UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA CRUZ
3 2106 00721 5632











COLLECTION
of
.
BRITISII AU TH OR S.
VOL. 636.
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET BY M. E. BRADDON.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.





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


Univ. Library, Univ. Calif., Santa Cruz


PR
4989
M4
L3
1862
CONTENTS
OF VOLUME II.
Page
1
.
.
.
.
19
37
.
61
.
776
.
CHAPTER I. So Far and no Farther . . .
II. Beginning at the Other End . .
III. Hidden in the Grave
IV. In the Lime-Walk
V. Preparing the Ground . . .
VI. Phoebe's Petition .
VII. The Red Light in the Sky
VIII. The Bearer of the Tidings . .
- IX. My Lady tells the Truth . .
The Hush that succeeds the Tempest
93
· · · ·
...........
· · · · · ·
.
115
.
IIIIIIIIIIIIIII
.
.
142
164
187
.
XI.
Dr. Mosgrave's Advice
205
220
·
.
·
XII.
XIII.
XIV.
XV.
XVI.
Buried Alive ,
Ghost-Haunted . . . .
That which the Dying Man had to tell .
Restored . . . . . . .
At Peace . . . . . . .
230
271
·
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
294
311





LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
CHAPTER I.
So Far and no Farther.
Robert left Audley the next morning by an early
train, and reached Shoreditch a little after nine o'clock.
He did not return to his chambers, but called a cab
and drove straight to Crescent Villas, West Brompton.
He knew that he should fail in finding the lady he
went to seek at this address, as his uncle had failed a
few months before, but he thought it possible to obtain
some clue to the schoolmistress's new residence, in spite
of Sir Michael's ill-success.
“Mrs. Vincent was in a dying state, according to
the telegraphic message," Robert thought. “If I do
find her, I shall at least succeed in discovering whether
that message was genuine.”
He found Crescent Villas after some difficulty.
The houses were large, but they lay half embedded
amongst the chaos of brick and mortar rising around
them. New terraces, new streets, new squares led away
into hopeless masses of stone and plaster on every side.
The roads were sticky with damp clay, which clogged
the wheels of the cab and buried the fetlocks of the
horse. The desolation of desolations — that awful
Lady Audley's Secret. II.


LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
aspect of incompleteness and discomfort which pervades
a new and unfinished neighbourhood – had set its
dismal seal upon the surrounding streets which had
arisen about and entrenched Crescent Villas; and Ro-
bert wasted forty minutes by his own watch, and an
hour and a quarter according to the cabman's reckoning,
in driving up and down uninhabited streets and terraces,
trying to find the Villas; whose chimney-pots were
frowning down upon him, black and venerable, amid
groves of virgin plaster, undimmed by time or smoke.
But having at last succeeded in reaching his
destination, Mr. Audley alighted from the cab, directed
the driver to wait for him at a certain corner, and set
out upon his voyage of discovery.
"If I were a distinguished Q. C., I could not do
this sort of thing," he thought; “my time would be
worth a guinea or so a minute, and I should be re-
tained in the great case of Hoggs v. Boggs, going for-
ward this very day before a special jury at West-
minster Hall. As it is, I can afford to be patient.”
He inquired for Mrs. Vincent at the number which
Mr. Dawson had given him. The maid who opened
the door had never heard that lady's name: but after
going to inquire of her mistress, she returned to tell
Robert that Mrs. Vincent had lived there, but that she
had left two months before the present occupants had
entered the house, “and missus has been here fifteen
months," the girl added, explanatorily.
“But you cannot tell me where she went on leaving
here?” Robert asked, despondingly.


SO FAR AND NO FARTHER.
of the tradesme, then, of learniner, whereabouts
“No, sir; missus says she believes the lady failed,
and that she left sudden like, and didn't want her ad-
dress to be known in the neighbourhood.”
Mr. Audley felt himself at a standstill once more.
If Mrs. Vincent had left the place in debt, she had no
doubt scrupulously concealed her whereabouts. There
was little hope, then, of learning her address from any
of the tradespeople; and yet, on the other hand, it was
just possible that some of her sharpest creditors might
have made it their business to discover the defaulter's
retreat.
He looked about him for the nearest shops, and
found a baker's, a stationer's, and a fruiterer's, a few
paces from the crescent. Three empty-looking; pre-
tentious shops, with plate-glass windows, and a hope-
less air of gentility.
He stopped at the baker's, who called himself a
pastrycook and confectioner, and exhibited some spe-
cimens of petrified sponge-cake in glass bottles, and
some highly-glazed tarts, covered with green gauze.
"She must have bought bread,” Robert thought, as
he deliberated before the baker's shop; "and she is
likely to have bought it at the handiest place. I'll try
the baker."
The baker was standing behind his counter, dis-
puting the items of a bill with a shabby-genteel young
woman. He did not trouble himself to attend to Ro-
bert Audley till he had settled the dispute, but he
looked up as he was receipting the bill, and asked the
barrister what he pleased to want.
1*


LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
“Can you tell me the address of a Mrs. Vincent,
who lived at No. 9, Crescent Villas, a year and a half
ago?” Mr. Audley inquired, mildly.
“No, I can't,” answered the baker, growing very
red in the face, and speaking in an unnecessarily loud
voice; “and what's more, I wish I could. That lady
owes me upwards of eleven pound for bread, and it's
rather more than I can afford to lose. If anybody
can tell me where she lives, I shall be much obliged
to 'em for so doing.”
Robert Audley shrugged his shoulders, and wished
the man good morning. He felt that his discovery of
the lady's whereabouts would involve more trouble
than he had expected. He might have looked for
Mrs. Vincent's name in the Post Office Directory, but
he thought it scarcely likely that a lady who was on
such uncomfortable terms with her creditors would
afford them so easy a means of ascertaining her resi-
dence.
"If the baker can't find her, how should I find
her?” he thought, despairingly. “If a resolute, san-
guine, active, and energetic creature, such as the baker,
fail to achieve this business, how can a lymphatic
wretch like me hope to accomplish it? Where the
baker has been defeated, what preposterous folly it
would be for me to try to succeed.”
Mr. Audley abandoned himself to these gloomy
reflections as he walked slowly back towards the
corner at which he had left the cab. About half-way
between the baker's shop and this corner, he was


SO FAR AND NO FARTHER.
arrested by hearing a woman's step close at his side,
and a woman's voice asking him to stop. He turned
and found himself face to face with the shabbily-
dressed woman whom he had left settling her account
with the baker.
"Eh, what?” he asked, vaguely. “Can I do any-
thing for you, ma'am? Does Mrs. Vincent owe you
money, too?”
“Yes, sir," the woman answered, with a semi-
genteel manner which corresponded with the shabby
gentility of her dress; “Mrs. Vincent is in my debt;
but it isn't that, sir. I - I want to know, please,
what your business may be with her — because -
because —”
“You can give me her address if you choose,
ma'am? That's what you mean to say, isn't it?”
The woman hesitated a little, looking rather sus-
piciously at Robert.
“You're not connected with — with the tally busi-
ness, are you, sir?” she asked, after considering Mr.
Audley's personal appearance for a few moments.
“The what, ma'am?” cried the young barrister,
staring aghast at his questioner.
“I'm sure I beg your pardon, sir," exclaimed the
little woman, seeing that she had made some very
awful mistake. “I thought you might have been, you
know. Some of the gentlemen who collect for the
tally-shops do dress so very handsome; and I know
Mrs. Vincent owes a good deal of money."


LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
fiabout a younasking the to see her
Robert Audley laid his hand upon the speaker's
arm.
“My dear madam,” he said, "I want to know
nothing of Mrs. Vincent's affairs. So far from being
concerned in what you call the tally business, I have
not the remotest idea of what you mean by that ex-
pression. You may mean a political conspiracy; you
may mean some new species of taxes. Mrs. Vincent
does not owe me any money, however badly she may
stand with that awful-looking baker. I never saw her
in my life; but I wish to see her to-day for the simple
purpose of asking her a few very plain questions
about a young lady who once resided in her house.
If you know where Mrs. Vincent lives, and will give
me her address, you will be doing me a great favour.”
He took out his card-case and handed a card to
the woman, who examined the slip of pasteboard
anxiously before she spoke again.
"I'm sure you look and speak like a gentleman,
sir,” she said, after a brief pause, “and I hope you
will excuse me if I've seemed mistrustful like; but
poor Mrs. Vincent has had dreadful difficulties, and
I'm the only person hereabouts that she's trusted with
her addresses. I'm a dressmaker, sir, and I've worked
for her for upwards of six years, and though she
doesn't pay me regular, you know, sir, she gives me a
little money on account now and then, and I get on as
well as I can. I may tell you where she lives, then,
sir? You haven't deceived me, have you?”
“On my honour, no."


SO FAR AND NO FARTHER.
“Well, then, sir,” said the dressmaker, dropping
her voice as if she thought the pavement beneath her
feet, or the iron railings before the houses by her side,
might have ears to hear her, “it's Acacia Cottage,
Peckham Grove. I took a dress there yesterday for
Mrs. Vincent.”
“Thank you,” said Robert, writing the address in
his pocket-book. “I am very much obliged to you,
and you may rely upon it, Mrs. Vincent shall not
suffer any inconvenience through me.”
He lifted his hat, bowed to the little dressmaker,
and turned back to the cab.
“I have beaten the baker at any rate,” he thought.
“Now for the second stage, travelling backwards, in
my lady's life.”
The drive from Brompton to the Peckham-road
was a very long one, and between Crescent Villas and
Acacia Cottage Robert Audley had ample leisure for
reflection. He thought of his uncle, lying weak and
ill in the oak-room at Audley Court. He thought of
the beautiful blue eyes watching Sir Michael's slumbers;
the soft white hands tending on his waking wants; the
low, musical voice soothing his loneliness; cheering and
consoling his declining years. What a pleasant picture
it might have been, had he been able to look upon it
ignorantly, seeing no more than others saw, looking
no farther than a stranger could look. But with the
black cloud which he saw, or fancied he saw, brooding
over it, what an arch mockery, what a diabolical de-
lusion it seemed.


LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
Peckham Grove — pleasant enough in the summer-
time — has rather a dismal aspect upon a dull
February day, when the trees are bare and leafless, and
the little gardens desolate. Acacia Cottage bore small
token of the fitness of its nomenclature, and faced the
road with its stuccoed walls, sheltered only by a couple
of tall attenuated poplars. But it announced that it
was Acacia Cottage by means of a small brass-plate
upon one of the gate-posts, which was sufficient indi-
cation for the sharp-sighted cabman, who dropped Mr.
Audley upon the pavement before the little gate.
Acacia Cottage was much lower in the social scale
than Crescent Villas, and the small maid-servant who
came to the low wooden gate and parleyed with Mr.
Audley, was evidently well used to the encounter of
relentless creditors across the same feeble barricade.
She murmured the familiar domestic fiction of un-
certainty regarding her mistress's whereabouts; and
told Robert that if he would please to state his name
and business, she would go and see if Mrs. Vincent
was at home.
Mr. Audley produced a card, and wrote in pencil
under his own name - "A connection of the late
Miss Graham.”
He directed the small servant to carry this card to
her mistress, and quietly awaited the result.
The servant returned in about five minutes with
the key of the gate. Her mistress was at home, she
told Robert as she admitted him, and would be happy
to see the gentleman.
oder waham. a the soatly and


SO FAR AND NO FARTHER.
The square parlour into which Robert was ushered
bore in every scrap of ornament, in every article of
furniture, the unmistakeable stamp of that species of
poverty which is most comfortless, because it is never
stationary. The mechanic who furnishes his tiny
sitting-room with half-a-dozen cane chairs, a Pembroke
table, a Dutch clock, a tiny looking-glass, a crockery
shepherd and shepherdess, and a set of gaudily-
japanned iron tea trays, makes the most of his limited
possessions, and generally contrives to get some degree
of comfort out of them; but the lady who loses the
handsome furniture of the house she is compelled to
abandon and encamps in some smaller habitation with
the shabby remainder — bought in by some merciful
friend at the sale of her effects — carries with her an
aspect of genteel desolation and tawdry misery not
easily to be paralleled in wretchedness by any other
phase which poverty can assume.
The room which Robert Audley surveyed was fur-
nished with the shabbier scraps snatched from the ruin
which had overtaken the imprudent schoolmistress in
Crescent Villas. A cottage piano, a cheffonier, six
sizes too large for the room, and dismally gorgeous in
gilded mouldings that were chipped and broken; a
slim-legged card-table, placed in the post of honour,
formed the principal pieces of furniture. A threadbare
patch of Brussels carpet covered the centre of the room,
and formed an oasis of roses and lilies upon a desert
of faded green drugget. Knitted curtains shaded the
windows, in which hung wire baskets of horrible-


10
. LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
looking plants of the cactus species, that grew down-
wards like some demented class of vegetation, whose
prickly and spider-like members had a fancy for stand-
ing on their heads.
The green-baize covered card-table was adorned
with gaudily-bound annuals or books of beauty, placed
at right angles; but Robert Audley did not avail him-
self of these literary distractions. He seated himself
upon one of the rickety chairs, and waited patiently
for the advent of the schoolmistress. He could hear
the hum of half-a-dozen voices in a room near him,
and the jingling harmonies of a set of variations to
Deh Conte, upon a piano, whose every wire was evi-
dently in the last stage of attenuation.
He had waited for about a quarter of an hour,
when the door was opened, and a lady, very much
dressed, and with the setting sunlight of faded beauty
upon her face, entered the room.
"Mr. Audley, I presume,” she said, motioning to
Robert to reseat himself, and placing herself in an
easy-chair opposite to him. “You will pardon me, I
hope, for detaining you so long; my duties —”.
“It is I who should apologise for intruding upon
you,” Robert answered, politely; "but my motive for
calling upon you is a very serious one, and must plead
my excuse. You remember the lady whose name I
wrote upon my card?”
“Perfectly."
“May I ask how much you know of that lady's
history since her departure from your house?”


