ing for his sultanship to throw the handkerchief, he
would only lift his eyebrows to the middle of his fore-
head, and tell them to scramble for it."


AFTER A YEAR.
81
But, for once in his life, Robert was almost enthu-
siastic.
“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 heartsease
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 birthplace. 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 trip-
ping towards him leaning on her old father's arm, and
pretending (with such a charming, delicious, serio-
comic pretence) 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
Lady Audley's Secret. I.


82
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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, Phæbe 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'm 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, Phæbe,” she said, Ainging herself
into a chair and throwing back her curls at the maid,
who stood, brush in hand, ready to arrange the


AFTER A YEAR.
83
luxuriant hair for the night. “Do you know, Phæbe,
I have heard some people say 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'm a poor plain
creature."
“Not at all, Phæbe," said the little lady superbly;
"you are like me, and your features are very nice; it
is only colour 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, Phæbe.”
She prattled on in this way for a long time, talk-
ing of a hundred frivolous subjects, and ridiculing the
people she had met at the races for her maid's amuse-
ment. Her step-daughter came into the dressing-room
to bid her good night, and found the maid and mis-
tress laughing aloud over one of the day's adventures.
Alicia, who was never familiar with her servants, with-
drew 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. “Phæbe Marks,” she said,
“I want you to do me a favour.”
6*


84
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
-
“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 afterwards, 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 be-
jewelled 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 cosily under the eider-down quilt.
She was a chilly little creature, and loved to bury her-
self in soft wrappings of satin and fur.
“Kiss me, Phæbe," she said, as the girl arranged
the curtains. “I hear Sir Michael's step in the ante-
room; 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 Madame
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.


AFTER A YEAR.
85
"A telegraphic message!" she cried; for the con-
venient 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 Gra-
ham, 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
to whom she had referred on 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 ?”.


86
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
“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.


BEFORE THE STORM.
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 acquaint-
ance; 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 in-
different, 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 in 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


88
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 indiges-
tion, 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 round 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 retroussé; 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 co-
quettish, espiègle, 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
Izaac Walton, is not the most lively of occupations;
therefore it is scarcely, perhaps, to be wondered that


BEFORE THE STORM.
89
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 over-
hanging the winding streams about Audley.
"Fig-tree 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 tobac-
conist'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 Southamp-
ton; I haven't seen the little one for upwards of a
month."
- He always spoke of his son as "the little one;"
always spoke of him mournfully rather than hopefully.
It seemed as if he could take no comfort from the
thought of his boy. 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


90
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 to-
wards me, ready to close in above my head when I
am least prepared for the end."
Robert Audley stared at his friend in silent amaze-
ment; 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, dear boy; you want
the refreshing breezes of Fig-tree Court, and the
soothing atmosphere 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 in-
difference.
“You are very soon tired of Audley, Robert," she
said carelessly; “but of course you have no friends


BEFORE THE STORM.
91
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, interrupt-
ing his cousin. “Audley is the dearest old place, but
when a man has to smoke dried cabbage leaves, you
know, Alicia —"
“Then you really are going to-morrow morning?”
“Positively — by the express 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 postscript, ‘Be sure you answer
my question about Mr. Audley and his friend, you
volatile, forgetful Alicia!""
in her post," said to write to Sugar-plums.


LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
“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 con-
templated 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 never believed 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 pencilled
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 a ditch, and
stood striking the bulrushes with his cane, half-a-dozen
paces away from Robert and Alicia.
"Never mind," said the young lady impatiently;
for she by no means relished the long disquisition
upon my lady's little note. “Give me the letter, and
let me go; it's past eight, and I must answer it by


BEFORE THE STORM.
93
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
lying in a darkened room, with a five-days’-old Chelms-
ford paper to entertain himself withal.
“It's nothing but the cigars, George,” he said re-
peatedly. “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 land-
lord had ridden off in his chaise-cart to purchase sup-
plies for his house — amongst other things, perhaps,


94
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
avoking, Ohich fright field op
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 towards dusk Mr. Audley pro-
posed 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 Aud-
ley without having shown you the old place, which I
give you my honour 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 sun-set, 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.


BEFORE THE STORM.
95
"It ought to be an avenue in a churchyard,” he
said. “How peacefully the dead might sleep under
this sombre 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,
modernised 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 eye-lashes 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 ante-room 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 it is not
at all unlike my lady to have taken this silly freak
like to show good order, door of the


96
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
into her head. I dare say she was afraid we should
go into her rooms, and pry about amongst her pretty
dresses, and meddle with her jewellery. It is very
provoking, for the best pictures in the house are in
that antechamber. There is her own portrait, too, un-
finished, 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 & tapestried chamber, the large figures
upon the faded canvas looking threatening in the dusky
light.
“That fellow with the battle-axe 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. I believe it's
damp, or else haunted. Indeed I believe all ghosts to
be the result of damp. 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


BEFORE THE STORM.
97
bed. The old lady is 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 by: *
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 very 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
Lady Audley's Secret. I.


98
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET,
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, ac-
cording 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 your hands into the passage, which
is about four feet high; stoop your head, and 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, sub-
missively 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 op-
pressive from the rich odours of perfumes in bottles
whose gold stoppers had not been replaced. A bunch


BEFORE THE STORM.
99
of hothouse 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 re-
vealed the treasures within. Jewellery, 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
cheval-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 antechamber, 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
autocontrol of the case donar echamber
a green baize in the centre 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 faith-
ful 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 one candle carried
by Robert only making one bright nucleus of light as
he moved about holding it before the pictures one by
one. The broad bare window looked out upon the


100
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
pale sky, tinged with the last cold flicker of the dead
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, stopping before 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, re-
quest 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 my lady's picture than in all the other
weariness 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.”


BEFORE THE STORM.
101
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 ex-
aggerated every attribute of that delicate face as to
give a lurid lightness 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-coloured fires before my lady's
face, and by their influence brought out new lines and
new expressions never seen in it before. The perfec-
tion of feature, the brilliancy of colouring, were there;
but I suppose the painter had copied quaint mediaval
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 colour 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 colours of each
accessory of the minutely-painted background, all
ur as if the sunship hair, th


102
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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."


BEFORE THE STORM.
103
phys he repectly sincot being ing passa of the
“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 meta-
physical: don't unsettle me.”
He repeated this several times with an air of
terror 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 old
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 by 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 cer-
tainly have it to-morrow.”
A
.


104
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 at the lightning?”
“No,” he answered curtly.
“But, my dear fellow, some of the most courageous
men have been frightened at it. It is scarcely to be
called a fear; it is constitutional. I am sure you are
frightened at it.”
“No, I am not.”


AFTER THE STORM.
105
“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;" 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 bed-room.
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


106
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 bed-room, 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 at 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 cloud-
less sky between the white curtains of his bed-room
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


AFTER THE STORM.
107
with the storm, 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 old hearty manner for which he had been dis-
tinguished 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 thunder-storm 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 im-
mediately agreed upon; and after they had finished their


108
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
breakfast, and ordered a four-o'clock dinner, George Tal-
boys 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 sensibi-
lities of his uncle's young wife. Lady Audley con-
fessed 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 pillows, 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 amongst the distant hills.
Until that hour she lay in the handsome silk dress in
which she had travelled, huddled together amongst the
bed-clothes, only looking up now and then with a
scared face to ask if the storm was over.
Towards four o'clock, her husband, who spent the
night in watching by her bed-side, 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


AFTER THE STORM.
109
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 on to
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 hap-
piness 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 recognise my
little wife in that ghastly, terrified, agonised-looking
creature, crying out about the storm. Thank God for
the morning sun, which has brought back the rosy
cheeks and the 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 was then
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 thunder-storm, frightened of
a rough sea. "Frightened of everything and every-
body, but my dear, noble, handsome husband," she
said.