SO FAR AND NO FARTHER.
“Very little. In point of fact, scarcely anything at
all. Miss Graham, I believe, obtained a situation in
the family of a surgeon resident in Essex. Indeed, it
was I who recommended her to that gentleman. I have
never heard from her since she left me."
“But you have communicated with her?” Robert
asked, eagerly.
“No, indeed."
Mr. Audley was silent for a few moments, the
shadow of gloomy thoughts gathering darkly on his
face.
“May I ask if you sent a telegraphic despatch to
Miss Graham early in last September, stating that
you were dangerously ill, and that you wished to see
her?”
Mrs. Vincent smiled at her visitor's question,
“I had no occasion to send such a message,” she
said, “I have never been seriously ill in my life.”
Robert Audley paused before he asked any further
questions, and scrawled a few pencilled words in his
note-book.
“If I ask you a few straightforward questions about
Miss Lucy Graham, madam,” he said, “will you do me
the favour to answer them without asking my motive
for making such inquiries?”
“Most certainly,” replied Mrs. Vincent. “I know
nothing to Miss Graham's disadvantage, and have
no justification for making a mystery of the little I do
know."


12
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
he least weareless creatler dates, the how
“Then will you tell me at what date the young
lady first came to you?" .
Mrs. Vincent smiled and shook her head. She had
a pretty smile — the frank smile of a woman who has
been admired, and who has too long felt the certainty
of being able to please, to be utterly subjugated by
any worldly misfortune.
“It's not the least use to ask me, Mr. Audley,"
she said. “I'm the most careless creature in the world;
I never did, and never could remember dates, though
I do all in my power to impress upon my girls how
important it is for their future welfare that they should
know when William the Conqueror began to reign, and
all that kind of thing. But I haven't the remotest
idea when Miss Graham came to me, although I know
it was ages ago, for it was the very summer I had my
peach-coloured silk. But we must consult Tonks —
Tonks is sure to be right.”
Robert Audley wondered who or what Tonks could
be; a diary, perhaps, or a memorandum-book — some
obscure rival of Letsome.
Mrs. Vincent rang the bell, which was answered
by the maid-servant who had admitted Robert.
“Ask Miss Tonks to come to me,” she said, “I
want to see her particularly.”
In less than five minutes Miss Tonks made her
appearance. She was wintry and rather frostbitten in
aspect, and seemed to bring cold air in the scanty
folds of her sombre merino dress. She was no age in
particular, and looked as if she had never been younger,


SO FAR AND NO FARTHER.
13
and would never grow older, but would remain for
ever working backwards and forwards in her narrow
groove, like some self-feeding machine for the instruction
of young ladies.
“Tonks, my dear,” said Mrs. Vincent, without
ceremony, “this gentleman is a relative of Miss Gra-
ham's. Do you remember how long it is since she
came to us at Crescent Villas?”
“She came in August, 1854,” answered Miss
Tonks; “I think it was the eighteenth of August, but
I'm not quite sure that it wasn't the seventeenth. I
know it was on sure that it weighteenth of Avered Miss
“Thank you, Tonks; you are a most invaluable
darling,” exclaimed Mrs. Vincent, with her sweetest
smile. It was, perhaps, because of the invaluable
nature of Miss Tonks's services that she had received
no remuneration whatever from her employer for the
last three or four years. Mrs. Vincent might have
hesitated to pay her from very contempt for the pitiful
nature of the stipend as compared with the merits of
the teacher.
“Is there anything else that Tonks or I can tell
you, Mr. Audley?” asked the schoolmistress. “Tonks
has a far better memory than I have.”
“Can you tell me where Miss Graham came from
when she entered your household ?” Robert inquired.
“Not very precisely," answered Mrs. Vincent. “I
have a vague notion that Miss Graham said something
about coming from the sea-side, but she didn't say


14
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
where, or if she did I have forgotten it. Tonks, did
Miss Graham tell you where she came from?”
“Oh, no!" replied Miss Tonks, shaking her grim
little head significantly. “Miss Graham told me
nothing; she was too clever for that. She knew how
to keep her own secrets, in spite of her innocent ways
and her curly hair,” Miss Tonks added, spitefully.
“You think she had secrets, then?” Robert asked,
rather eagerly.
“I know she had,” replied Miss Tonks with frosty
decision; "all manner of secrets. I wouldn't have
engaged such a person as junior teacher in a respect-
able school, without so much as one word of recom-
mendation from any living creature.”
“You had no reference, then, from Miss Graham?"
asked Robert, addressing Mrs. Vincent.
"No," the lady answered, with some little embar-
rassment; "I waived that. Miss Graham waived the
question of salary; I could not do less than waive the
question of reference. She had quarrelled with her
papa, she told me, and she wanted to find a home
away from all the people she had ever known. She
wished to keep herself quite separate from these
people. She had endured so much, she said, young as
she was, and she wanted to escape from her troubles.
How could I press her for a reference under these cir-
cumstances? especially when I saw that she was a
perfect lady? You know that Lucy Graham was a per-
fect lady, Tonks, and it is very unkind of you to say


NO FAR AND NO FARTHER.
15
such cruel things about my taking her without a refer-
ence.”
“When people make favourites, they are apt to be
deceived by them,” Miss Tonks answered, with icy
sententiousness, and with no very perceptible relevance
to the point in discussion.
“I never made her a favourite, you jealous Tonks,”
Mrs. Vincent answered, reproachfully. "I never said
she was as useful as you, dear. You know I never
did.”
“Oh, no!" replied Miss Tonks, with a chilling
accent, "you never said she was useful. She was only
ornamental; a person to be shown off to visitors, and
'to play fantasias on the drawing-room piano."
“Then you can give me no clue to Miss Graham's
previous history?” Robert asked, looking from the
schoolmistress to her teacher. He saw very clearly
that Miss Tonks bore an envious grudge against Lucy
Graham — a grudge which even the lapse of time had
not healed.
“If this woman knows anything to my lady's
detriment, she will tell it,” he thought. “She will tell
it only too willingly.”
But Miss Tonks appeared to know nothing what-
ever; except that Miss Graham had sometimes declared
herself an ill-used creature, deceived by the baseness
of mankind, and the victim of unmerited sufferings, in
the way of poverty and deprivation. Beyond this,
Miss Tonks could tell nothing; and although she made


LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
the most of what she did know, Robert very soon
sounded the depth of her small stock of information.
"I have only one more question to ask,” he said
at last. “It is this. Did Miss Graham leave any
books or knick-knacks, or any kind of property what-
ever, behind her, when she left your establishment ?”
“Not to my knowledge,” Mrs. Vincent replied.
“Yes,” cried Miss Tonks, sharply. “She did leave
something. She left a box. It's up-stairs in my room.
I've got an old bonnet in it. Would you like to see
the box?" she asked, addressing Robert.
"If you will be so good as to allow me,” he an-
swered, “I should very much like to see it."
"I'll fetch it down,” said Miss Tonks. “It's not
very she water any these cacher
She ran out of the room before Mr. Audley had
time to utter any polite remonstrance.
“How pitiless these women are to each other,” he
thought, while the teacher was absent. “This one
knows intuitively that there is some danger to the
other lurking beneath my questions. She sniffs the
coming trouble to her fellow female creature, and
rejoices in it, and would take any pains to help me.
What a world it is, and how these women take life
out of our hands. Helen Maldon, Lady Audley, Clara
Talboys, and now Miss Tonks — all womankind from
beginning to end."
Miss Tonks re-entered while the young barrister
was meditating upon the infamy of her sex. She


SO FAR AND NO FARTHER.
17
carried a dilapidated paper-covered bonnet-box, which
she submitted to Robert's inspection.
Mr. Audley knelt down to examine the scraps of
railway labels and addresses which were pasted here
and there upon the box. It had been battered upon a
great many different lines of railway, and had evidently
travelled considerably. Many of the labels had been
torn off, but fragments of some of them remained, and
upon one yellow scrap of paper Robert read the letters
TURI.
“The box has been to Italy," he thought. “Those
are the first four letters of the word Turin, and the
label is a foreign one.”
The only direction which had not been either
defaced or torn away was the last, which bore the
name of Miss Graham, passenger to London. Looking
very closely at this label, Mr. Audley discovered that
it had been pasted over another.
“Will you be so good as to let me have a little
water and a piece of sponge?” he said. "I want to
get off this upper label. Believe me that I am justified
in what I am doing.”
Miss Tonks ran out of the room, and returned im-
mediately with a basin of water and a sponge.
“Shall I take off the label?” she asked.
“No, thank you,” Robert answered, coldly. “I can
do it very well myself.”
He damped the upper label several times before
he could loosen the edges of the paper; but after two
Lady Audley's Secret. II.


18
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
or three careful attempts, the moistened surface peeled
off without injury to the underneath address.
Miss Tonks could not contrive to read this address
across Robert's shoulder, though she exhibited con-
siderable dexterity in her endeavours to accomplish
that object.
Mr. Audley repeated his operations upon the lower
label, which he removed from the box, and placed
very carefully between two blank leaves of his pocket-
book.
"I need intrude upon you no longer, ladies," he
said, when he had done this. “I am extremely obliged
to you for having afforded me all the information in
your power. I wish you good morning."
Mrs. Vincent smiled and bowed, murmuring some
complacent conventionality about the delight she had
felt in Mr. Audley's visit. Miss Tonks, more observant,
stared at the white change which had come over the
young man's face since he had removed the upper
label from the box.
Robert walked slowly away from Acacia Cottage.
“If that which I have found to-day is no evidence for
a jury,” he thought, “it is surely enough to convince
my uncle that he has married a designing and in-
famous woman."


BEGINNING AT THE OTHER END.
19
CHAPTER II.
Beginning at the Other End.
ROBERT AUDLEY walked slowly through the leafless
grove, under the bare and shadowless trees in the grey
February atmosphere, thinking as he went of the dis-
covery he had just made.
“I have that in my pocket-book,” he pondered,
"which forms the connecting link between the woman
whose death George Talboys read of in the Times
newspaper and the woman who rules in my uncle's
house. The history of Lucy Graham ends abruptly on
the threshold of Mrs. Vincent's school. She entered
that establishment in August, 1854. The schoolmistress
and her assistant can tell me this, but they cannot tell
me whence she came. They cannot give me one clue
to the secrets of her life from the day of her birth
until the day she entered that house. I can go no
further in this backward investigation of my lady's
antecedents. What am I to do, then, if I mean to keep
my promise to Clara Talboys?”
He walked on for a few paces revolving this
question in his mind, with a darker shadow than the
shadows of the gathering winter twilight on his face,
and a heavy oppression of mingled sorrow and dread
weighing down his heart.
“My duty is clear enough,” he thought — “not the
2*


20
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
less clear because it is painful – not the less clear
because it leads me step by step, carrying ruin and
desolation with me, to the home I love. I must begin
at the other end — I must begin at the other end, and
discover the history of Helen Talboys from the hour
of George's departure until the day of the funeral in the
churchyard at Ventnor.”
Mr. Audley hailed a passing Hansom, and drove
back to his chambers.
He reached Fig-tree Court in time to write a few
lines to Miss Talboys, and to post his letter at St.
Martin's-le-Grand before six o'clock.
“It will save me a day,” he thought, as he drove
to the General Post Office with this brief epistle.
He had written to Clara Talboys to inquire the
name of the little seaport town in which George had
met Captain Maldon and his daughter; for in spite of
the intimacy between the two young men, Robert
Audley knew very few particulars of his friend's brief
married life.
From the hour in which George Talboys had read
the announcement of his wife's death in the columns
of the Times, he had avoided all mention of the tender
history which had been so cruelly broken, the familiar
record which had been so darkly blotted out.
There was so much that was painful in that brief
story! There was such bitter self-reproach involved in
the recollection of that desertion which must have
seemed so cruel to her who waited and watched at
home! Robert Audley comprehended this, and he did


BEGINNING AT THE OTHER END.
not wonder at his friend's silence. The sorrowful story
had been tacitly avoided by both, and Robert was as
ignorant of the unhappy history of this one year in his
schoolfellow's life as if they had never lived together in
friendly companionship in those snug Temple chambers.
The letter, written to Miss Talboys by her brother
George within a month of his marriage, was dated
Harrowgate. It was at Harrowgate, therefore, Robert
concluded, the young couple spent their honeymoon.
Robert Audley had requested Clara Talboys to
telegraph an answer to his question, in order to avoid
the loss of a day in the accomplishment of the in-
vestigation he had promised to perform.
The telegraphic answer reached Fig-tree Court be-
fore twelve o'clock the next day.
The name of the seaport town was Wildernsea,
Yorkshire.
Within an hour of the receipt of this message Mr.
Audley arrived at the King's-cross station, and took
his ticket for Wildernsea by an express train that
started at a quarter before two.
The shrieking engine bore him on the dreary
northward journey, whirling him over desert wastes of
flat meadow-land and bare corn-fields, faintly tinted
with fresh sprouting green. This northern road was
strange and unfamiliar to the young barrister, and the
wide expanse of the wintry landscape chilled him by
its aspect of bare loneliness. The knowledge of the
purpose of his journey blighted every object upon
which his absent glances fixed themselves for a mo-


22
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
ment; only to wander wearily away; only to turn in-
wards upon that far darker picture always presenting
itself to his anxious mind.
It was dark when the train reached the Hull ter-
minus; but Mr. Audley's journey was not ended.
Amidst a crowd of porters and scattered heaps of that
incongruous and heterogeneous luggage with which
travellers encumber themselves, he was led, bewildered
and half asleep, to another train, which was to convey
him along the branch line that swept past Wildernsea,
and skirted the border of the German Ocean.
Half an hour after leaving Hull, Robert felt the
briny freshness of the sea upon the breeze that blew in
at the open window of the carriage, and an hour
afterwards the train stopped at a melancholy station,
built amid a sandy desert, and inhabited by two or
three gloomy officials, one of whom rang a terrific peal
upon a harshly clanging bell as the train approached.
Mr. Audley was the only passenger who alighted
at the dismal station. The train swept on to gayer
scenes before the barrister had time to collect his scat-
tered senses, or to pick up the portmanteau which had
been discovered with some difficulty amid a black
cavern of luggage only illuminated by one lantern.
"I wonder whether settlers in the back-woods of
America feel as solitary and strange as I feel to-night?”
he thought, as he stared hopelessly about him in the
darkness.
He called to one of the officials, and pointed to his
portmanteau.