110
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 while 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 round 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 Ita-
lian 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 re-arranged 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 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


AFTER THE STORM.
111
While Lady Audley amused herself in her own
frivolous fashion, the two young men strolled slowly
along the margin of a 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 heart's content with timid
nibbles at this gentleman's bait, without in any manner
endangering their safety; for George only stared va-
cantly at 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 upon her chestnut mare;
the servants were all at dinner in the back part of the


112
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
house; and my lady had strolled, book in hand, into
the shadowy lime-walk; so the grey 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-natured! Bah, Cæsar! I hate you, and you hate
me; and if you met me in the dark in some narrow


AFTER THE STORM.
113
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 for you?”
Lucy Audley lifted her pencilled eyebrows. “I .
thought he was coming to dinner,” she said. “Surely
we shall have enough of him 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 rang the bell violently,
and it was answered by Phæbe 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 round and looked at Lady Audley as if
waiting for further orders.
Lady Audley's Secret. I.


114
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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.”


MISSING
115
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 bar-
rister was a long time stretching bis 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 con-
trived to rise from the grass, and having deliberately
folded his railway rug into a convenient shape for car-
rying 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 re-
ceiving 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."


116
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 ex-
pected 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 Ro-
bert groaned aloud.
“This is lively!” he said. "A cold dinner, and
nobody to eat it with!”
The landlord of the Sun came himself to apologise
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 waggon laden
with trusses of hay crawling slowly past, the lazy
horses and the lazy waggoner dropping their heads
with a weary stoop under the afternoon sunshine.
There was a flock of sheep straggling about the road,
with a dog running himself into a fever in the en-
deavour to keep them decently together. There were


MISSING.
117
some bricklayers just released from work — a tinker
mending some kettles by the road-side; there was a
dogcart 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 con-
fusion; 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 so
extraordinary in the simple fact of a gentleman being
late for his dinner?
"I shall go and look for him," said Robert snatch-
ing 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 forget 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."


118
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 be-
cause 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 pre-
posterous 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.”
He crossed another meadow, and then seating him-


MISSING.
119
self 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 in-
scribed, 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 I do. You came by the four o'clock, if
you remember, and there's always a many 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."


120
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
“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 what it was brownish
like."
“Was he dressed in grey?”.
“I believe it was grey: a many gents wears grey.
He asked for the ticket sharp and short like, and when
he'd got it walked straight out on to 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."


THE MARK UPON MY LADY'S WRIST.
121.
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 round upon this re-
volving 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 curtsey. "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 ma-
liciously, “since Pythias, in the person of Mr. Robert


122
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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'll 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 Aud-
ley 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 black eyes and hair,
by way of variety.”
“George Talboys is not one of those men. I firmly
believe that his wife's death broke his heart.”
in died, " when good


THE MARK UPON MY LADY'S WRIST.
123
“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 schoolmistress,
telling me that she was dying, and that if I wanted
to see her again I must hasten to her immediately.
The telegraphic despatch 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.


124
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 a 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 infor-
mation 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 re-
proachfully 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 uneasi-
ness 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 Fig-tree Court, and he thought of poor George
Talboys smoking his solitary cigar in the room with
the dogs and the 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


THE MARK UPON MY LADY'S wrist.
125
merrily and continuously as the babble of some brook;
and still Robert's thoughts wandered, in spite of him-
self, 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 towards
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 extraordi-
nary 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 mu-
sician. She struck a few chords, and then wandered


126
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
into a pensive 'sonata of Beethoven's. It was one of
the many paradoxes in her character, that love of
sombre and melancholy melodies, so opposite to her
gay, frivolous 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 jewelled 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 encoiled 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 ex-
claimed.
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, laugh-


THE MARK UPON MY LADY'S WRIST.
127
ing. “I am rather absent in mind, and amused my-
self a few days ago by tying a piece of ribbon round
my arm so tightly, that it left a bruise when I re-
moved 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 colour.”
Sir Michael took the slender wrist in his strong
hand.
"Hold the candles, 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 these 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 said that he should run


128
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
up to London by the first train to look for George, in
Fig-tree Court.
“If I don't find him there, I shall go to South-
ampton,” he said “and if I don't find him there "
“What then?" asked my lady.
“I shall think that something strange has hap-
pened.”
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
the Sun Inn, where he and George had lounged to-
gether, staring out of the window, and smoking their
cigars.
“To think,” he said meditatively, “that it is pos-
sible 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. Robert Audley's lymphatic nature, deter-
mination 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 fulfilment 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


THE MARK UPON MY LADY'S WRIST.
129
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.
Lady Audley's Secret. I.


130
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
CHAPTER XII.
Still Missing.
THE September sun-light sparkled upon the foun-
tain in the Temple Gardens, when Robert Audley re-
turned to Fig-tree 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 mantel-pieces 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 round the room, now
and then whistling to his delighted canaries, a slip-
shod 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.


STILL MISSING.
131
Had anything happened to the poor dear gentle-
man? she asked, seeing Robert Audley's pale face.
He turned round 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 dull street leading down to the water, where
George's father-in-law lived. Little Georgey was
playing at the open parlour 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 parlour to look
at the strange gentleman.
He was a handsome boy, with his father's brown
eyes and dark waving hair, and yet with some latent
expression which was not his father's, and which per-
vaded his whole face, so that although each feature of
9*


132
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
a mans a newspapeorgey are of his
the child resembled the same feature in George Tal-
boys, the boy was not actually like him.
The old man 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 little parlour. 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 scat-
tered upon the dirty carpet. Little Georgey crept to-
wards 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 came 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 South-
ampton?”
"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 heavens!” said Robert, "what useless anxiety


STILL MISSING.
133
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 knew 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 extra-
ordinary 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


134
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 re-
member?"
“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!”


STILL MISSING.
135
“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 ex-
cellent 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 grandpapa. 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


136
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 centre 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
pencilled 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 despatch. The upper
portion had been burnt away, but the more important


STILL MISSING.
137
part, the greater part of the message itself, remained.
alboys came to
last night,
and left by the mail for London, on his way for Liver-
pool, 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 in-
quiries there."


138
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 grey 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 con-
fused 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 rooms 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


TROUBLED DREAMS.
139
strange the telefcbyard med fort
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
altogether 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 endeavour to unravel
the mystery of the telegraphic despatch; at another
time he was in the churchyard 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 stone-
mason, was told that the man had a reason for re-
moving the inscription, a reason that Robert would
some day learn.
He started from his dreams to find there was some
one knocking at the outer door of his chambers.
It was a dreary wet morning, the rain beating
against the windows, and the canaries twittering dis-
mally to each other — complaining, perhaps, of the
bad weather. Robert could not tell how long the per-
son had been knocking. He had heard the sound with
his dreams, and when he woke he was only half con-
scious of outer things.
“It is that stupid Mrs. Maloney, I dare say," he


140
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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
afterwards 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, Misther Audley, but walked
straight in with the key - "
"Then who did knock? There's been someone
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?”


TROUBLED DREAMS.
141
“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 mes-
sage 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 mes-
sage 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 towards himself, or towards 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 civilised 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 mes-
sage 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


142
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
o'clock, so Robert Audley left Fig-tree 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 new paper, and looked in-
stinctively at the second column, with a morbid interest
in the advertisements of people missing – sons, bro-
thers, and husbands who had left their homes, never
to return or to be heard of more.
There was one advertisement of a young man who
was 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 vessels 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.
lays for the
sailed at 10 for Melbou


TROUBLED DREAMS.
143
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 amongst 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 remem-
bered 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
:


144
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
them good morning. As he was leaving the office one
of the young men called after him.
“Oh, by the bye, 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 - troubled
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 foolscap, and dipped a
pen in the ink.
But after doing this he paused, leaned his fore-
head upon his hand, and once more relapsed into thought.


TROUBLED DREAMS.
145
"I shall draw up a record of all that has occurred
between our going down to Essex and to-night, be-
ginning at the very beginning.”
He drew up this record in short detached sen-
tences, 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 this objection.
I see my lady. My lady refuses to be introduced
to George 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 despatch the
next morning which summons her to London.
Lady Audley's Secret. I.
10
thong time I was corties, objec


146
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
“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 un-
known to my lady. In one of the rooms we find her
portrait.
“9. George is frightened at the storm. His con-
duct 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 South-
ampton, 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


TROUBLED DREAMS.
147
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 several of
them with a pencilled 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 clue 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.”
10*


148
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
CHAPTER XIV.
Phæbe'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 break-
fast 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 who can be silly enough to advertise for
him. The young man was evidently of a restless,
roving disposition - a sort of Bamfylde Moore Carew
of modern life, whom no attraction could ever keep in
one spot.”
Though the advertisement appeared three succes-
sive 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


PHIEBE'S SUITOR.
149
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, Cæsar, who was the sole recipient of the young
lady's confidences; "she is a practised and consummate
flirt, Cæsar; 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 im-
pertinence 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 Cæsar. She came up


150
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
hold of his cal her. She mal friends with Sir Michael
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 sup-
pressed 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 Cæsar
should be frightened of so fragile a creature as Lucy
Audley.
Amiable 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 at least be neutral. You won't
try to injure me?”
“Injure you!” exclaimed Alicia; “how should I in-
jure you?”


PHEBE'S SUITOR.
151
“You'll not try to deprive me of your father's
affection?"
"I may not be as amiable as you are, my lady,
and I may not have the same sweet smiles and pretty
words for every stranger I meet, but I am not capable
of a contemptible meanness; and even if I were,
I think you are so secure of my father's love, that
nothing but your own act will ever deprive you
of it.”
“What a severe creature you are, Alicia!” said
my lady, making a little grimace. “I suppose you
mean to infer by all that, that I'm deceitful. Why,
I can't help smiling at people, and speaking prettily
to them. I know I'm no better than the rest of the
world, but I can't help it if I'm pleasanter. It's con-
stitutional."
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, only natural that my lady, being of
an eminently social disposition, should find herself
thrown a good deal upon her white-eyelashed maid for
society.
Phæbe Marks was exactly the sort of 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 in-
tellectual tarantella, in which her tongue went mad to


152
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 those 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 Phæbe
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 discoloured 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


PHCBE'S SUITOR.
153
sable mantle. “Everything dropping to ruin and de-
cay, 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,
Phæbe? 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 her-
self closely in her fur, walked so fast, that her maid
had some difficulty in keeping up with her.
“Do you remember, Phæbe,” she said presently,
relaxing her pace, “do you remember that French
story we read — the story of a beautiful woman who
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 cen-
tury, spending her old age in her family château, be-
loved and honoured by all the province, as an un-
canonised 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 re-
vealed in romances, and she was tried, found guilty,
and condemned to be burned alive? The king who
had worn her colours was dead and gone; the court of


154
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET..
which she had been the star had passed away; power-
ful functionaries and great magistrates, who might
perhaps have helped her, were mouldering in their
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
only by 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 candour.
"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 decorations 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 no lady’s-maid ever 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


PH@BE'S SUITOR.
155
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 Phæbe any peace
till she obtained for him, by the aid of my lady's in-
terference, a situation as under-groom at 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 grey 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 grey 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, Phæbe ?” asked my lady
sharply.
The girl was sitting on a low stool at her mis-
tress's 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.
The lady's der afternoont window with the


156
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
Presently she said, rather as if she had been think-
ing 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 shan't marry him, Phæbe. In the first place,
I hate the man; and, in the next place, I can't afford


PHEBE'S SUITOR.
157
to part with you. We'll give him a few pounds and
send him about his business.”
Phoebe Marks caught my lady's hands 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, Phæbe," 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 pro-
mised 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


158
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 splendour; 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 meant 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 with-
out uttering a word in answer to her offer. Phæbe
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," an-
swered 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 Aud-
ley, 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 sank


PHEBE'S SUITOR.
159
under hers, then walking straight up to her maid, she
said in a high, piercing voice, peculiar to her in mo-
ments of intense agitation, “Phæbe 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 !”


. 160
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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, undistinguish-
able 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 grey old chimney, every village child and
straggling cur, seeming strange and weird of aspect in
the semi-darkness, Phæbe 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 bride-
groom.
Luke Marks, dressed in his ill-fitting Sunday
clothes, looked by no means handsomer than in his
every-day apparel; but Phæbe, arrayed in a rustling
silk of delicate grey, that had been worn about half a
dozen times by her mistress, looked, as the few spec-
tators of the ceremony remarked, quite the lady.
A very dim and shadowy lady; vague of outline,


ON TIE WATCH.
161
des
a superstiti scure light of pale and
the bride
and faint of colouring; 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 vaults 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 centre 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 some-
thing 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 some-
times made cruel use of its power. It was the wind
that battered and bent the low, thatched roofs of out-
houses 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 im-
Lady Audley's Secret. I.
11


162
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
pudently set up to tell the movements of its mighti-
ness; it was the wind that made light of any little bit
of wooden trellis-work, or creeping plant, or tiny bal-
cony, or any modest decoration whatsoever, and tore
and scattered it in its scornful fury; it was the wind
that left mossy secretions on the discoloured 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
parlour, while their horses munched some suspicious
mixture of mouldy 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 import-
ance of the demand.
So Luke Marks, who was by no means troubled
with an eye for the beautiful, thought himself very
fortunate in becoming landlord of the Castle Inn,
Mount Stanning.


ON THE WATCH.
163
A chaise-cart was waiting in the fog to convey the
bride and bridegroom to their new home; and a few
of the simple villagers, who had known Phæbe from a
child, were lingering round 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 round 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 gowns 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 round 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-
coloured ribbons in her cap, and complained bitterly
of the dulness of Audley Court.
But Christmas brought visitors to the rambling old
mansion. A country squire and his fat wife occupied
11*


164
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 clamour;
strange servants horded together on the garret storey;
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.
Amongst 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 fore-


ON THE WATCH.
165
arm, or the colt that had just come back from the
veterinary surgeon's, set down Mr. 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 travelled 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 com-
panion had been taken by the barrister vi et armis from
a costermonger 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 grey pony of Sir Michael's,
and drawing up breathless and panting at the door of
some farm-house, had expressed his intention of follow-
ing the hounds no further that morning. He had even
gone so far as to put on, with great labour, a pair of
skates, with a view to taking a turn on the frozen
surface of the fish-pond, and had fallen ignominiously
at the first attempt, lying placidly extended on the flat


166
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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
for the re-adjustment of the cushions. But this year
he showed no inclination for any of these outdoor
amusements. 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 unfor-
tunate fox. Lady Audley interests me, and my uncle's
county friends do not. Is that a sufficient answer,
Alicia?”
drawing-room contemptuspiritless fel
hunting


ON THE WATCH.
167
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 easychair 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, in-
animate countenance."
Mr. Robert Audley opened his handsome grey eyes
to their widest extent at this tirade, and looked help-
lessly 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 coun-
tenance. 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


168
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 pleases 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 ma-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 Robert
could investigate the truth of this assertion Alicia had
darted out of the room.
Mr. Audley was preparing to follow her, when he
heard her voice in the courtyard below, amidst the


ON THE WATCH.
169
trampling of horses and the clamour of visitors, dogs,
and grooms. Sir Harry Towers, the most aristocratic
young sportsman in the neighbourhood, had just taken
her little foot in his hand as she sprang into her
saddle.
"Good heavens!” 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 Fig-tree
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 take
them straight across Fleet Street to St. Dunstan's
Church, and deliver them into the hands of their hus-
bands."
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