BEGINNING AT THE OTHER END.
23
“Will you carry that to the nearest hotel for me?”
he asked — “that is to say, if I can get a good bed
there."
The man laughed as he shouldered the port-
manteau.
“You could get thirty beds, I daresay, sir, if you
wanted 'em,” he said. “We ain't over busy at
Wildernsea at this time o' year. This way, sir.”
The porter opened a wooden door in the station
wall, and Robert Audley found himself upon a wide
bowling-green of smooth grass, which surrounded a huge
square building that loomed darkly on him through the
winter's night, its black solidity only relieved by two
lighted windows, far apart from each other, and glim-
mering redly like beacons on the darkness.
"This is the Victoria Hotel, sir," said the porter.
“You wouldn't believe the crowds of company we have
down here in the summer.”
In the face of the bare grass-plat, the tenantless
wooden alcoves, and the dark windows of the hotel, it
was indeed rather difficult to imagine that the place
was ever gay with merry people taking pleasure in the
bright summer weather; but Robert Audley declared
himself willing to believe anything the porter pleased
to tell him, and followed his guide meekly to a little
door at the side of the big hotel, which led into a
comfortable bar, where the humbler classes of summer
visitors were accommodated with such refreshments as
they pleased to pay for, without running the gauntlet


24
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
of the prim, white-waistcoated waiters on guard at the
principal entrance.
But there were very few attendants retained at the
hotel in this bleak February season, and it was the
landlord himself who ushered Robert into a dreary
wilderness of polished mahogany tables and horsehair-
cushioned chairs, which he called the coffee room.
Mr. Audley seated himself close to the wide steel
fender, and stretched his cramped legs upon the
hearthrug, while the landlord drove the poker into the
vast pile of coal, and sent a ruddy blaze roaring up-
ward through the chimney.
“If you would prefer a private room, sir —” the
man began.
“No, thank you,” said Robert, indifferently; "this
room seems quite private enough just now. If you
will order me a mutton chop and a pint of sherry, I
shall be obliged.”
“Certainly sir.”
“And I shall be still more obliged if you will
favour me with a few minutes' conversation before you
do so."
“With very great pleasure, sir,” the landlord
answered, good-naturedly. “We see so very little
company at this season of the year, that we are only
too glad to oblige those gentlemen who do visit us.
Any information which I can afford you respecting the
neighbourhood of Wildernsea and its attractions,” added
the landlord, unconsciously quoting a small hand-book


BEGINNING AT THE OTHER END.
25
of the watering place which he sold in the bar, “I shall
be most happy to —,”
“But I don't want to know anything about the
neighbourhood of Wildernsea,” interrupted Robert, with
a feeble protest against the landlord's volubility. “I
want to ask you a few questions about some people
who once lived here.”
The landlord bowed and smiled, with an air which
implied his readiness to recite the biographies of all
the inhabitants of the little seaport, if required by Mr.
Audley to do so.
"How many years have you lived here?” Robert
asked, taking his memorandum-book from his pocket.
"Will it annoy you if I make notes of your replies to
my questions?"
“Not at all, sir," replied the landlord, with a
pompous enjoyment of the air of solemnity and im-
portance which pervaded this business. “Any informa-
tion which I can afford that is likely to be of ultimate
value _"
“Yes, thank you,” Robert murmured, interrupting
the flow of words. “You have lived here -"
"Six years, sir.”
"Since the year fifty-three.”
"Since November in the year fifty-two, sir. I was
in business in Hull prior to that time. This house was
only completed in the October before I entered it.”
“Do you remember a lieutenant in the navy, on
half-pay I believe at that time, called Maldon?”
“Captain Maldon, sir?”


LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
ro
“Yes, commonly called Captain Maldon. I see you
do remember him.”
“Yes, sir. Captain Maldon was one of our best
customers. He used to spend his evenings in this very
room, though the walls were damp at that time, and
we weren't able to paper the place for nearly a twelve-
month afterwards. His daughter married a young
officer that came here with his regiment at Christmas
time in fifty-two. They were married here, sir, and
they travelled on the Continent for six months, and
came back here again. But the gentleman ran away
to Australia, and left the lady, a week or two after
her baby was born. The business made quite a sensa-
tion in Wildernsea, sir, and Mrs. - Mrs. — I forget
the name —”
“Mrs. Talboys,” suggested Robert.
“To be sure, sir, Mrs. Talboys. Mrs. Talboys
was very much pitied by the Wildernsea folks, sir, I
was going to say, for she was very pretty, and had
such nice winning ways, that she was a favourite with
everybody who knew her.”
“Can you tell me how long Mr. Maldon and his
daughter remained at Wildernsea after Mr. Talboys
left them?” Robert asked.
“Well — no, sir,” answered the landlord, after a
few moments' deliberation. “I can't say exactly how
long it was. I know Mr. Maldon used to sit here in
this very parlour, and tell people how badly his
daughter had been treated, and how he'd been deceived
by a young man he'd put so much confidence in; but
for "Well" Robert dat Wilderong Mr. Ma


BEGINNING AT THE OTHER END.
27
I can't say how long it was before he left Wildernsea.
But Mrs. Barkamb could tell you, sir," added the land-
lord, briskly.
“Mrs. Barkamb?”
“Yes, Mrs. Barkamb is the person who owns No. 17,
North Cottages, the house in which Mr. Maldon and
his daughter lived. She's a nice, civil-spoken, motherly
woman, sir, and I'm sure she'll tell you anything you
may want to know.”
"Thank you, I will call upon Mrs. Barkamb to-
morrow. Stay — one more question. Should you re-
cognise Mrs. Talboys if you were to see her?”
“Certainly, sir. As sure as I should recognise one
of my own daughters.”
Robert Audley wrote Mrs. Barkamb's address in
his pocket-book, ate his solitary dinner, drank a couple
of glasses of sherry, smoked a cigar, and then retired
to the apartment in which a fire had been lighted for
his comfort.
He soon fell asleep, worn out with the fatigue of
hurrying from place to place during the last two days;
but his slumber was not a heavy one, and he heard
the disconsolate moaning of the wind upon the sandy
wastes, and the long waves rolling in monotonously
upon the flat shore. Mingling with these dismal sounds,
the melancholy thoughts engendered by his joyless
journey repeated themselves in ever-varying succession
in the chaos of his slumbering brain, and made them-
selves into visions of things that never had been and
never could be upon this earth; but which had some


28
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
slee In those from an Esses, sorthern
vague relation to real events, remembered by the
sleeper.
In those troublesome dreams he saw Audley Court,
rooted up from amidst the green pastures and the
shady hedgerows of Essex, standing bare and unpro-
tected upon that desolate northern shore, threatened
by the rapid rising of a boisterous sea, whose waves
seemed gathering upward to descend and crush the
house he loved. As the hurrying waves rolled nearer
and nearer to the stately mansion, the sleeper saw a
pale, starry face looking out of the silvery foam, and
knew that it was my lady, transformed into a mer-
maid, beckoning his uncle to destruction. Beyond that
rising sea great masses of cloud, blacker than the
blackest ink, more dense than the darkest night,
lowered upon the dreamer's eye; but as he looked at
the dismal horizon the storm clouds slowly parted,
and from a narrow rent in the darkness a ray of light
streamed out upon the hideous waves, which slowly,
very slowly, receded, leaving the old mansion safe and
firmly rooted on the shore.
Robert awoke with the memory of this dream in
his mind, and a sensation of physical relief, as if
some heavy weight, which had oppressed him all the
night, had been lifted from his breast.
He fell asleep again, and did not awake until the
broad winter sunlight shone upon the window-blind,
and the shrill voice of the chamber-maid at his door
announced that it was half past eight o'clock. At a
quarter before ten he had left the Victoria Hotel, and


BEGINNING AT THE OTHER END.
29
was making his way along the lonely platform in
front of a row of shadowless houses that faced the sea.
This row of hard, uncompromising, square-built
habitations stretched away to the little harbour, in
which two or three merchant vessels and a couple of
colliers were anchored. Beyond the harbour there
loomed, grey and cold upon the wintry horizon, a
dismal barrack, parted from the Wildernsea houses by
a narrow creek, spanned by an iron draw-bridge. The
scarlet coat of the sentinel who walked backwards and
forwards between two cannons, placed at remote angles
before the barrack wall, was the only scrap of colour
that relieved the neutral-tinted picture of the grey
stone houses and the leaden sea.
On one side of the harbour a long stone pier
stretched out far away into the cruel loneliness of the
sea, as if built for the especial accommodation of some
modern Timon, too misanthropical to be satisfied even
by the solitude of Wildernsea, and anxious to get still
further away from his fellow-creatures.
It was on that pier George Talboys had first met
his wife, under the yellow glory of a sunny sky, and
to the music of a braying band. It was there that the
young cornet had first yielded to that sweet delusion,
that fatal infatuation which had exercised so dark an
influence upon his after-life.
Robert looked savagely at the solitary watering-
place — the shabby seaport.
"It is such a place as this,” he thought, “that


30
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
works a strong man's ruin. He comes here, heart
whole and happy, with no better experience of woman
than is to be learnt at a flower-show or in a ball-
room; with no more familiar knowledge of the creature
than he has of the far-away satellites of the remoter
planets; with a vague notion that she is a whirling
teetotum in pink or blue gauze, or a graceful automaton
for the display of milliners' manufacture. He comes
to some place of this kind, and the universe is sud-
denly narrowed into about half a dozen acres; the
mighty scheme of creation is crushed into a bandbox.
The far-away creatures whom he had seen floating
about him, beautiful and indistinct, are brought under
his very nose; and before he has time to recover his
bewilderment, hey, presto! the witchcraft has begun:
the magic circle is drawn around him, the spells are
at work, the whole formula of sorcery is in full play,
and the victim is as powerless to escape as the marble-
legged prince in the Eastern story.”
Ruminating in this wise, Robert Audley reached
the house to which he had been directed as the re-
sidence of Mrs. Barkamb. He was admitted imme-
diately by a prim, elderly servant, who ushered him
into a sitting-room as prim and elderly-looking as her-
self. Mrs. Barkamb, a comfortable matron of about
sixty years of age, was sitting in an arm-chair before
a bright handful of fire in the shining grate. An
elderly terrier, whose black-and-tan coat was thickly
sprinkled with grey, reposed in Mrs. Barkamb's lap.
Every object in the quiet sitting-room had an elderly
at the victim is the Eastern storbert Au


BEGINNING AT THE OTHER END.
31
aspect; an aspect of simple comfort and precision,
which is the evidence of outward repose.
“I should like to live here,” Robert thought, “and
watch the grey sea slowly rolling over the grey sand
under the still grey sky. I should like to live here,
and tell the beads upon my rosary, and repent and
rest."
He seated himself in the arm-chair opposite Mrs.
Barkamb, at that lady's invitation, and placed his hat
upon the ground. The elderly terrier descended from
his mistress's lap to bark at and otherwise take objec-
tion to this hat.
"You were wishing, I suppose, sir, to take one
– be quiet, Dash — one of the cottages,” suggested
Mrs. Barkamb, whose mind ran in one narrow groove,
and whose life during the last twenty years had been
an unvarying round of house-letting.
Robert Audley explained the purpose of his visit.
"I come to ask one simple question,” he said, in
conclusion. “I wish to discover the exact date of
Mrs. Talboys' departure from Wildernsea. The pro-
prietor of the Victoria Hotel informed me that you
were the most likely person to afford me that in-
formation.”
Mrs. Barkamb deliberated for some moments.
"I can give you the date of Captain Maldon's de-
parture," she said, "for he left No. 17 considerably in
my debt, and I have the whole business in black and
white; but with regard to Mrs. Talboys --" .
were orm of the viparture from


-
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
32
Mrs. Barkamb paused for a few moments before
resuming
“You are aware that Mrs. Talboys left rather ab-
ruptly?" she asked.
“I was not aware of that fact.”
“Indeed! Yes, she left abruptly, poor little woman!
She tried to support herself after her husband's deser-
tion by giving music lessons; she was a very brilliant
pianist, and succeeded pretty well, I believe. But I
suppose her father took her money from her, and spent
it in public-houses. However that might be, they had
a very serious misunderstanding one night; and the
next morning Mrs. Talboys left Wildernsea, leaving
her little boy, who was out at nurse in the neighbour-
hood.”
“But you cannot tell me the date of her de-
parture?”
“I'm afraid not,” answered Mrs. Barkamb; "and
yet, stay. Captain Maldon wrote to me upon the day
his daughter left. He was in very great distress, poor
old gentleman, and he always came to me in his
troubles. If I could find that letter, it might be dated,
you know — mightn't it, now?”
Mr. Audley said that it was only probable the
letter was dated.
Mrs. Barkamb retired to a table in the window on
which stood an old-fashioned mahogany desk lined
with green baize, and suffering from a plethora of
documents, which oozed out of it in every direction.
Letters, receipts, bills, inventories, and tax-papers were


BEGINNING AT THE OTHER END.
33
mingled in hopeless confusion; and amongst these Mrs.
Barkamb set to work to search for Captain Maldon's
letter.
Mr. Audley waited very patiently, watching the
grey clouds sailing across the grey sky, the grey vessels
gliding past upon the grey sea.
After about ten minutes' search, and a great deal
of rustling, crackling, folding and unfolding of the
papers, Mrs. Barkamb uttered an exclamation of
triumph.
“I've got the letter,” she said; "and there's a note
inside it from Mrs. Talboys."
Robert Audley's pale face flushed a vivid crimson
as he stretched out his hand to receive the papers.
“The person who stole Helen Maldon's love-letters
from George's trunk in my chambers might have spared
themselves the trouble," he thought.
The letter from the old lieutenant was not long,
but almost every other word was underscored.
“My generous friend,” the writer began —-
[Mr. Maldon had tried the lady's generosity pretty
severely during his residence in her house, rarely pay-
ing his rent until threatened with the intruding pre-
sence of the broker's man.]
"I am in the depths of despair. My daughter has
left me! You may imagine my feelings! We had a few
words last night upon the subject of money matters,
which subject has always been a disagreeable one be-
tween us, and on rising this morning I found that I
Lady Audley's Secret. II.