170
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 colours 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
— that made six pounds five a quarter. How well I
remember receiving the money - six dingy old sover-
eigns, 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 colours I am
using cost a guinea each at Windsor and 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 colours were mixed; she was copying a water-
coloured sketch of an impossibly beautiful Italian
peasant, in an impossibly Turneresque atmosphere.
The sketch was nearly finished, and she had only to


ON THE WATCH.
171
put in some critical little touches with the most deli-
cate 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.”
Lucy Audley's clear blue eyes dilated as she fixed
them suddenly on the young barrister. The winter
sunlight, gleaming full upon her face from a side win-
dow, lit up the azure of those beautiful eyes, till their
colour seemed to flicker and tremble betwixt blue and
green, as the opal tints of the sea change upon a sum-
mer'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 crumpled
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 mur-
mured. “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!
Do you know that you sometimes puzzle me --"


172
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
“Not more than you puzzle me, my dear aunt.”
My lady put away her colours and sketch-book,
and seating herself in the deep recess of another win-
dow at a considerable distance from Robert Audley
settled herself 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
- the day upon which he left me asleep in the mea-
dows on the other side of the village."
“Dear me!” exclaimed my lady, “what a strange


ON THE WATCH.
173
young man this Mr. George Talboys must be! Pray
tell me all about it.”
Robert told, in a few words, of his visit to South-
ampton, 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 what-
ever; 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. Secondly, that he never went to South-
ampton at all."
“But you traced him there. His father-in-law had
seen him."
“I have reason to doubt his father-in-law's in-
tegrity.”
“Good gracious me!", cried my lady, piteously.
“What do you mean by all this?”
“Lady Audley," answered the young man gravely,
"I have never practised as a barrister. I have enrolled
myself in the ranks of a profession, the members of
which hold solemn responsibilities, and have sacred


174
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
duties to perform; and I have shrunk from those re-
sponsibilities 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 interrup-
tion, “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 over-cautious 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; a thousand circumstances so
slight as to be forgotten by the criminal, but links of
steel 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 grey 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


ON THE WATCH.
175
-
mullioned window by which she sat; but every trace of
the natural colour of that face had faded out, leaving
it a ghastly ashen grey.
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 South-
ampton."


176
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
CHAPTER XVI.
Robert Audley gets his Congé.
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 grey,
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 storey 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 the carriage windows
to smile the last farewell upon the group at the hall
door, as the vehicle rattled and rumbled under the
ivied archway. ir Michael was in request every-
where. Shaking hands with the young sportsmen;
kissing the rosy-cheeked girls; sometimes even em-
bracing 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


ROBERT AUDLEY GETS HIS congé.
177
the stables to the courtyard, from the courtyard 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, mourn-
ful 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 visi-
tors 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 inten-
tion whatever of leaving his uncle's house. He had no
professional duties, he said; Fig-tree Court was delight-
fully shady in hot weather, but there was a sharp corner
round which the wind came in the winter 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
Lady Audley's Secret. I.
12


178
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 thought-
fully 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 inter-
view in which considerable emotion was displayed by
the stalwart young foxhunter; so much emotion, indeed,
and of such a genuine and honest character, that Alicia
fairly broke down as she told him that she should for
ever esteem and respect him for his true and noble
heart, but that he must never, 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 grey 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


ROBERT AUDLEY GETS HIS CONGÉ.
179
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've been crying?!!
The young lady did not condescend to reply.
“You've 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
12*


180
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
and his touldn't eat na, thirdly, left
handsome young panther might look at its daring tor-
mentor.
"I thought not. I dare say Sir Harry would ask
if it was a new kind of horse-ball. I knew by induc-
tion that the baronet was going to make you an offer;
first, because he came down stairs with his hair parted
on the wrong side, and his face as pale as the table-
cloth; secondly, because he couldn't eat any breakfast,
and let his coffee go the wrong way; and, thirdly, be-
cause 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 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 out-
riders 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, and 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?"


ROBERT AUDLEY GETS HIS CO
181
“Yes."
“Then don't, Alicia, don't,” said Robert Audley,
grasping his cousin's slender little wrist, and leading
her upstairs. “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 quar-
relling, if we can.”
The cousins had the drawing-room all to them-
selves. 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 neighbours 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."


182
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
Alicia opened her grey 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?" Miss
Audley asked, 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 your-
self of banging doors, bouncing in and out of 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 — but 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 sank into an easy-chair, he


ROBERT AUDLEY GETS HIS CONGÉ.
183
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 now in returning to
the stately mansion hidden among sheltering oaks and
venerable beeches. The square, red-brick house gleam-
ing at the end of a long arcade of leafless trees was to
be for ever 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 drink-
ing 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 young baronet's mind.
He had been desperately in love with Alicia ever


184
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
since the last hunting season, when he had met her at
a 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 mau-
vaise 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!” he had been so spoiled by the flatteries of
bright eyes that had looked, or seemed to look, the
brighter when he drew near, that without being pos-
sessed 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 imme-
diately accepted.
“Yes,” he would say complacently to some admi-
ring 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, and 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


ROBERT AUDLEY GETS HIS CONGÉ.
185
and wears green spectacles; but, hang it! I like a
girl 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 mono-
syllable, Sir Harry Towers felt that the whole fabric
of the future he had built up 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," interposed 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 mys-
tery - there's some mystery!”


186
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 wel-
come,” 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 honourable
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.


ROBERT AUDLEY GETS HIS CONGÉ.
187
"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've been 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 to-night.”
“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 — strongly, strangely interests me;" and
then, with a change in his voice, and an emotion not
common to him, he turned to the baronet, and grasping


188
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
The young vinted fashion före, and the
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 lightest shadow of
dishonour should ever fall upon your honoured head
- least of all through any 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 Phæbe
Marks if he could be accommodated with apartments.


IN THE CASTLE INN.
189
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-parlour 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 employed in its construction,
and that the wind, having a special fancy for this un-
protected 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 speciality was never to be
shut, yet always to be banging; windows constructed
with a peculiar view to letting in the draught when
they were closed, 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 wood-work,
or a trowelful of plaster employed in all the rickety


190
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 com-
forts 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 cham-
bers in Fig-tree 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 favourites, who sat shivering before
the smoky little fire, barking shortly and sharply
now and then, by way of hinting for some slight re-
freshment.
While Mr. Robert Audley contemplated his new
quarters, Phæbe 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 into 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


IN THE CASTLE INN.
191
message from Phæbe 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 hilly 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."
Phæbe 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 grey dress
fitted as precisely, as of old. The same neutral tints
pervaded her person and her dress; no showy rose-
coloured ribbons or rustling silk gown proclaimed the
well-to-do innkeeper's wife. Phoebe Marks was a per-
son who never lost her individuality. Silent and self-
contained, she seemed to hold herself within herself,
and take no colour from the outer world.
Robert looked at her thoughtfully as she spread
the cloth, and drew the table nearer to the fire-place.
“That,” he thought, “is a woman who could keep
a secret.”


192
LADY AUDLEY'S 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 in a horse-hair-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 Phæbe, 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.”


AT THE CASTLE INN.
193
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 Phæbe
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 com-
fort of this apartment,” murmured Robert; “and there
certainly are pleasanter sensations than that of standing
up to one's knees in cold water.”
He poked the fire, patted his dogs, put on his
great-coat, rolled a rickety old sofa close to the
hearth, wrapped his legs in his railway rug, and
stretching himself at full length upon the narrow
horsehair cushion, smoked his pipe, and watched the
bluish-grey wreaths curling slowly upwards to the dingy
ceiling.
“No,” he murmured again; “that is a woman who
can keep a secret. A counsel for the prosecution would
get very little out of her.”
I have said that the bar-parlour was only separated
from the sitting-room occupied by Robert by a lath-
and-plaster partition. The young barrister could hear
Lady Audley's Secret. I.
13


194
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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, espe-
cially 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 front door upon the last of his customers,
he strolled quietly into the bar-parlour where the land-
lord was seated with his wife.
Phoebe was busy at a little table, upon which
stood a prim workbox, with every reel of cotton and
glistening steel bodkin in its appointed place. She
was darning the coarse grey 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 colour 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 Aud-
ley's fairy boudoir at the Court.
She looked up suddenly as Robert entered the bar-
parlour. There was some shade of vexation in her
pale grey eyes, which changed to an expression of


AT THE CASTLE INN.
195
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 com-
fortably 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
Phæbe'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 under-tone Phoebe looked up from her work
and spoke to him.
“We forgot the brewhouse door, Luke,” she said.
13*


196
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
“Will you come with me and help me put up the
bar?”
“The brewhouse 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 brewhouse 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 brewhouse door. I suppose you don't
want me to open my mouth to this 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!”
Phæbe Marks shrugged her shoulders, folded her
work, shut her workbox, and crossing her hands in her
lap, sat with her grey 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.


AT THE CASTLE INN.
197
“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 agoin' 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, speaking with
wonderful distinctness, and addressing his words to
Luke Marks, but fixing his eyes upon Phæbe'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?”
Phæbe's face, at all times almost colourless, 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 com-
plexion.
“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 "


198
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 mouth, 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 towards Audley
seemed untrodden by a footstep, as Robert looked out
at the wintry landscape.
"Lively," he said, "for a man used to the fascina-
tions of Temple Bar!”.
As he watched the snow-flakes falling every mo-
ment 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


ROBERT RECEIVES A VISITOR.
199
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 minutes when
Phæbe Marks entered the room to announce Lady
Audley.
“Lady Audley! Pray beg her to come in,” said
Robert; and then, as Phæbe 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 colouring 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 watched 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!”


200
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
“Yes, indeed! Why did you come out in such
weather, Lady Audley?”
“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
very ceremonious towards 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
looked down almost sadly at her bright, animated
face.
“Lady Audley," he said. "Heaven forbid that
either you or I should ever bring grief or dishonour
upon my uncle's generous heart! Better perhaps, that
I should be out of the house -- better, perhaps, that
I had never entered it!”


ROBERT RECEIVES A VISITOR.
201
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 grey eyes. A dan-
gerous man, my lady - a man in whose power I should
not like to be.”
A sudden change came over Lady Audley's face;


202
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 feel-
ings towards other people are strangely embittered.”
"You mean the Mr. Talboys who went to Austra-
lia ?"
“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


ROBERT RECEIVES A VISITOR.
203
Essex, on the 6th of September last. I ought to re-
ceive 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, stabbed to
death upon this hearth-stone on which I now stand,
and I might stay here for a twelve-month, 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 common-place,
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 blood-stains
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


204
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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
that my friend is dead.”
“Yes, and then — ?”
“I shall examine the effects he left at my
chambers.”
"Indeed! and what are they? Coats, waist-coats,
varnished boots, and meerschaum pipes, I suppose,”
said Lady Audley, laughing.
“No; letters — letters from his friends, his old
school-fellows, 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.


ROBERT RECEIVES A VISITOR.
205
“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 towards 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 Fig-tree 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 towards Audley, but in the direc-
tion 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


206
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
a mugi. Sir; started
her by as to the line to Lon
watching the snow falling in the whitened fields op-
posite, 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 sta-
tion. 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 mis-
taken, I know where to find her.”
He packed his portmanteau, paid his bill, which
was carefully receipted by Phæbe Marks, fastened his
dogs together with a couple of leathern collars and a
chain, and stepped into the rumbling fly kept at 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
huge railway rugs, and smoking a cigar in mild defi-
ance of the authorities. “The Company may make as
many bye-laws as they please,” he murmured, “but I
shall take the liberty of enjoying my cheroot as long
as I've half-a-crown left to give the guard.”


THE BLACKSMITH'S MISTAKE.
207
CHAPTER XIX.
The Blacksmith's Mistake.
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 attend-
ant porter who had called his cab, and undertaken
the general conduct of the 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 consum-
mate patience for a considerable time; but as the ex-
press 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 descrip-
tion, it took a long while to make matters agreeable
to all claimants, and even the barrister's seraphic in-
difference to mundane affairs nearly gave way. . .
“Perhaps, when that gentleman who is making
such a noise about a pointer with liver-coloured 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


208
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 had heard a bell ring, and, looking at the
clock, had remembered that the down train for Col-
chester 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 plat-
form 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 plat-
form 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


THE BLACKSMITH'S MISTAKE.
209
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 rang, 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
Lady Audley's Secret. I.
14


210
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 Fig-tree 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 port-
manteaus, 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 con-
dition 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


THE BLACKSMITH'S MISTAKE.
211
awaited only sent for if anybody
housewives, for neither the portmanteau nor the trunk
were dusty.
Mr. Audley despatched 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 express-
ing her delight in the return of "the masther,” 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 honour; there's been no
lady for the kay; barrin' it's the blacksmith yer honour
manes.”
“The blacksmith!”
“Yes; the blacksmith your honour 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 honour 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 labour -
14*


212
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
"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. Ma-
loney 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 gentle-
man was spending his Christmas. Mrs. Maloney, be-
lieving 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 after-
noon, and I took the opporchunity 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


THE BLACKSMITH'S MISTAKE.
213
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 stairrs,
your honour — " and here she rambled off into a dis-
quisition 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 daresay, without your being any the wiser.”
Mrs. Maloney stared at her employer with mingled
surprise and alarm.
“Sure, there wasn't anythin' for him to stale, your
honour, barrin' the birds and the geranums, 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 determina-
tion, and walked towards 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


214
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 common-place 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 atten-
tion.
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 colourless extract of the juniper
berry, much affected by the masses; but of bôna 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 coloured.
The locksmith was speaking as Robert Audley
opened the door.
“And with that,” he said, “she walked off, as
graceful as you please.”


THE BLACKSMITH'S MISTAKE.
215
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 com-
panions. 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'll 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 so good as
to look over the mistake as has occurred, which I've
been in business thirteen year come July, and —-".
“Nothing of this kind ever happened before, I sup-


216
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
pose,” 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's neighbours, 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
Mr. Robert Audley for being caught in the act of en-
joying himself in his own parlour.
Robert cut him short with a careless nod.
“Pray don't apologise,” 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's
neighbours, 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


THE BLACKSMITH'S MISTAKE.
217
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
round 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 fami-
liar meal; remembering his uncle's cook with a fond,
regretful sorrow.
“Her cutlets à 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


218
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
next room, and had never been taken away to be
buried. How long ago that September afternoon ap-
pears 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!"