34
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
was deserted! The enclosed from Helen was waiting
for me on the parlour table.
“Yours in distraction and despair,
“HENRY MALDON.
“North Cottages,
August 16th, 1854.”
The note from Mrs. Talboys was still more brief.
It began abruptly thus: -
“I am weary of my life here, and wish, if I can,
to find a new one. I go out into the world, dissevered
from every link which binds me to the hateful past, to
seek another home and another fortune. Forgive me
if I have been fretful, capricious, changeable. You
should forgive me, for you know why I have been so.
You know the secret which is the key to my life.
“HELEN TALBOYS."
These lines were written in a hand that Robert
Audley knew only too well.
He sat for a long time pondering silently over the
letter written by Helen Talboys.
What was the meaning of those two last sentences
“You should forgive me, for you know why I have
been so. You know the secret which is the key to my
life?”
He wearied his brain in endeavouring to find a
clue to the signification of those two sentences. He
could remember nothing, nor could he imagine any-
thing that would throw a light upon their meaning.


BEGINNING AT THE OTHER END.
35
The date of Helen's departure, according to Mr. Mal-
don's letter, was the 16th of August, 1854. Miss
Tonks had declared that Lucy Graham entered the
school at Crescent Villas upon the 17th or 18th of
August in the same year. Between the departure of
Helen Talboys from the Yorkshire watering-place, and
the arrival of Lucy Graham at the Brompton school,
not more than eight-and-forty hours could have elapsed.
This made a very small link in the chain of circum-
stantial evidence, perhaps; but it was a link, never-
theless, and it fitted neatly into its place.
"Did Mr. Maldon hear from his daughter after she
had left Wildernsea?” Robert asked.
“Well, I believe he did hear from her,” Mrs. Bar-
kamb answered; "but I didn't see much of the old
gentleman after that August. I was obliged to sell
him up in November, poor fellow, for he owed me
fifteen months' rent; and it was only by selling his
poor little bits of furniture that I could get him out of
my place. We parted very good friends, in spite of
my sending in the brokers; and the old gentleman
went to London with the child, who was scarcely a
twelvemonth old.”
Mrs. Barkamb had nothing more to tell, and Robert
had no further questions to ask. He requested per-
mission to retain the two letters written by the lieute-
nant and his daughter, and left the house with them
in his pocket-book.
He walked straight back to the hotel, where he
called for a time-table. An express for London left
3*


36
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
Wildernsea at a quarter- past one. Robert sent his
portmanteau to the station, paid his bill, and walked
up and down the stone terrace fronting the sea, waiting
for the starting of the train.
“I have traced the histories of Lucy Graham and
Helen Talboys to a vanishing point,” he thought; “my
next business is to discover the history of the woman
who lies buried in Ventnor churchyard."


HIDDEN IN THE GRAVE.
CHAPTER III.
Hidden in the Grave.
Upon his return from Wildernsea, Robert Audley
found a letter from his cousin, Alicia, awaiting him at
his chambers.
“Papa is much better,” the young lady wrote, “and
is very anxious to have you at the Court. For some
inexplicable reason, my step-mother has taken it into
her head that your presence is extremely desirable,
and worries me with her frivolous questions about your
movements. So pray come without delay, and set these
people at rest. Your affectionate cousin,
A. A.”
"So my lady is anxious to know my movements,"
thought Robert Audley, as he sat brooding and smoking
by his lonely fireside. “She is anxious; and she ques-
tions her step-daughter in that pretty, childlike manner
which has such a bewitching air of innocent frivolity.
Poor little creature; poor unhappy little golden-haired
sipner; the battle between us seems terribly unfair.
Why doesn't she run away while there is still time?
I have given her fair warning, I have shown her my
cards, and worked openly enough in this business,
Heaven knows. Why doesn't she run away?"
He repeated this question again and again as he
filled and emptied his meerschaum, surrounding himself


38
SECRET.
LADY AUDL
with the blue vapour from his pipe until he looked
like some modern magician, seated in his laboratory.
"Why doesn't she run away? I would bring no
needless shame upon that house, of all other houses
upon this wide earth. I would only do my duty to
my missing friend, and to that brave and generous
man who has pledged his faith to a worthless woman.
Heaven knows I have no wish to punish. Heaven
knows I was never born to be the avenger of guilt or
the persecutor of the guilty. I only wish to do my
duty. I will give her one more warning, a full and
fair one, and then --"
His thoughts wandered away to that gloomy pro-
spect in which he saw no gleam of brightness to relieve
peeth in the night ise wande
the dull, black obscurity that encompassed the future,
shutting in his pathway on every side, and spreading
a dense curtain around and about him, which Hope
was powerless to penetrate. He was for ever haunted
by the vision of his uncle's anguish, for ever tortured
by the thought of that ruin and desolation, which,
being brought about by his instrumentality, would
seem in a manner his handiwork. But amid all, and
through all, Clara Talboys, with an imperious gesture,
beckoned him onwards to her brother's unknown grave.
“Shall I go down to Southampton," he thought,
"and endeavour to discover the history of the woman
who died at Ventnor? Shall I work underground,
bribing the paltry assistants in that foul conspiracy,
until I find my way to the thrice guilty principal ?
No! not till I have tried other means of discovering


HIDDEN IN THE GRAVE.
39
the truth. Shall I go to that miserable old man, and
charge him with his share in the shameful trick which
I believe to have been played upon my poor friend?
No; I will not torture that terror-stricken wretch as I
tortured him a few weeks ago. I will go straight to
the arch conspirator, and will tear away the beautiful
veil under which she hides her wickedness, and will
wring from her the secret of my friend's fate and
banish her for ever from the house which her presence
has polluted.”
He started early the next morning for Essex, and
reached Audley before eleven o'clock.
Early as it was, my lady was out. She had gone
to Chelmsford upon a shopping expedition with her
step-daughter. She had several calls to make the
neighbourhood of the town, and was not likely to
return until dinner-time. Sir Michael's health was
very much improved, and he would come down-stairs
in the afternoon. Would Mr. Audley go to his uncle's
room?
No; Robert had no wish to meet that generous
kinsman. What could he say to him? How could he
smooth the way to the trouble that was to come? -
how soften the cruel blow of the great grief that was
preparing for that noble and trusting heart?
"If I could forgive her the wrong done to my
friend,” Robert thought, "I should still abhor her for
the misery her guilt must bring upon the man who has
believed in her.”
He told his uncle's servant that he would stroll


40
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
ed indifferencle's howandering ice walked
into the village, and return before dinner. He walked
slowly away from the Court, wandering across the
meadows between his uncle's house and the village,
purposeless and indifferent, with the great trouble and
perplexity of his life stamped upon his face and reflected
in his manner.
“I will go into the churchyard,” he thought, “and
stare at the tombstones. There is nothing I can do
that will make me more gloomy than I am.”
He was in those very meadows through which he
had hurried from Audley Court to the station upon
the September day in which George Talboys had dis-
appeared. He looked at the pathway by which he
had gone upon that day, and remembered his un-
accustomed hurry, and the vague feeling of terror which
had taken possession of him immediately upon losing
sight of his possession of him que feeling of
“Why did that unaccountable terror seize upon
me?” he thought. “Why was it that I saw some
strange mystery in my friend's disappearance? Was
it a monition or a monomania ? What if I am wrong
after all? What if this chain of evidence which I have
constructed link by link, is woven out of my own folly?
What if this edifice of horror and suspicion is a mere
collection of crotchets — the nervous fancies of a hypo-
chondriacal bachelor? Mr. Harcourt Talboys sees no
meaning in the events out of which I have created a
horrible mystery. I lay the separate links of the chain
before him, and he cannot recognise their fitness. He
is unable to put them together. Oh, my God, if it


HIDDEN IN THE GRAVE.
41
should be in myself all this time that the misery lies;
if —” he smiled bitterly, and shook his head. “I
have the handwriting in my pocket-book which is the
evidence of the conspiracy,” he thought. “It remains
for me to discover the darker half of my lady's
secret."
He avoided the village, still keeping to the meadows.
The church lay a little way back from the straggling
High Street, and a rough wooden gate opened from
the churchyard into a broad meadow, that was bordered
by a running stream, and sloped down into a grassy
valley dotted by groups of cattle.
Robert slowly ascended the narrow hill-side path-
way leading up to the gate in the churchyard. The
quiet dulness of the lonely landscape harmonised with
his own gloom. The solitary figure of an old man
hobbling towards a stile at the further end of the wide
meadow was the only human creature visible upon the
area over which the young barrister looked. The
smoke slowly ascending from the scattered houses in
the long High Street was the only evidence of human
life. The slow progress of the hands of the old clock
in the church steeple was the only token by which
à traveller could perceive that the sluggish course of
rural time had not come to a full stop in the village
of Audley.
Yes, there was one other sign. As Robert opened
the gate of the churchyard, and strolled listlessly into
the little enclosure, he became aware of the solemn


42
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
music of an organ, audible through a half-open window
in the steeple.
He stopped and listened to the slow harmonies of
a dreamy melody that sounded like an extempore com-
position of an accomplished player.
“Who would have believed that Audley church
could boast such an organ?” thought Robert. "When
last I was here, the national schoolmaster used to ac-
company his children by a primitive performance of
common chords. I didn't think the old organ had such
music in it.”
He lingered at the gate, not caring to break the
lazy spell woven about him by the monotonous melan-
choly of the organist's performance. The tones of the
instrument, now swelling to their fullest power, now
sinking to a low, whispering softness, floated towards
him upon the misty winter atmosphere, and had a
soothing influence, that seemed to comfort him in his
trouble.
He closed the gate softly, and crossed the little
patch of gravel before the door of the church. This
door had been left ajar — by the organist, perhaps.
Robert Audley pushed it open, and walked into the
square porch, from which a flight of narrow stone steps
wound upwards to the organ-loft and the belfry. Mr.
Audley took off his hat, and opened the door between
the porch and the body of the church. He stepped
softly into the holy edifice, which had a damp,
mouldy smell upon week-days. He walked down
the narrow aisle to the altar-rails, and from that point


HIDDEN IN THE GRAVE.
43
of observation took a survey of the church. The
little gallery was exactly opposite to him, but the
scanty green curtains before the organ were closely
drawn, and he could not get a glimpse of the player.
The music still rolled on. The organist had wandered
into a melody of Mendelssohn's, a strain whose dreamy
sadness went straight to Robert's heart. He loitered in
the nooks and corners of the church, examining the
dilapidated memorials of the well-nigh forgotten dead,
and listening to this music.
“If my poor friend, George Talboys, had died in
my arms, and I had buried him in this quiet church,
in one of the vaults over which I tread to-day, how
much anguish of mind, vacillation, and torment I might
have escaped,” thought Robert Audley, as he read the
faded inscriptions upon tablets of discoloured marble:
"I should have known his fate - I should have known
his fate! Ah, how much there would have been in that.
It is this miserable uncertainty, this horrible suspicion,
which has poisoned my very life.”
He looked at his watch.
“Half-past one,” he muttered. “I shall have to
wait four or five dreary hours before my lady comes
home from her morning calls. Her morning calls —
her pretty visits of ceremony or friendliness. Good
heavens! what an actress this woman is. What an arch
trickster - what an all-accomplished deceiver. But she
shall play her pretty comedy no longer under my uncle's
roof. I have diplomatised long enough. She has re-


44
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
fused to accept an indirect warning. To-night I will
speak plainly."
The music of the organ ceased, and Robert heard
the closing of the instrument.
“I'll have a look at this new organist,” he thought,
"who can afford to bury his talents at Audley, and play
Mendelssohn's finest fugues for a stipend of sixteen
pounds a-year.” He lingered in the porch, waiting for
the organist to descend the awkward little staircase.
In the weary trouble of his mind, and with the pro-
spect of getting through the five hours in the best way
he could, Mr. Audley was glad to cultivate any diver-
sion of thought, however idle. He therefore freely in-
dulged his curiosity about the new organist.
The first person who appeared upon the steep stone
steps was a boy in corduroy trousers and a dark linen
smock-frock, who shambled down the stairs with a
good deal of unnecessary clatter of his hobnailed shoes,
and who was red in the face from the exertion of
blowing the bellows of the old organ. Close behind
this boy came a young lady, very plainly dressed in
a black silk gown and a large grey shawl, who started
and turned pale at the sight of Mr. Audley.
This young lady was Clara Talboys.
Of all people in the world she was the last whom
Robert either expected or wished to see. She had told
him that she was going to pay a visit to some friends
who lived in Essex; but the county is a wide one, and
the village of Audley one of the most obscure and least
frequented spots in the whole of its extent. That the


HIDDEN IN THE GRAVE.
45
sister of his lost friend should be here — here where
she could watch his every action, and from those actions
deduce the secret workings of his mind, tracing his
doubts home to their object — made a complication of
his difficulties that he could never have anticipated. It
brought him back to that consciousness of his own
helplessness, in which he had exclaimed –
"A hand that is stronger than my own is beckoning
me onward on the dark road that leads to my lost
friend's unknown grave.”
Clara Talboys was the first to speak.
“You are surprised to see me here, Mr. Audley,”
she said.
“Very much surprised."
"I told you that I was coming to Essex. I left
home the day before yesterday. I was leaving home
when I received your telegraphic message. The friend
with whom I am staying is Mrs. Martyn, the wife of
the new rector of Mount Stanning. I came down this
morning to see the village and church, and as Mrs.
Martyn had to pay a visit to the schools with the curate
and his wife, I stopped here and amused myself by
trying the old organ. I was not aware till I came here
that there was a village called Audley. The place
takes its name from your family, I suppose?”
“I believe so," Robert answered, wondering at the
lady's calmness, in contradistinction to his own em-
barrassment. “I have a vague recollection of hearing
the story of some ancestor who was called Audley of
Audley in the reign of Edward the Fourth. The tomb


46
SECRET.
LADY AUDLI
inside the rails near the altar belongs to one of the
knights of Audley, but I have never taken the trouble
to remember his achievements. Are you going to wait
here for your friends, Miss Talboys?”
“Yes; they are to return here for me after they
have finished their rounds."
“And you go back to Mount Stanning with them
this afternoon?”
“Yes.”
Robert stood with his hat in his hand looking ab-
sently out at the tombstones and the low wall of the
churchyard. Clara Talboys watched his pale face,
haggard under the deepening shadow that had rested
upon it so long.
“You have been ill since I saw you last, Mr.
Audley,” she said, in a low voice, that had the same
melodious sadness as the notes of the old organ under
her touch.
“No, I have not been ill; I have been only harassed,
wearied by a hundred doubts and perplexities.”
He was thinking as he spoke to her — "How
much does she guess? how much does she suspect ?”
He had told the story of George's disappearance
and of his own suspicions, suppressing only the names
of those concerned in the mystery; but what if this girl
should fathom the slender disguise, and discover for
herself that which he had chosen to withhold?
Her grave eyes were fixed upon his face, and he
knew that she was trying to read the innermost secrets
of his mind.