THE WRITING IN THE BOOK.
219
CHAPTER XX.
The Writing in the Book.
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 un-
locked the doors of this 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 port-
manteaus 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 anyone 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


220
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
each article separately, and laying it carefully upon a
chair by his side. He handled the things with a re-
spectful 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 labelled 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 amongst 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, amongst
the mourning garments in the trunk. Whether he had
afterwards 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


THE WRITING IN THE BOOK.
221
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 his 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 humour
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


222
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
clerk's office, prior to bidding her employer good
night. As the door closed upon the Irishwoman, he
rose 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 com-
plete? I think and 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, crueller
words, I believe him to be dead. Am I bound to dis-
cover 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;


THE WRITING IN THE BOOK.
223
conscious of his own weakness; anxious to keep to the
strict line of duty; fearful to swerve from the con-
scientious 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. Per-
haps he uttered his first thoroughly earnest prayer that
night, seated by his lonely fireside, thinking of George
Talboys. When he raised his head from that long and
silent reverie, 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 afterwards.”
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 caligraphy; the Tom Jones
had evidently been bought at a book-stall, and bore
an inscription, dated March 14th, 1788, setting forth
that the work was a tribute of respect to Mr. Thomas
Scrowton, from his obedient servant, James Anderley;
the Don Juan and the Testament were blank. Robert


• 224
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 common-place. 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 these 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
Counter nothing which bright
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 natu-
rally as the tendril of a vine; and was very opposite in
texture, if not different in hue, to the soft, smooth
tress 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 memoran-
dum about George Talboys and Alicia's letter, in the
pigeon-hole marked important. He was going to replace
the fat annual amongst the other books, when he dis-


THE WRITING IN THE BOOK.
225
covered that the two blank leaves at the beginning
were stuck together. He was so determined to pro-
secute 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 perseve-
rance 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 pre-
cious 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 her-
self, 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."
Lady Audley's Secret. I.
15


226
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
with had never had gladly avıdent mar
careless of that immediates his lettre
CHAPTER XXI.
Mrs. Plowson.
AMONGST the packet of letters which Robert Audley
had found in George's trunk, there was one labelled
with the name of the missing man's father — the father,
who had never been too indulgent a friend to his only
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 ab-
surd disappearance was only in character with his pre-
posterous marriage. The writer of this fatherly letter
added in a postscript that if Mr. George Talboys had
any low design of alarming his friends by this pre-
tended disappearance, and thereby playing on their
feelings with a view to pecuniary advantage, he was


MRS. PLOWSON.'
227
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 des-
patching 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-indif-
ferent Mr. Harcourt Talboys.
“I will run into Dorsetshire after I leave South-
ampton,” 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 to-
gether 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 com-
15*


228
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
forters 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 cer-
tain 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, towards 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


MRS. PLOWSON.
229
gods in one of those dreary thoroughfares which spe-
culative 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 parlour door of an adjacent tavern while the car-
cases were yet unfinished. The man who had bought
the brick and mortar skeletons had gone through the
Bankruptcy Court while the paperhangers were still
busy in Brigsome's Terrace, and had whitewashed his
ceilings and himself simultaneously. Ill-luck and in-
solvency 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 parlour 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 water-side 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


230
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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
lost 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 Ro-
bert could hear the clattering of knives and forks and
the childish voice of little George prattling gaily. 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 fur-
ther ceremony, he opened the door of the parlour.
The girl stared at him aghast as he did this; and, as
if struck by some sudden 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 lieute-
nant'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.


MRS. PLOWSON.
231
When Robert entered the sitting-room he was sur-
prised to find little George seated opposite to a woman
who was doing the honours of a shabby repast, spread
upon a dirty tablecloth, and flanked by a pewter beer
measure. The woman rose as Robert entered, and
curtsied 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 notice-
able in her mouth, which was an obvious misfit for the
set of teeth it contained. She smiled as she curtsied
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


232
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
gave me some money, and I gave it to granpa to take
care of, and granpa kept it, and he always does.”
Robert Audley took the boy in his arms, and car-
ried 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're 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's once — day-school, you know – round the
corner in the next street; but I caught the measles,
and granpa wouldn't let me go any more, for fear I
should catch the measles again; and granpa 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 musn'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 un-
easily at Mr. Robert Audley.
“What on earth is the matter with this woman?”
thought Robert, as he turned from the boy to the fair-


MRS. PLOWSON.
233
haired widow, who was edging herself slowly towards
the table upon which little George Talboys stood talking
to his guardian. “Does she still take me for a tax-
collector with inimical intentions towards these wretched
goods and chattels; or can the cause of her fidgetty
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 same 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 grey eyes.
“I like you very much,” he said. “I was frightened


234
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
"Nou know appointes Mr. Ma
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 fidgetty about some one, ma'am,
I'm afraid,” said Robert.
She coloured 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
jewelled 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 jeweller who cleans it is an idle man,
granpa says, and always keeps it such a long time;
and granpa says it will have to be cleaned again, be-
cause 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 all 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


MRS. PLOWSON.
235
Georgey'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 on to Mr.
Audley's knees, assisting his descent by a very un-
ceremonious manipulation of his guardian's coat collar.
“I'll tell you all about the pretty lady," he said,
“because I like you very much. Grandpa 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


236
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 obliged to
wet them with her tongue before the words would
come.
The little boy relieved her embarrassment.
“Don't be cross, Mrs. Plowson,” he said. “Mrs.
Plowson is very kind to me. Mrs. Plowson is Matilda's
mother. You didn'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 parlour-
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 polite-


MRS. PLOWSON.
237
ness, 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."


238
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
CHAPTER XXII.
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 clear-
ing 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
vapours 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?"
asked Robert, scrutinising 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."


LITTLE GEORGEY LEAVES HIS OLD HOME.
239
“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 an-
swered, confusedly, shuffling his scanty limp grey hairs
with his two wandering hands — “I know; but he
might have come back — mightn't he? He was rest-
less, and — and — queer in his mind, perhaps, some-
times. He might have come back.”
He repeated this two or three times, in feeble,
muttering tones; groping about on the littered mantel-
piece for a dirty-looking clay-pipe, and filling and
lighting it with hands that trembled violently.
Robert Audley watched those poor withered, tre-
mulous 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


LITTLE GEORGEY LEAVES HIS OLD HOME.
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! Hiding 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 him-
self; beating his hands upon his grey head, and rock-
ing backwards and forwards 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, re-
lentless voice, “that my friend never left Essex; and
I believe that he died on the 7th of September last.”
The wretched old man, still beating his hands
amongst his thin grey hair, slid from his chair to the
ground, and grovelled at Robert's feet.
“Oh! no, no - for God's sake, no!” he shrieked
hoarsely. “No! you don't know what you say — you
don't know what you ask me to think -- 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?” mut-
tered the old man, feebly; then raising himself from
Lady Audley's Secret. I.
16


LITTLE GEORGEY LEAVES HIS OLD HOME.
243
ing 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 common 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 contem-
plated 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 grey head upon the soiled
table-cloth, 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
The ma the piteous scssex and to sd shame.
16*


244
SECRET.
LADY AUDLE
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 re-
motest 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 for ever, and purposely
fly from the possibility of ever coming across another
clue to the secret, I would do it — I would gladly,
thankfully do it -- but I cannot! A hand which is


LITTLE GEORGEY LEAVES HIS OLD HOME.
245
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 warn-
ing you would give to any one, give it. If the secret
towards which I am travelling 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 en-
dangered; let them go away -- they shall not be pur-
sued. 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 handker-
chief.
“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 endeavoured in a feeble manner to show to
Robert Audley that his wild outburst of anguish had


248
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
The face into which he was looking changed very
slightly; but the eyes that had been looking at his
shifted away as he spoke, and once more 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 common notion of death which
is generally imparted to children by their wise elders,
and which always leads the infant mind to the open
grave, but 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 neighbourhood, 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


LITTLE GEORGEY LEAVES HIS OLD HOME.
249
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 realised by the mind of a young man like your-
self; he has been kept away from school, perhaps,
sometimes, and has 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, Georgey, 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 mora 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 honour
that I will extort nothing from his innocent simplicity
which can in any manner – I mean,” he said, break-


250
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
ing 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 that the
most accomplished detective would like to get his in-
formation 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 gentle-
man to take his poor grandpa's pet away,” Mrs. Plow-
son 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 shan't trouble anybody
long."
The tears oozed slowly through the dirty fingers
with which he shaded his bloodshot 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 ever 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


LITTLE GEORGEY LEAVES HIS OLD HOME.
251
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 gerani-
ums 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.
“Say good-by to your grandpapa, Georgey."
The little fellow sprang towards the old man, and
clinging about him, kissed the dirty tears from his
faded cheeks.
“Don't be sorry for me, grandpa,” he said; “I am
going to school to learn to be a clever man, and I shall
come home to see you and Mr. Plowson, shan'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,


252
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
wandemy for a Mr. Marcip-looking of a couple
hot suppers of the most indigestible nature, and sips of
rum-and-water from his grandfather's glass.
He communicated his sentiments upon many sub-
jects 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, towards Mr. Marchmont's
academy for young gentlemen.
He found Mr. Marchmont a very sensible man, and
he met a file of orderly-looking young gentlemên walk-
ing townwards 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. March-
mont's especial care, and he further requested that no
visitors should be admitted to see the boy, unless ac-
credited by a letter from himself. Having arranged
the matter in a very few business-like words, he re-
turned 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


LITTLE GEORGEY LEAVES HIS OLD HOME.
253
attention to the different objects of interest in the
High-street.
Poor Robert had about as much notion of the re-
quirements 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 vagué 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 moustache 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 table, as a preparatory
step towards laying a cloth.
"Perhaps you'd like some lunch?” Mr. Audley
suggested, still pulling his moustache.
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 stand-still.


254
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 grandpa calls something savoury.
I should like a veal cutlet. Grandpa told me he dined
here once, and the veal cutlets were lovely, grandpa
said. Please may I have a veal cutlet, with egg and
bread-crumb, you know, and some lemon-juice, you
know?” he added to the waiter. “Grandpa knows the
cook here. The cook's such a nice gentleman, and
once gave me a shilling, when grandpa brought me
here. The cook wears better clothes than grandpa —
better than yours even,” said Master Georgey, pointing
to Robert's rough great-coat with a depreciatory 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 — “P'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
- "a little Julienne, some stewed eels, a dish of cut-
lets, a bird, and a pudding. What do you say to that,
George bird, and a piccome stewede your repeated Robe


LITTLE GEORGEY LEAVES HIS OLD HOME.
255
"I don't think the young gentleman will object to
it when he sees it, sir,” said the waiter. “Eels, Ju-
lienne, 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 shan'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 moulder-
ing walls of the town towards 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's pale ale
to an extent which considerably alarmed his enter-
tainer, and enjoyed himself amazingly, showing an ap-


256
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
preciation 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, enclosing a
cheque 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 brother. He's a
common boy, you know. Matilda was common, but
she "
But the flyman smacking his whip at this moment,
the old horse jogged off, and Robert Audley heard no
more of Matilda.


COMING TO A STANDSTILL.
257
CHAPTER XXIII.
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 centre 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 very last
person in this world with whom it was possible to as-
sociate 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 south-
erly 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 insomuch as 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 grey eyes, and scanty dark
hair, brushed from either ear across a bald crown, and
thus imparting to his physiognomy some faint resem-
blance to that of a terrier — a sharp, uncompromising,
Lady Audley's Secret. I.
17


258
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
ht, an the sharfe do not here me
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 circumstance 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 pos-
sessed 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 been
ever known to bend from its remorseless purpose. He


COMING TO A STANDSTILL.
259
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 centre 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 sons 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 him-
self 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 mar-
rying the daughter of a drunken pauper,” Mr. Talboys
would answer to anyone 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
17*


260
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 have liked 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 has 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 were 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 Har-
court Talboys.
“No, my darling,” he would say conclusively. “It
is 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 of for the benefit of the neighbourhood. No,
my pretty one; it is easy to starve, but it is difficult
to stoop.”


COMING TO A STANDSTILL.
261
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 beershop. 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 dra-
goons; and tradespeople always want to serve dragoons;
and hotel-keepers to entertain dragoons; and theatrical
managers to be patronised by dragoons. Who could
have ever expected that a dragoon would drink six-
penny ale, smoke horrid bird's-eye tobacco, and let his
wife wear a shabby bonnet?”
If there were any selfish feeling 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 been bewitched by Lieutenant
Maldon's pretty daughter, and however she might have
changed, the image which had charmed him then,


262
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 ground that was almost as
iron as themselves. The wintry day bore some re-
semblance 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 dis-
believing world that there never had been, and never
could be, any other side.
Robert Audley's heart sank 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


COMING TO A STANDSTILL.
263
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, gravelled carriage-
drive ran between these straight trees across a smoothly-
kept lawn to a square redbrick mansion, every window
of which winked and glittered in the January sunlight,
as if it had been that moment cleaned by some inde-
fatigable house-maid.
I don't know whether Junius Brutus was a nuisance
in his own house, but amongst 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 gravelled 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 con-
taining 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


264
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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, lofty, and paved with stone.
The panels of the oaken wainscot shone with the
same uncompromising polish which was on every ob-
ject within and without the red-bricked mansion.
Some people are so weak-minded as to affect pic-
tures and statues. Mr. Harcourt Talboys was far too
practical to indulge in any such foolish fancies. A
barometer and an umbrella-stand were the only adorn-
ments 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 spare, 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 he had imagined that
everybody in Dorsetshire was acquainted with his
breakfast-hour."


COMING TO A STANDSTILL.
265
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 eye-
brows in placid deprecation of himself and every-
body else.
"I don't belong to Dorsetshire,” he said. “Mr.
Talboys might have known that, if he'd done me the
honour to exercise his powers of ratiocination. Drive
on, my friend."
The emotionless man looked at Robert Audley
with the 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 the top of a table which would have
accommodated eighteen persons, Robert beheld Mr.
Harcourt Talboys.
Mr. Talboys was robed in a dressing-gown of grey
cloth, fastened about his waist with a girdle. It was
a severe-looking garment, and was perhaps the nearest
approach to a 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 grey of his dressing-gown was almost the
same as the cold grey 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 manners or disposition,
but he had expected to see some family likeness be-
tween the father and the son. There was none. It


266
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
Mr. Talboys so have writte in the large Harcourt
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 had 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, to-
wards whom Robert glanced after saluting Harcourt
Talboys, doubtful how to proceed. This second per-
son 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 towards 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


COMING TO A STANDSTILL.
267
daughter, nor had his face been turned towards 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 pro-
ceeding with an expression of supreme 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 honour 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 extra-
ordinary 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."


268
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 splendour and
the very little appearance of any substantial entertain-
ment, 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 grey 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 sons. 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 tranquillity upon an
open gun-powder 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 dis-
appearance.
"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


COMING TO A STANDSTILL.
271
“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 centre, 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 he knew that
all ordinary 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
80," 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


272
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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,
regione Clara Tana majestical hier head in
em the docume papers froes' pause,
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; amongst
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


COMING TO A STANDSTILL.
273
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 school-fellow, and for
the companion who had been dear to me. But the
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 mo-
mentary.
“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.
Lady Audley's Secret. I.
18


274
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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, depre-
cating 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 happened 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,


COMING TO A STANDSTILL.
275
“I await your decision. You have heard my reasons
for coming to this terrible conclusion. In what manner
do those reasons influence you?”
“They do not 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,
18*


276
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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."


CLARA.
277
CHAPTER XXIV.
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-
somnambulant 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 grey
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


278
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 fellowmen? How was it? Because
we have Some One higher than our parents to thank
for the souls which make us great or small; and be-
cause, 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 are 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 un-
known 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 de-
ductions.
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 planta-
tion as he thought this, and he stood up in the vehicle


CLARA.
279
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 mo-
ments 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 towards the hurrying female
figure, which gained upon him rapidly.
He was rather short-sighted, and is was not until
she came very near to him that he saw who she was.
“Good heavens!” he exclaimed, “it's Miss Tal-
boys."
It was Miss Talboys, flushed and breathless, with
a woollen shawl 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


280
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
(she had been flushed when she approached him, but
the colour faded away as she recovered her breath),
regular features, and 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 lustre — terribly bright
and dry — aud 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 towards 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 towards
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,


CLARA.
281
when I have never had power to win 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 backway. 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,” remon-
strated 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
ooking back the house by Mr. Audley, a you go i


CLARA.
283
“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 me-
mory 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 dread-
ful 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 towards 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
further.”
“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


284
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
at him with her bright brown eyes. “I myself will
follow up the clue to this mystery; I will find this
woman - yes, 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 se-
cret 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 na-
tural feelings of my heart, until they have become un-
natural 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 centred
upon him. Do you wonder, then, that when I hear
that his young life has been ended by the hand of


CLARA.
285
simplicity, becamEven her dress.een more pure
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 clas-
sical than hers. Even her dress, puritan in its grey
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 for-
gotten. I do not think that any professional aid which
you could procure would lead you as surely to the se-
cret of this mystery as I can lead you, if you are pa-
tient 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


286
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 Tal-
boys?” 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 agita-
tion 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 re-
plied. “My position becomes every day more com-
plicated, every day more painful. Good-bye.”