HIDDEN IN THE GRAVE.
47
“What am I in her hands?” he thought. “What
am I in the hands of this woman, who has my lost
friend's face and the manner of Pallas Athenè? She
reads my pitiful, vacillating soul, and plucks the
thoughts out of my heart with the magic of her solemn
brown eyes. How unequal the fight must be between
us, and how can I ever hope to conquer against the
strength of her beauty and her wisdom?”
Mr. Audley was clearing his throat preparatory to
bidding his beautiful companion good morning, and
making his escape from the thraldom of her presence
into the lonely meadow outside the churchyard, when
Clara Talboys arrested him by speaking upon that very
subject which he was most anxious to avoid.
"You promised to write to me, Mr. Audley," she
said, "if you made any discovery which carried you
nearer to the mystery of my brother's disappearance.
You have not written to me, and I imagine, therefore,
that you have discovered nothing."
Robert Audley was silent for some moments. How
could he answer this direct question ?
“The chain of circumstantial evidence which unites
the mystery of your brother's fate with the person
whom I suspect,” he said, after a pause, “is formed of
very slight links. I think that I have added an-
other link to that chain since I saw you in Dorset-
shire."
"And you refuse to tell me what it is that you
have discovered.”
“Only until I have discovered more.”.


48
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
“I thought from your message that you were going
to Wildernsea.”
“I have been there."
“Indeed! It was there that you made some dis-
covery, then?”
“It was," answered Robert. “You must remember,
Miss Talboys, that the sole ground upon which my
suspicions rest is the identity of two individuals who
have no apparent connection — the identity of a per-
son who is supposed to be dead with one who is living.
The conspiracy of which I believe your brother to have
been the victim hinges upon this. If his wife, Helen
Talboys, died when the papers recorded her death –
if the woman who lies buried in Ventnor churchyard
was indeed the woman whose name is inscribed on the
headstone of the grave — I have no case, I have no
clue to the mystery of your brother's fate. I am about
to put this to the test. I believe that I am now in a
position to play a bold game, and I believe that I shall
soon arrive at the truth.”
He spoke in a low voice, and with a solemn em-
phasis that betrayed the intensity of his feeling. Miss
Talboys stretched out her ungloved hand, and laid it
in his own. The cold touch of that slender hand sent
a shivering thrill through his frame.
“You will not suffer my brother's fate to remain a
mystery, Mr. Audley,” she said quietly. “I know that
you will do your duty to your friend.”
The rector's wife and her two companions entered
the churchyard as Clara Talboys said this. Robert


HIDDEN IN THE GRAVE.
49
Audley pressed the hand that rested in his own, and
raised it to his lips.
"I am a lazy, good-for-nothing fellow, Miss Tal-
boys,” he said; "but if I could restore your brother
George to life and happiness, I should care very little
for any sacrifice of my own feeling. I fear that the
most I can do is to fathom the secret of his fate;' and
in doing that I must sacrifice those who are dearer to
me than myself.”
He put on his hat and hurried away through the
gateway leading into the field as Mrs. Martyn came up
to the porch.
“Who is that handsome young man I caught tête-
à-tête with you, Clara?" she asked, laughing.
. "He is a Mr. Audley, a friend of my poor bro-
ther's."
"Indeed! He is some relation of Sir Michael Aud-
ley, I suppose?”
“Sir Michael Audley!”
“Yes, my dear; the most important personage in
the parish of Audley. But we'll call at the Court in
a day or two, and you shall see the baronet and his
pretty young wife.”
“His young wife!” repeated Clara Talboys, looking
earnestly at her friend. “Has Sir Michael Audley
lately married?"
“Yes. He was a widower for sixteen years, and
married a penniless young governess about a year and
a half ago. The story is quite romantic, and Lady
Audley is considered the belle of the county. But
Lady Audley's Secret. II.


50
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
come, my dear Clara, the pony is tired of waiting for
us, and we've a long drive before dinner.”
Clara Talboys took her seat in the little basket-
carriage which was waiting at the principal gate of the
churchyard in the care of the boy who had blown the
organ-bellows. Mrs. Martyn shook the reins, and the
sturdy chestnut cob trotted off in the direction of Mount
Stanning.
“Will you tell me more about this Lady Audley,
Fanny?” Miss Talboys said, after a long pause. "I
want to know all about her. Have you heard her
maiden name?”
“Yes; she was a Miss Graham.”
“And she is very pretty?”.
“Yes, very, very pretty. Rather a childish beauty
though, with large clear blue eyes, and pale golden
ringlets, that fall in a feathery shower over her throat
and shoulders.”
Clara Talboys was silent. She did not ask any
further questions about my lady.
She was thinking of a passage in that letter which
George had written to her during his honeymoon — a
passage in which he said: – “My childish little wife
is watching me as I write this. Ah! how I wish you
could see her, Clara! Her eyes are as blue and as
clear as the skies on a bright summer's day, and her
hair falls about her face like the pale golden halo you
see round the head of a Madonna in an Italian pic-
ture.”


IN THE LIME-WALK.
CHAPTER IV.
In the Lime-Walk.
ROBERT AUDLEY was loitering upon the broad
grass-plat in front of the Court as the carriage con-
taining my lady and Alicia drove under the archway,
and drew up at the low turret-door. Mr. Audley pre-
sented himself in time to hand the ladies out of the
vehicle.
My lady looked very pretty in a delicate blue
bonnet and the sables which her nephew had bought
for her at St. Petersburg. She seemed very well
pleased to see Robert, and smiled most bewitchingly
as she gave him her exquisitely gloved little hand.
“So you have come back to us, truant?” she said,
laughing. “And now that you have returned, we shall
keep you prisoner. We won't let him run away again,
will we, Alicia?"
· Miss Audley gave her head a scornfull toss, that
shook the heavy curls under her cavalier hat.
"I have nothing to do with the movements of so
erratic an individual,” she said. “Since Robert Audley
has taken it into his head to conduct himself like some
ghost-haunted hero in a German story, I have given
up attempting to understand him.”
Mr. Audley looked at his cousin with an expression
of serio-comic perplexity. “She's a nice girl," he
4*


52
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
thought, “but she's a nuisance. I don't know how it
is, but she seems more a nuisance than she used
to be.”
He pulled his mustachios reflectively as he con-
sidered this question. His mind wandered away for a
few moments from the great trouble of his life to dwell
upon this minor perplexity.
"She's a dear girl," he thought; . "a generous-
hearted, bouncing, noble English lassie, and yet —”
He lost himself in a quagmire of doubt and difficulty.
There was some hitch in his mind which he could not
understand; some change in himself, beyond the change
made in him by his anxiety about George Talboys,
which mystified and bewildered him.
“And pray where have you been wandering during
the last day or two, Mr. Audley?” asked my lady, as
she lingered with her step-daughter upon the threshold
of the turret door, waiting until Robert should be
pleased to stand aside and allow them to pass. The
young man started as she asked this question and
looked up at her suddenly. Something in the aspect
of her bright young beauty, something in the childish
innocence of her expression, seemed to smite him
to the heart, and his face grew pale as he looked
at her.
“I have been — in Yorkshire,” he said; "at the
little watering place where my poor friend George Tal-
boys lived at the time of his marriage.”
The white change in my lady's face was the only
sign of her having heard these words. She smiled, a


IN THE LIME-WALK.
53
faint, sickly smile, and tried to pass her husband's
nephew.
“I must dress for dinner,” she said. “I am going
to a dinner-party, Mr. Audley; please let me go in.”
“I must ask you to spare me half-an-hour, Lady
Audley,” Robert answered, in a low voice. “I came
down to Essex on purpose to speak to you."
“What about?” asked my lady.
She had recovered herself from any shock which
she might have sustained a few moments before, and
it was in her usual manner that she asked this question.
Her face expressed the mingled bewilderment and
curiosity of a puzzled child, rather than the serious
surprise of a woman.
"What can you want to talk to me about, Mr.
Audley?” she repeated.
"I will tell you when we are alone,” Robert said,
glancing at his cousin, who stood a little way behind
my lady, watching this confidential little dialogue.
"He is in love with my step-mother's wax-doll
beauty," thought Alicia, “and it is for her sake he has
become such a disconsolate object. He's just the sort
of person to fall in love with his aunt.”
Miss Audley walked away to the grass-plat, turn-
ing her back upon Robert and my lady.
“The absurd creature turned as white as a sheet
when he saw her,” she thought, “So he can be in
love, after all. That slow lump of torpidity he calls
his heart can beat, I suppose, once in a quarter of a
century: but it seems that nothing but a blue-eyed


54
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
wax-doll can set it going. I should have given him
up long ago if I'd known that his ideal of beauty was
to be found in a toyshop.”
Poor Alicia crossed the grass-plat and disappeared
upon the opposite side of the quadrangle, where there
was a Gothic gate that communicated with the stables.
I am sorry to say that Sir Michael Audley's daughter
went to seek consolation from her dog Cæsar and her,
chestnut mare Atalanta, whose loose box the young
lady was in the habit of visiting every day.
“Will you come into the lime-walk, Lady Aud-
ley?” said Robert, as his cousin left the garden. “I
wish to talk to you without fear of interruption or ob-
servation. I think we could choose no safer place than
that. Will you come there with me?”
"If you please,” answered my lady. Mr. Audley
could see that she was trembling, and that she glanced
from side to side, as if looking for some outlet by
which she might escape him.
“You are shivering, Lady Audley," he said.
“Yes, I am very cold. I would rather speak to
you some other day, please. Let it be to-morrow, if
you will. I have to dress for dinner, and I want to
see Sir Michael; I have not seen him since ten o'clock
this morning. Please let it be to-morrow.”
There was a painful piteousness in her tone. Heaven
knows how painful to Robert's heart. Heaven knows
what horrible images arose in his mind as he looked
down at that fair young face and thought of the task
that lay before him.


IN THE LIME-WALK.
55
"I must speak to you, Lady Audley," he said. “If
I am cruel, it is you who have made me cruel. You
might have escaped this ordeal. You might have
avoided me. I gave you fair warning. But you have
chosen to defy me, and it is your own folly which is
to blame if I no longer spare you. Come with me. I
tell you again I must speak to you.”
There was a cold determination in his tone which
silenced my lady's objections. She followed him sub-
missively to the little iron gate which communicated
with the long garden behind the house — the garden
in which a little rustic wooden bridge led across the
quiet fish-pond into the lime-walk.
The early winter twilight was closing in, and the
intricate tracery of the leafless branches that over-
arched the lonely pathway looked black against the
cold grey of the evening sky. The Kme-walk seemed
like some cloister in this uncertain light.
“Why do you bring me to this horrible place to
frighten me out of my poor wits?” cried my lady.
peevishly. “You ought to know how nervous I am."
"You are nervous, my lady?”
"Yes, dreadfully nervous. I am worth a fortune to
poor Mr. Dawson. He is always sending me camphor,
and sal volatile, and red lavender, and all kinds of
abominable mixtures, but he can't cure me.”
"Do you remember what Macbeth tells his physi-
cian, my lady?” asked Robert, gravely. “Mr. Dawson
may be very much more clever than the Scottish leech;


56
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
but I doubt if even he can minister to the mind that is
diseased.”
“Who said that my mind was diseased?” exclaimed
Lady Audley.
“I say so, my lady," answered Robert. “You tell
me that you are nervous, and that all the medicines
your doctor can prescribe are only so much physic that
might as well be thrown to the dogs. Let me be the
physician to strike to the root of your malady, Lady
Audley. Heaven knows that I wish to be merciful -
that I would spare you as far as it is in my power to
spare you in doing justice to others — but justice must
be done. Shall I tell you why you are nervous in this
house, my lady?”
“If you can,” she answered, with a little laugh.
“Because for you this house is haunted.”
"Haunted ?"
“Yes, haunted by the ghost of George Talboys."
Robert Audley heard my lady's quickened breathing,
he fancied he could almost hear the loud beating of
her heart as she walked by his side, shivering now
and then, and with her sable cloak wrapped tightly
round her.
“What do you mean?” she cried suddenly, after a
pause of some moments. “Why do you torment me
about this George Talboys, who happens to have taken
it into his head to keep out of your way for a few
months? Are you going mad, Mr. Audley, and do
you select me as the victim of your monomania? What


IN THE LIME-WALK.
is George Talboys to me that you should worry me
about him?"
"He was a stranger to you, my lady, was he not?”
“Of course!” answered Lady Audley. “What should
he be but a stranger?”
“Shall I tell you the story of my friend's dis-
appearance as I read that story, my lady?” asked
Robert.
"No," cried Lady Audley; “I wish to know no-
thing of your friend. If he is dead I am sorry for
him. If he lives, I have no wish either to see him or
to hear of him. Let me go in to see my husband, if
you please, Mr. Audley; unless you wish to detain me
in this gloomy place until I catch my death of cold.”
“I wish to detain you until you have heard what
I have to say, Lady Audley,” answered Robert, reso-
lutely. “I will detain you no longer than is necessary;
and when you have heard me, you shall choose your
own course of action.”
“Very well, then; pray lose no time in saying what
you have to say,” replied my lady, carelessly. “I
promise to attend very patiently.”
“When my friend George Talboys returned to
England,” Robert began gravely, “the thought which
was uppermost in his mind was the thought of his wife.”
“Whom he had deserted,” said my lady quickly.
"At least,” she added, more deliberately, “I remember
your telling us something to that effect when you first
told us your friend's story.”
Robert Audley did not notice this interruption.
-
-
-
-
-
-
--


58
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
“The thought that was uppermost in his mind
was the thought of his wife," he repeated. “His
fairest hope in the future was the hope of making her
happy, and lavishing upon her the fortune which he
had won by the force of his own strong arm in the
gold-fields of Australia. I saw him within a few hours
of his reaching England, and I was a witness of the
joyful pride with which he looked forward to his re-
union with his wife. I was also a witness of the blow
which struck him to the very heart — which changed
him from the man he had been, to a creature as unlike
that former self as one human being can be unlike
another. The blow which made that cruel change was
the announcement of his wife's death in the Times news-
paper. I now believe that that announcement was a
black and bitter lie.”
“Indeed!” said my lady; "and what reason could
any one have for announcing the death of Mrs. Tal-
boys, if Mrs. Talboys had been alive?”
“The lady herself might have had a reason,” Ro-
bert answered, quietly.
“What reason?”
"How if she had taken advantage of George's ab-
sence to win a richer husband? How if she had mar-
ried again, and wished to throw my poor friend off the
scent by this false announcement?”
Lady Audley shrugged her shoulders.
“Your suppositions are rather ridiculous, Mr. Aud-
ley,” she said; “it is to be hoped that you have some
reasonable grounds for them.”


IN THE LIME-WALK.
59
"I have examined a file of each of the newspapers
published in Chelmsford and Colchester,” continued
Robert, without replying to my lady's last observation,
"and I find in one of the Colchester papers, dated July
the 2nd, 1857, a brief paragraph amongst numerous
miscellaneous scraps of information copied from other
newspapers, to the effect that a Mr. George Talboys,
an English gentleman, had arrived at Sydney from the
gold-fields, carrying with him nuggets and gold-dust
to the amount of twenty thousand pounds, and that he
had realised his property and sailed for Liverpool in
the fast-sailing clipper Argus. This is a very small
fact of course, Lady Audley, but it is enough to prove
that any person residing in Essex in the July of the
year fifty-seven, was likely to become aware of George
Talboys' return from Australia. Do you follow me?”
“Not very clearly," said my lady. “What have
the Essex papers to do with the death of Mrs. Tal-
boys?”
“We will come to that by-and-by, Lady Audley.
I say that I believe the announcement in the Times to
have been a false announcement, and a part of the
conspiracy which was carried out by Helen Talboys
and Lieutenant Maldon against my poor friend.”
“A conspiracy!" ..
“Yes, a conspiracy concocted by an artful woman,
who had speculated upon the chances of her husband's
death, and had secured a splendid position at the risk
of committing a crime; a bold woman, my lady, who
thought to play her comedy out to the end without


60
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
fear of detection; a wicked woman, who did not care
what misery she might inflict upon the honest heart of
the man she betrayed; but a foolish woman, who
looked at life as a game of chance, in which the best
player was likely to hold the winning cards, forgetting
that there is a Providence above the pitiful speculators,
and that wicked secrets are never permitted to remain
long hidden.' If this woman of whom I speak had
never been guilty of any blacker sin than the publica-
tion of that lying announcement in the Times news-
paper, I should still hold her as the most detestable of
her sex -- the most pitiless and calculating of human
creatures. That cruel lie was a base and cowardly
blow in the dark; it was the treacherous dagger-thrust
of an infamous assassin.”
"But how do you know that the announcement was
a false one?” asked my lady. “You told us that you
had been to Ventnor with Mr. Talboys to see his wife's
grave. Who was it who died at Ventnor if it was not
Mrs. Talboys?"
"Ah, Lady Audley,” said Robert, “that is a ques-
tion which only two or three people can answer, and
one or other of those persons shall answer it to me
before very long. I tell you, my lady, that I am de-
termined to unravel the mystery of George Talboys'
death. Do you think I am to be put off by feminine
prevarication -- by womanly trickery? No! Link by
link I have put together the chain of evidence, which
wants but a link here and there to be complete in its
terrible strength. Do you think I will suffer myself to


IN THE LIME-WALK.
61
be baffled? Do you think I shall fail to discover those
missing links? No, Lady Audley, I shall not fail, for
I know where to look for them! There is a fair-haired
woman at Southampton – a woman called Plowson,
who has some share in the secrets of the father of my
friend's wife. I have an idea that she can help me to
discover the history of the woman who lies buried in
Ventnor churchyard, and I will spare no trouble in
making that discovery; unless — "
“Unless what?” asked my lady, eagerly.
“Unless the woman I wish to save from degradation
and punishment accepts the mercy I offer her, and
takes warning while there is still time.”
My lady shrugged her graceful shoulders, and
flashed bright defiance out of her blue eyes.
“She would be a very foolish woman if she suffered
herself to be influenced by any such absurdity,” she
said. “You are hypochondriacal, Mr. Audley, and you
must take camphor, or red lavender, or sal volatile.
What can be more ridiculous than this idea which you
have taken into your head? You lose your friend
George Talboys in rather a mysterious manner — that
is to say, that gentleman chooses to leave England
without giving you due notice. What of that? You
confess that he became an altered man after his wife's
death. He grew eccentric and misanthropical; he
affected an utter indifference as to what became of
him. What more likely, then, that he grew tired of
the monotony of civilised life, and ran away to those
savage gold-fields to find a distraction for his grief?


62
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
It is rather a romantic story, but by no means an un-
common one. But you are not satisfied with this simple
interpretation of your friend's disappearance, and you
build up some absurd theory of a conspiracy which
has no existence except in your own overheated brain.
Helen Talboys is dead. The Times newspaper derlares
she is dead. Her own father tells you that she is
dead. The headstone of the grave in Ventnor church-
yard bears record of her death. By what right,” cried
my lady, her voice rising to that shrill and piercing
tone peculiar to her when affected by any intense
agitation – “by what right, Mr. Audley, do you
come to me and torment me about George Talboys -
by what right do you dare to say that his wife is
still alive?”
"By the right of circumstantial evidence, Lady
Audley," answered Robert — “by the right of that
circumstantial evidence which will sometimes fix the
guilt of a man's murder upon that person who, on the
first hearing of the case, seems of all other men the
most unlikely to be guilty.”
“What circumstantial evidence?”
“The evidence of time and place. The evidence
of handwriting. When Helen Talboys left her father's
house at Wildernsea, she left a letter behind her — a
letter in which she declared that she was weary of her
old life, and that she wished to seek a new home and
a new fortune. That letter is in my possession."
“Indeed.”
“Shall I tell you whose handwriting' resembles that


IN THE LIME-WALK.
. 63
of Helen Talboys so closely, that the most dexterous
expert could perceive no distinction between the two ?”
“A resemblance between the handwriting of two
women is no very uncommon circumstance now-a-days,"
replied my lady, carelessly. “I could show you the
caligraphies of half-a-dozen of my female correspond-
ents, and defy you to discover any great differences
in them.”
“But what if the handwriting is a very uncommon
one, presenting marked peculiarities by which it may
be recognised among a hundred ?”
“Why, in that case the coincidence is rather
curious,” answered my lady; "but it is nothing more
than a coincidence. You cannot deny the fact of Helen
Talboy's death on the ground that her handwriting
resembles that of some surviving person.”
“But if a series of such coincidences lead up to
the same point,” said Robert. "Helen Talboys left
her father's house, according to the declaration in her
own handwriting, because she was weary of her old
life, and wished to begin a new one. Do you know
what I infer from this?”
My lady shrugged her shoulders.
"I have not the least idea,” she said; "and as you
have detained me in this gloomy place nearly half-an-
hour, I must beg that you will release me, and let me
go and dres; for dinner.”
“No, Lady Audley,” answered Robert, with a cold
sternness that was so strange to him as to transform
him into another creature — a pitiless embodiment of


64
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
justice, a cruel instrument of retribution — "no, Lady
Audley,” he repeated, “I have told you that womanly
prevarication will not help you; I tell you now that
defiance will not serve you. I have dealt fairly with
you, and have given you fair warning. I gave you in-
direct notice of your danger two months ago.”
“What do you mean?” asked my lady, suddenly.
“You did not choose to take that warning, Lady
Audley,” pursued Robert, "and the time has come in
which I must speak very plainly to you. Do you
think the gifts which you have played against fortune
are to hold you exempt from retribution ? No, my
lady, your youth and beauty, your grace and refine-
ment; only make the horrible secret of your life more
horrible. I tell you that the evidence against you
wants only one link to be strong enough for your con-
demnation, and that link shall be added. Helen Tal-
boys never returned to her father's house. When she
deserted that poor old father, she went away from his
humble shelter with the declared intention of washing
her hands of that old life. What do people generally
do when they wish to begin a new existence -- to start
for a second time in the race of life, free from the
encumbrances that had fettered their first journey?
They change their names, Lady Audley. Helen Talboys
deserted her infant son — she went away from Wil-
dernsea with the predetermination of sinking her
identity. She disappeared as Helen Talboys upon the
16th of August, 1854, and upon the 17th of that
month she reappeared as Lucy Graham, the friendless


IN THE LIME-WALK.
65
girl who undertook a profitless duty in consideration of
a home in which she was asked no questions."
“You are mad, Mr. Audley!” cried my lady. “You
are mad, and my husband shall protect me from your
insolence. What if this Helen Talboys ran away from
her home upon one day, and I entered my employer's
house upon the next, what does that prove?”
"By itself, very little,” replied Robert Audley;
"but with the help of other evidence --”.
“What evidence?"
“The evidence of two labels, pasted one over the
other, upon a box left by you in the possession of Mrs.
Vincent, the upper label bearing the name of Miss
Graham, the lower that of Mrs. George Talboys."
My lady was silent. Robert Audley could not see
her face in the dusk, but he could see that her two
small hands were clasped convulsively over her heart,
and he knew that the shot had gone home to its mark.
“God help her, poor, wretched creature,” he thought.
"She knows now that she is lost. I wonder if the
judges of the land feel as I do now, when they put on
the black cap, and pass sentence of death upon some
poor, shivering wretch who has never done them any
wrong. Do they feel a heroic fervour of virtuous in-
dignation, or do they suffer this dull anguish which
gnaws my vitals as I talk to this helpless woman?”
He walked by my lady's side, silently, for some
minutes. They had been pacing up and down the dim
avenue, and they were now drawing near the leafless
shrubbery at one end of the lime-walk -- the shrubbery
Lady Audley's Secret. II.


LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
in which the ruined well sheltered its unheeded decay
among the tangled masses of briery underwood.'
A winding pathway, neglected and half-choked with
weeds, led towards this well. Robert left the lime-
walk, and struck into this pathway. There was more
light in the shrubbery than in the avenue, and Mr.
Audley wished to see my lady's face.
He did not speak until they reached the patch of
rank grass beside the well. The massive brickwork
had fallen away here and there, and loose fragments of
masonry lay buried amidst weeds and briers. The
heavy posts which had supported the wooden roller
still remained, but the iron spindle had been dragged
from its socket, and lay a few paces from the well,
rusty, discoloured, and forgotten.
Robert Audley leant against one of the moss-grown
posts and looked down at my lady's face, very pale in
the chill winter twilight. The moon had newly risen,
a feebly luminous crescent in the grey heavens, and a
faint, ghostly light mingled with the misty shadows of
the declining day. My lady's face seemed like that
face which Robert Audley had seen in his dreams
looking out of the white foam flakes on the green sea
waves and luring his uncle to destruction.
“Those two labels are in my possession, Lady
Audley,” he resumed. “I took them from the box left
by you at Crescent Villas. I took them in the presence
of Mrs. Vincent and Miss Tonks. Have you any proof
to offer against this evidence? You say to me, 'I am
Lucy Graham, and I have nothing whatever to do with


IN THE LIME-WALK.
Helen Talboys.' In that case, you can produce wit-
nesses who will declare your antecedents. Where had
you been living prior to your appearance at Crescent
Villas? You must have friends, relations, connections,
who can come forward to prove as much as this for
you. If you were the most desolate creature upon this
earth, you would be able to point to someone who
could identify you with the past.”.
“Yes,” cried my lady, "if I were placed in a cri-
minal dock, I could, no doubt, bring forward witnesses
to refute your absurd accusation. But I am not in a
criminal dock, Mr. Audley, and I do not choose to do
anything but laugh at your ridiculous folly. I tell you
that you are mad! If you please to say that Helen
Talboys is not dead, and that I am Helen Talboys,
you may do so. If you choose to go wandering about
to the places in which I have lived, and to the places
in which this Mrs. Talboys has lived, you must follow
the bent of your own inclination; but I would warn
you that such fancies have sometimes conducted people
as apparently sane as yourself, to the life-long im-
prisonment of a private lunatic asylum.”
Robert Audley started, and recoiled a few paces
among the weeds and brushwood as my lady said this.
“She would be capable of any new crime to shield
her from the consequences of the old one,” he thought.
"She would be capable of using her influence with my
uncle to place me in a mad-house."
I do not say that Robert Audley was a coward,
but I will admit that a shiver of horror, something akin
5*