CLARA.
287
She gave him her hand mechanically when he held
out his, but it was colder than marble, and it 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 bare-
foot 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."


288
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
“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-bye,
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-bye.”
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 amongst 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."


GEORGE'S LETTERS.
289
CHAPTER XXV.
George's Letters.
ROBERT AUDLEY did not return to Southampton,
but took a ticket for the first up-train that left Ware-
ham, 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 lamps of the gin-palaces
and the flaring gas in the butchers' shops.
Robert Audley shrugged his shoulders as he looked
at the dinsy streets through which the Hansom carried
him, the cabman choosing — with that delicious in-
stinct 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 arrière 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 him-
self for a week or ten days in thirty years, perhaps.
Lady Audley's Secret. I.
19


GEORGE'S LETTERS.
291
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 heart-
less 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 byway 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 sub-
mit 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 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,
our brother elevated
hnical t
19*


292
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
which knows no stoppage or cessation, though the
mainspring be for ever broken, and the hands pointing
to purposeless figures upon 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 had directed the cabman to drop him at
the corner of Chancery-lane, and he ascended the bril-
liantly-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 weari-
ness, 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


GEORGE'S LETTERS.
293
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 “briled sole” or
“biled 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 Fig-tree court was evidently out of spirits.
Robert ate his dinner, and drank a pint of Moselle;
but he had poor appreciation for the excellence of the
viands or the delicate fragrance of the wine. The
mental monologue still went on, and the young philo-
sopher of the modern school was arguing the favourite
modern question of the nothingness of everything, and
the folly of taking too much trouble to walk upon a
road that led 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 recognise 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 my folly. I found two


GEORGE'S LETTERS.
295
ment; 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 some-
times 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 con-
fusion in the helpless innocence of well-placed incapa-
city. 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 mis-
chief, 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 Semira-
mides, and Cleopatras, and Joan of Arcs, Queen Eliza-
beths, and Catharine the Seconds, and they riot in
battle, and murder, and clamour, 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 mantie op the character of emul .
of a mantle or the character of a small maid-servant.
To call them the weaker sex is to utter a hide-
ous 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 -


296
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 profession-
less. 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 beat 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 liber-
ally. The young barrister was very willing to dis-
tribute his comfortable little income amongst the people
who served him, for he carried his indifference to all
things in the universe, even to the matter of pounds,


GEORGE'S LETTERS.
297
shillings, and pence. Perhaps he was rather excep-
tional 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 recognises
the tangible nature of India Bonds, Spanish Certifi-
cates, and Egyptian Scrip – as contrasted with the
painful uncertainty of an Ego or a non-Ego in meta-
physics.
The snug rooms in Fig-tree Court seemed dreary
in their orderly quiet to Robert Audley upon this par-
ticular 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
favourite meerschaum and dropped into his favourite
chair with a sigh.
"It's comfortable, but it seems so d-d 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 has 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


298
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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 correspond-
ent, 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 recognise 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 wo-
man 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 resigna-
tion. 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


GEORGE'S LETTERS.
299
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 expres-
sion 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 purpose
this description would serve when he wrote it,” thought
the young barrister, “surely his hand would have
fallen paralysed by horror, and powerless to shape one
syllable of these tender words.”


300
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
CHAPTER XXVI.
Retrograde Investigation.
The dreary London January dragged its dull
length slowly out. The last slender records of Christ-
mas time were swept away, and Robert Audley still
lingered in town — still spent his lonely evenings in
his quiet sitting-room in Fig-tree Court — still wan-
dered 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


302
· LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
Towards the close of February, Robert received a
letter from his cousin Alicia; which hurried him one
step further forward towards his destiny, by causing
him to return to the house from which he had been
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 espoken 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.”
he readed not shine though the right
A sick and deadly terror chilled Robert Audley's
heart, as he read this letter — a vague yet hideous
fear, wich 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 was clear before him; and the first
step of that course, a rapid journey to Audley Court.
He packed his portmanteau; jumped into a cab; and


304
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
trammelled 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 grey-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 strength 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, as he drew nearer to the
ivied archway, and the still waterpools, coldly grey 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 inter-
woven with the inmost fibres 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 which 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 habi-
-
-
-
-
- -
-
-


RETROGRADE INVESTIGATION.
305
tation? 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
patient endurance and tranquil resignation, calm ex-
pectation 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 talent by in a napkin, knowing
that indifference is near akin to dishonesty? If Robert
Audley had lived in the time of Thomas a Kempis,
he would very likely have built himself a narrow
hermitage amid some forest loneliness, and spent his
life in tranquil imitation of the reputed author of The
Imitation. As it was, Fig-tree Court was a pleasant
hermitage in its way, and for breviaries and Books of
Hours, I am ashamed to say the young barrister sub-
stituted 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 ir-
regular range of windows facing the archway as Ro-
bert passed under the gloomy shade of the rustling ivy,
restless in the chill moaning of the wind. He recog-
nised 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
Lady Audley's Secret. I.
20


RETROGRADE INVESTIGATION.
307
bered picture. Two or three moments afterwards 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 lying
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 bed-chamber might have made a strik-
ing picture for an artist's pencil. The massive furni-
ture, dark and sombre, yet broken up and relieved here
and there by scraps of gilding, and masses of glowing
colour; the elegance of every detail, in which wealth
was subservient to purity of taste; and last, but great-
est in importance, the graceful figures of the two wo-
men 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 flow-
ing 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 mediæval saint. in one of the tiny chapels
hidden away in the nooks and corners of a grey 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 grey beard
lay upon the dark silken coverlet of the stately bed?
Robert paused upon the threshold, fearful of awak-
ing his uncle. The two ladies had heard his step,
20*


303
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
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, recognising
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, Ro-
bert,” she added, in the same whispered tones, beckon-
ing 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.


312
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
“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 honour
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 friend or relatives. 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


RETROGRADE INVESTIGATION.
315
en residing as, that I was
from
“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, concluded that she was a re-
sponsible person, and wrote to her. Her reply was
perfectly satisfactory: — Miss Lucy Graham was as-
siduous 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
pocket-book.
“Certainly. She was then living at No. 9, Crescent
Villas, Brompton.”
"Ah, to be sure," muttered Mr. Audley, a recollec-
tion 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.”


RETROGRADE INVESTIGATION.
317
envelop her in a cloud of scented vapour, 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 bar-
barism. How clumsily the wretched creatures attempt
to assist the witch president of the tea-tray; how hope-
lessly 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 amongst 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 teacups 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 Levi-
son; above taking the pains to be pretty; above making
themselves agreeable; above tea-tables, and that cruelly
scandalous and rather satirical gossip which even strong
men delight in; and what a dreary, utilitarian, ugly
life the sterner sex must lead.
My lady was by no means strong-minded. The
starry diamond upon her white fingers flashed hither
and thither amongst the tea-things, and she bent her


320
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
“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 conversa-
tion. 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."


322
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
never departed. He was on the spot at which all re-
cord 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 con-
sideration? 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.
END OF VOL. I.