68
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
to fear, chilled him to the heart, as he remembered the
horrible things that have been done by women, since
that day upon which Eve was created to be Adam's
companion and help-meet in the garden of Eden. What
if this woman's hellish power of dissimulation should
be stronger than the truth, and crush him? She had
not spared George Talboys when he had stood in her
way, and menaced her with a certain peril; would she
spare him who threatened her with a far greater
danger? Are women merciful, or loving, or kind in
proportion to their beauty and their grace? Was there
not a certain Monsieur Mazers de Latude, who had the
bad fortune to offend the all-accomplished Madame de
Pompadour, who expiated his youthful indiscretion by
a life-long imprisonment; who twice escaped from
prison, to be twice cast back into captivity; who,
trusting in the tardy generosity of his beautiful foe,
betrayed himself to an implacable fiend? Robert Audley
looked at the pale face of the woman standing by his
side: that fair and beautiful face, illumined by starry
blue eyes, that had a strange and surely a dangerous
light in them; and remembering a hundred stories of
womanly perfidy, shuddered as he thought how unequal
the struggle might be between himself and his uncle's
wife.
"I have shown her my cards,” he thought, “but she
has kept hers hidden from me. The mask that she
wears is not to be plucked away. My uncle would
rather think me mad than believe her guilty.”
The pale face of Clara Talboys — that grave and


IN THE LIME-WALK.
69
earnest face, so different in its character to my lady's
fragile beauty — arose before him.
“What a coward I am to think of myself or my
own danger," he thought. “The more I see of this
woman, the more reason I have to dread her influence
upon others; the more reason to wish her far away
from this house."
He looked about him in the dusky obscurity. The
lonely garden was as quiet as some solitary graveyard,
walled in and hidden away from the world of the
living.
“It was somewhere in this garden that she met
George Talboys upon the day of his disappearance,"
he thought. “I wonder where it was they met; I
wonder where it was that he looked into her cruel
face, and taxed her with her falsehood.”
My lady, with her little hand resting lightly upon
the opposite post to that against which Robert leant,
toyed with her pretty foot amongst the long weeds,
but kept a furtive watch upon her enemy's face.
"It is to be a duel to the death, then, my lady,"
said Robert Audley, solemnly. “You refuse to accept
my warning. You refuse to run away and repent of
your wickedness in some foreign place, far from the
generous gentleman you have deceived and fooled by
your false witcheries. You choose to remain here and
defy me."
"I do," answered Lady Audley, lifting her head,
and looking full at the young barrister. “It is no


70
SECRET.
LADY AUDLE
fault of mine if my husband's nephew goes mad, and
chooses me for the victim of his monomania.”
“So be it, then, my lady," answered Robert. “My
friend George Talboys was last seen entering these
gardens by the little iron gate at which we came in
to-night. He was last heard inquiring for you. He
was seen to enter these gardens, but he was never
seen to leave them. I do not believe that he ever did
leave them. I believe that he met with his death
within the boundary of these grounds; and that his
body lies hidden below some quiet water, or in some
forgotten corner of this place. I will have such a
search made as shall level that house to the earth,
and root up every tree in these gardens, rather than
I will fail in finding the grave of my murdered
friend."
Lucy Audley uttered a long, low, wailing cry, and
threw up her arms above her head with a wild gesture
of despair, but she made no answer to the ghastly
charge of her accuser. Her arms slowly dropped, and
she stood staring at Robert Audley, her white face
gleaming through the dusk, her blue eyes glittering
and dilated.
“You shall never live to do this,” she said. “I will
kill you first. Why have you tormented me so? Why
could you not let me alone? What harm had I ever
done you that you should make yourself my persecutor,
and dog my steps, and watch my looks, and play the
spy upon me? Do you want to drive me mad? Do
you know what it is to wrestle with a madwoman?


IN THE LIME-WALK.
71
I tell
am Solte condo vou hor upon to the
“No,” cried my lady, with a laugh, "you do not, or
you would never ——"
She stopped abruptly, and drew herself suddenly
to her fullest height. It was the same action which
Robert had seen in the old half-drunken lieutenant;
and it had that same dignity — the sublimity of ex-
treme misery
“Go away, Mr. Audley,” she said. “You are mad,
I tell you; you are mad.”
“I am going, my lady,” answered Robert, quietly.
“I would have condoned your crimes out of pity to
your wretchedness. You have refused to accept my
mercy. I wished to have pity upon the living. I shall
henceforth only remember my duty to the dead."
He walked away from the lonely well under the
shadow of the limes. My lady followed him slowly
down that long, gloomy avenue, and across the rustic
bridge to the iron gate. As he passed through the
gate, Alicia came out of a little half-glass door that
opened from an oak-panelled breakfast-room at one
angle of the house, and met her cousin upon the
threshold of the gateway.
“I have been looking for you everywhere, Robert,"
she said. “Papa has come down to the library, and
I'm sure he will be glad to see you."
The young man started at the sound of his cousin's
fresh young voice. “Good heavens!” he thought, “can
these two women be of the same clay? Can this frank,
generous-hearted girl, who cannot conceal any impulse
of her innocent nature, be of the same flesh and blood


72
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
as that wretched creature whose shadow falls upon the
path beside me?”
He looked from his cousin to Lady Audley, who
stood near the gateway, waiting for him to stand aside
and let her pass him.
“I don't know what has come to your cousin, my
dear Alicia,” said my lady. “He is so absent-minded
and eccentric, as to be quite beyond my comprehen-
sion.”
"Indeed,” exclaimed Miss Audley; "and yet I
should imagine, from the length of your tête-à-tête,
that you had made some effort to understand him."
“Oh, yes,” said Robert, quietly, “my lady and I
understand each other very well; but as it is growing
late I will wish you good evening, ladies. I shall
sleep to-night at Mount Stanning, as I have some
business to attend to up there, and I will come down
and see my uncle to-morrow.”
“What, Robert!” cried Alicia, "you surely won't
go away without seeing papa?”
“Yes, my dear,” answered the young man. “I am
a little disturbed by some disagreeable business in
which I am very much concerned, and I would rather
not see my uncle. Good night, Alicia. I will come or
write to-morrow.”
He pressed his cousin's hand, bowed to Lady
Audley, and walked away under the black shadows of
the archway, and out into the quiet avenue beyond
the Court.


IN THE LIME-WALK.
asid
Echer
My lady and Alicia stood watching him until he
was out of sight.
“What in goodness' name is the matter with my
cousin Robert?” exclaimed Miss Audley, impatiently,
as the barrister disappeared. “What does he mean by
these absurd goings-on ? Some disagreeable business
that disturbs him, indeed! I suppose the unhappy
creature has had a brief forced upon him by some
evil-starred attorney, and is sinking into a state of
imbecility from a dim consciousness of his own in-
competence."
“Have you ever studied your cousin's character,
Alicia?” asked my lady, very seriously, after a
pause.
“Studied his character! No, Lady Audley. Why
should I study his character?” said Alicia. "There is
very little study required to convince anybody that he
is a lazy, selfish Sybarite, who cares for nothing in the
world except his own ease and comfort.”
“But have you never thought him eccentric?”.
“Eccentric!" repeated Alicia, pursing up her red
lips and shrugging her shoulders. “Well, yes — I
believe that is the excuse generally made for such
people. I suppose Bob is eccentric."
“I have never heard you speak of his father and
mother,” said my lady, thoughtfully. “Do you re-
member them?”
"I never saw his mother. She was a Miss Dal-
rymple, a very dashing girl, who ran away with my
uncle, and lost a very handsome fortune in consequence.
some
Toni
I am
ling
ss in
auther
de or
Lady
vs of


74,
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
She died at Nice when poor Bob was five years
old.”
“Did you ever hear anything particular about
her?"
"How do you mean, “particular'?” asked Alicia.
“Did you ever hear that she was eccentric -- what
people call 'odd’?"
"Oh, no,” said Alicia, laughing. "My aunt was a
very reasonable woman, I believe, though she did
marry for love. But you must remember that she died
before I was born, and I have not, therefore, felt very
much curiosity about her.”
“But you recollect your uncle, I suppose?”
“My uncle Robert?” said Alicia. “Oh, yes, I re-
member him very well indeed.”.
"Was he eccentric — I mean to say, peculiar in
his habits, like your cousin?"
“Yes, I believe Robert inherits all his absurdities
from his father. My uncle expressed the same in-
difference for his fellow-creatures as my cousin; but as
he was a good husband, an affectionate father, and a
kind master, nobody ever challenged his opinions.”
“But he was eccentric?”
“Yes; I suppose he was generally thought a little
eccentric.”
“Ah,” said my lady gravely, “I thought as much.
Do you know, Alicia, that madness is more often
transmitted from father to son than from father to
daughter, and from mother to daughter than from
mother to son? Your cousin Robert Audley is a very


IN THE LIME-WALK.
75
handsome young man, and I believe a very good-
hearted young man; but he must be watched, Alicia,
for he is mad!"
“Mad!” cried Miss Audley, indignantly; "you are
dreaming, my lady, or — or — you are trying to
frighten me,” added the young lady, with considerable
alarm. .
“I only wish to put you on your guard, Alicia,"
answered my lady. “Mr. Audley may be as you say,
merely eccentric; but he has talked to me this evening
in a manner that has filled me with absolute terror,
and I believe that he is going mad. I shall speak
very seriously to Sir Michael this very night.”
"Speak to papa!” exclaimed Alicia; "you surely
won't distress papa by suggesting such a possibility!”
“I shall only put him on his guard, my dear
Alicia."
* “But he'll never believe you,” said Miss Audley;
"he will laugh at such an idea.”
“No, Alicia; he will believe anything that I tell
him," answered my lady, with a quiet smile.


76
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
CHAPTER V.
Preparing the Ground.
LADY AUDLEY went from the garden to the library,
a pleasant oak-panelled homely apartment in which
Sir Michael liked to sit reading or writing, or arran-
ging the business of his estate with his steward, a
stalwart countryman, half agriculturist, half lawyer, who
rented a small farm a few miles from the Court.
The baronet was seated in a capacious easychair
near the hearth. The bright blaze of the fire rose and
fell, flashing now upon the polished prominences of the
black-oak bookcase, now upon the gold and scarlet
bindings of the books; sometimes glimmering upon the
Athenian helmet of a marble Pallas, sometimes lighting
up the forehead of Sir Robert Peel.
The lamp upon the reading-table had not yet been
lighted, and Sir Michael sat in the firelight waiting for
the coming of his young wife.
It is impossible for me ever to tell the purity of
his generous love -- it is impossible to describe that
affection which was as tender as the love of a young
mother for her first-born, as brave and chivalrous as
the heroic passion of a Bayard for his liege mistress.
The door opened while he was thinking of this
fondly-loved wife, and looking up, the baronet saw
the slender form standing in the doorway.


PREPARING THE GROUND.
77
“Why, my darling!” he exclaimed, as my lady
closed the door behind her, and came towards his
chair, “I have been thinking of you, and waiting for
you for an hour. Where have you been, and what
have you been doing?”
My lady, standing in the shadow rather than in
the light, paused a few moments before replying to
this question.
“I have been to Chelmsford,” she said, "shopping;
and "
She hesitated — twisting her bonnet-strings in her
thin white fingers with an air of pretty embarrass-
ment.
"And what, my dear,” asked the baronet -- "what
have you been doing since you came from Chelmsford ?
I heard a carriage stop at the door an hour ago. It
was yours, was it not?”.
“Yes, I came home an hour ago," answered my
lady, with the same air of embarrassment.
“And what have you been doing since you came
home?"
Sir Michael Audley asked this question with a
slightly reproachful accent. His young wife's presence
made the sunshine of his life, and though he could not
bear to chain her to his side, it grieved him to think
that she could willingly remain unnecessarily absent
from him frittering away her time in some childish
talk or frivolous occupation.
“What have you been doing since you came home,


78
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
my dear?” he repeated. “What has kept you so long
away from me?"
"I have been talking – to – Mr. Robert Audley."
She still twisted her bonnet-string round and round
her fingers. She still spoke with the same air of em-
barrassment.
“Robert!” exclaimed the baronet; "is Robert
here?"
“He was here a little while ago."
“And is here still, I suppose?”
“No, he has gone away.”
“Gone away!” cried Sir Michael. “What do you
mean, my darling."
“I mean that your nephew came to the Court this
afternoon. Alicia and I found him idling about the
gardens. He stayed here till about a quarter of an
hour ago talking to me, and then he hurried off, with-
out a word of explanation, except, indeed, some ridi-
culous excuse about business at Mount Stanning."
“Business at Mount Stanning! Why, what busi-
ness can he possibly have in that out-of-the-way place?
He has gone to sleep at Mount Stanning, then, I
suppose?”
“Yes, I think he said something to that effect.”
“Upon my word,” exclaimed the baronet, “I think
that boy is half mad.”
My lady's face was so much in shadow, that Sir
Michael Audley was unaware of the bright change
that came over its sickly pallor as he made this very
common-place observation. A triumphant smile illu-


PREPARING THE GROUND.
79
mined Lucy Audley's countenance, a smile that plainly
said, “It is coming -- it is coming; I can twist him
which way I like. I can put black before him, and if
I say it is white, he will believe me.”
But Sir Michael Audley, in declaring that his
nephew's wits were disordered, merely uttered that
common-place ejaculation which is well known to have
very little meaning. The baronet had, it is true, no
very great estimate of Robert's faculty for the business
of this every-day life. He was in the habit of looking
upon his nephew as a good-natured nonentity -- a man
whose heart had been amply stocked by liberal nature
with all the best things the generous goddess had to
bestow, but whose brain had been somewhat overlooked
in the distribution of intellectual gifts. Sir Michael
Audley made that mistake which is very commonly
made by easy-going, well-to-do observers, who have no
occasion to look below the surface. He mistook laziness
for incapacity. He thought because his nephew was
idle, he must necessarily be stupid. He concluded
that if Robert did not distinguish himself it was because
he could not
He forgot the mute inglorious Miltons who die
voiceless and inarticulate for want of that dogged per-
severance, that blind courage, which the poet must pos-
sess before he can find a publisher; he forgot the Crom-
wells, who see the noble vessel — political economy –
floundering upon a sea of confusion, and going down
in a tempest of noisy bewilderment, and who yet are
powerless to get at the helm, forbidden even to send
of intellecithich is very who have no


80
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
out a life-boat to the sinking ship. Surely it is a
mistake to judge of what a man can do by that which
he has done.
The world's Valhalla is a close borough, and per-
haps the greatest men may be those who perish silently
far away from the sacred portal. Perhaps the purest
and brightest spirits are those who shrink from the
turmoil of the race-course — the tumult and confusion
of the struggle. The game of life is something like
the game of écarté, and it may be that the best cards
are sometimes left in the pack.
My lady threw off her bonnet, and seated herself
upon a velvet-covered footstool at Sir Michael's feet.
There was nothing studied or affected in this girlish
action. It was so natural to Lucy Audley to be
childish, that no one would have wished to see her
otherwise. It would have seemed as foolish to expect
dignified reserve or womanly gravity from this amber-
haired syren, as to wish for rich basses in the clear
treble of a skylark's song
She sat with her pale face turned away from the
firelight, and with her hands locked together upon the
arm of her husband's easy-chair. They were very rest-
less, these slender white hands. My lady twisted the
jewelled fingers in and out of each other, as she talked
to her husband.
“I wanted to come to you, you know, dear," she
said — "I wanted to come to you directly I got home,
but Mr. Audley insisted upon my stopping to talk to
him.”


PREPARING THE GROUND.
81
"But what about, my love?" asked the baronet.
“What could Robert have to say to you?” ,
My lady did not answer this question. Her fair
head drooped upon her husband's knee, her rippling
yellow curls fell over her face.
Sir Michael lifted that beautiful head with his
strong hands, and raised my lady's face. The firelight
shining on that pale face lit up the large, soft blue
eyes which were drowned in tears.
“Lucy, Lucy!” cried the baronet, “what is the
meaning of this? My love, my love, what has hap-
pened to distress you in this manner?”
Lady Audley tried to speak, but the words died
away inarticulately upon her trembling lips. A cho-
king sensation in her throat seemed to strangle those
false and plausible words, her only armour against her
enemies. She could not speak. The agony she had
endured silently in the dismal lime-walk had grown too
strong for her, and she broke into a tempest of hys-
terical sobbing. It was no simulated grief that shook
her slender frame, and tore at her like some ravenous
beast that would have rent her piece-meal with its hor-
rible strength. It was a storm of real anguish and
terror, of remorse and misery. It was the one wild
outcry, in which the woman's feebler nature got the
better of the syren's art.
It was not thus that she had meant to fight her
terrible duel with Robert Audley. These were not the
weapons which she had intended to use; but perhaps
no artifice which she could have devised would have
Lady Audley's Secret. II.


82
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
served her so well as this one outburst of natural
grief. It shook her husband to the very soul. It be-
wildered and terrified him. It reduced the strong in-
tellect of the man to helpless confusion and perplexity.
It struck at the one weak point in a good man's na-
ture. It appealed straight to Sir Michael Audley's
affection for his wife.
Ah, Heaven help a strong man's tender weakness
for the woman he loves. Heaven pity him when the
guilty creature has deceived him and comes with her
tears and lamentations to throw herself at his feet in
self-abandonment and remorse, torturing him with the
sight of her agony, rending his heart with her sobs,
lacerating his breast with her groans. Multiplying her
own sufferings into a great anguish for him to bear,
multiplying them by twenty-fold, multiplying them in
the ratio of a brave man's capacity for endurance.
Heaven forgive him if, maddened by that cruel agony,
the balance wavers for a moment, and he is ready to
forgive anything, ready to take this wretched one to the
shelter of his breast, and to pardon that which the
stern voice of manly honour urges must not be par-
doned. Pity him, pity him. The wife's worst remorse
when she stands without the threshold of the home she
may never enter more is not equal to the agony of the
husband who closes the portal on that familiar and en-
treating face. The anguish of the mother who may
never look again upon her children is less than the
torment of the father who has to say to those children,
“My little ones, you are henceforth motherless."


PREPARING THE GROUND.
83
Sir Michael Audley rose from his chair, trembling
with indignation, and ready to do immediate battle
with the person who had caused his wife's grief.
“Lucy,” he said, “Lucy, I insist upon your telling
me what and who has distressed you. I insist upon it.
Whoever has annoyed you shall answer to me for your
grief. Come, my love, tell me directly what it is?”
He reseated himself and bent over the drooping
figure at his feet, calming his own agitation in his de-
sire to soothe his wife's distress.
"Tell me what it is, my dear?” he whispered, ten-
derly.
The sharp paroxysm had passed away, and my
lady looked up: a glittering light shone through the
tears in her eyes, and the lines about her pretty rosy
mouth, those hard and cruel lines which Robert Aud-
ley had observed in the pre-Raphaelite portrait, were
plainly visible in the firelight.
“I am very silly,” she said; "but really he has
made me quite hysterical."
“Who — who has made you hysterical?”
"Your nephew — Mr. Robert Audley."
“Robert!” cried the baronet. “Lucy, what do you
mean?”
"I told you that Mr. Audley insisted upon my
going into the lime-walk, dear," said my lady. “He
wanted to talk to me, he said, and I went, and he said
such horrible things that — "
“What horrible things, Lucy?"
Lady Audley shuddered and clung with convulsive
6*


LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
fingers to the strong hand that had rested caressingly
upon her shoulder.
“What did he say, Lucy?”
“Oh, my dear love, how can I tell you ?” cried my
lady. “I know that I shall distress you -- or you will
laugh at me, and then —"
“Laugh at you? no, Lucy."
Lady Audley was silent for a moment. She sat
looking straight before her into the fire, with her fingers
still locked about her husband's hand.
: “My dear,” she said, slowly, hesitating now and
then between her words, as if she almost shrank from
uttering them, “have you ever – I am so afraid of
vexing you — or — have you ever thought Mr. Audley
a little - a little —"
“A little what, my darling?”
“A little out of his mind,” faltered Lady Audley.
“Out of his mind!” cried Sir Michael. “My dear
girl, what are you thinking of?”
“You said just now, dear, that you thought he was
half mad.”
“Did I, my love?" said the baronet, laughing. “I
don't remember saying it, and it was a mere façon de
parler, that meant nothing whatever. Robert may be a
little eccentric -- a little stupid, perhaps — he mayn't
be overburdened with wits, but I don't think he has
brains enough for madness. I believe it's generally
your great intellects that get out of order.”
"But madness is sometimes hereditary," said my
lady. “Mr. Audley may have inherited "


PREPARING THE GROUND.
85
"He has inherited no madness from his father's
family,” interrupted Sir Michael. “The Audleys have
never peopled private lunatic asylums or fee'd mad
doctors.”
"Nor from his mother's family?"
"Not to my knowledge."
“People generally keep these things a secret,” said
my lady, gravely. “There may have been madness in
your sister-in-law's family.”
"I don't think so, my dear," replied Sir Michael.
“But, Lucy, tell me what, in Heaven's name, has put
this idea into your head?”
“I have been trying to account for your nephew's
conduct. I can account for it in no other manner. If
you had heard the things he said to me to-night, Sir
Michael, you too might have thought him mad."
“But what did he say, Lucy?”
“I can scarcely tell you. You can see how much
he has stupefied and bewildered me. I believe he has
lived too long alone in those solitary Temple chambers.
Perhaps he reads too much, or smokes too much. You
know that some physicians declare madness to be a
mere illness of the brain – an illness to which any
one is subject, and which may be produced by given
causes, and cured by given means.”
Lady Audley's eyes were still fixed upon the
burning coals in the wide grate. She spoke as if she
had been discussing a subject that she had often heard
discussed before. She spoke as if her mind had almost
wandered away from the thought of her husband's


86
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
nephew to the wider question of madness in the
abstract.
“Why should he not be mad?” resumed my lady.
“People are insane for years and years before their
insanity is found out. They know that they are mad,
but they know how to keep their secret; and, perhaps
they may sometimes keep it till they die. Sometimes
a paroxysm seizes them, and in an evil hour they
betray themselves. They commit a crime, perhaps.
The horrible temptation of opportunity assails them,
the knife is in their hand, and the unconscious victim
by their side. They may conquer the restless demon
and go away, and die innocent of any violent deed;
but they may yield to the horrible temptation — the
frightful, passionate, hungry craving for violence and
horror. They sometimes yield, and are lost."
Lady Audley's voice rose as she argued this dread-
ful question. The hysterical excitement from which
she had only just recovered had left its effects upon
her, but she controlled herself, and her tone grew
calmer as she resumed: -
“Robert Audley is mad," she said, decisively.
“What is one of the strongest diagnostics of madness
- what is the first appalling sign of mental aber-
ration? The mind becomes stationary; the brain
stagnates; the even current of the mind is interrupted;
the thinking power of the brain resolves itself into a
monotone. As the waters of a tideless pool putrefy by
reason of their stagnation, the mind becomes turbid
and corrupt through lack of action; and perpetual


PREPARING THE GROUND.
87
.
reflection upon one subject resolves itself into mono-
mania. Robert Audley is a monomaniac. The disap-
pearance of his friend, George Talboys, grieved and
bewildered him. He dwelt upon this one idea until he
lost the power of thinking of anything else. The one
idea looked at perpetually became distorted to his
mental vision. Repeat the commonest word in the
English language twenty times, and before the
twentieth repetition you will have begun to wonder
whether the word which you repeat is really the word
you mean to utter. Robert Audley has thought of his
friend's disappearance until the one idea has done its
fatal and unhealthy work. He looks at a common
event with a vision that is diseased, and he distorts it
into a gloomy horror engendered of his own mono-
mania. If you do not want to make me as mad as he
is, you must never let me see him again. He declared to-
night that George Talboys was murdered in this place,
and that he will root up every tree in the gardens,
and pull down every brick in the house, in his search
for "
My lady paused. The words died away upon her
lips. She had exhausted herself by the strange energy
with which she had spoken. She had been transformed
from a frivolous childish beauty into a woman, strong
to argue her own cause and plead her own defence..
"Pull down this house!” cried the baronet. "George
Talboys murdered at Audley Court! Did Robert say
this, Lucy?"


688
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
“He said something of that kind — something that
frightened me very much.”
"Then he must be mad,” said Sir Michael, gravely.
“I'm bewildered by what you tell me. Did he really
say this, Lucy, or did you misunderstand him?”
“I -I - don't think I did,” faltered my lady.
“You saw how frightened I was when I first came in.
I should not have been so much agitated if he hadn't
said something horrible.”
Lady Audley had availed herself of the very
strongest argument by which she could help her
cause.
"To be sure, my darling, to be sure," answered the
baronet. “What could have put such a horrible fancy
into the unhappy boy's head? This Mr. Talboys —
a perfect stranger to all of us - murdered, at Audley
Court! I'll go to Mount Stanning to-night, and see
Robert. I have known him ever since he was a baby,
and I cannot be deceived in him. If there is really
anything wrong, he will not be able to conceal it
from me."
My lady shrugged her shoulders.
“That is rather an open question,” she said. “It
is generally a stranger who is the first to observe any
psychological peculiarity.”
· The big words sounded strange from my lady's
rosy lips; but her newly-adopted wisdom had a certain
quaint prettiness about it, which bewildered her hus
band.


PREPARING THE GROUND.
89
c Then Jout this De his head. I don't
"But you must not go to Mount Stanning, my dear
darling,” she said, tenderly. “Remember that you are
under strict orders to stay in-doors until the weather
is milder, and the sun shines upon this cruel ice-bound
country.”
• Sir Michael Audley sank back in his capacious
chair with a sigh of resignation.
“That's true, Lucy,” he said; "we must obey Mr.
Dawson. I suppose Robert will come to see me to-
morrow.”
“Yes, dear. I think he said he would.”
“Then we must wait till to-morrow, my darling.
I can't believe that there really is anything wrong
with the poor boy - I can't believe it, Lucy."
"Then how do you account for his extraordinary
delusion about this Mr. Talboys?” asked my lady.
Sir Michael shook his head.
"I don't know, Lucy – I don't know," he an-
swered. “It is always so difficult to believe that any
one of the calamities that continually befal our fellow-
men will ever happen to us. I can't believe that my
nephew's mind is impaired – I can't believe it. I-
I'll get him to stop here, Lucy, and I'll watch him
closely. I tell you, my love, if there is anything
wrong I am sure to find it outI can't be mistaken
in a young man who has always been the same to me
as my own son. But, my darling, why were you so
frightened by Robert's wild talk? It could not affect
you."
My lady sighed piteously.


90
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
“You must think me very strong-minded, Sir
Michael,” she said, with rather an injured air, “if you
imagine I can hear of these sort of things indifferently.
I know I shall never be able to see Mr. Audley
again."
“And you shall not, my dear —. you shall not."
“You said just now you would have him here,”
murmured Lady Audley.
“But I will not, my darling girl, if his presence
annoys you. Good heavens, Lucy, can you imagine
for a moment that I have any higher wish than to
promote your happiness? I will consult some London
physician about Robert, and let him discover if there
is really anything the matter with my poor brother's
only son. You shall not be annoyed, Lucy."
“You must think me very unkind, dear,” said my
lady, "and I know I ought not to be annoyed by the
poor fellow; but he really seems to have taken some
absurd notion into his head about me.”
“About you, Lucy!” cried Sir Michael.
“Yes, dear. He seems to connect me in some
vague manner - which I cannot quite understand —
with the disappearance of this Mr. Talboys."
“Impossible, Lucy. You must have misunderstood
him."
"I don't think so."
“Then he must be mad," said the baronet — "he
must be mad. I will wait till he goes back to town,
and then send some one to his chambers to talk to


PREPARING THE GROUND.
91
him. Good heavens, what a mysterious business
this is!”
“I fear I have distressed you, darling," murmured
Lady Audley.
“Yes, my dear, I am very much distressed by what
you have told me; but you were quite right to talk to
me frankly about this dreadful business. I must think
it over, dearest, and try and decide what is best to be
done."
My lady rose from the low ottoman on which she
had been seated. The fire had burned down, and
there was only a faint glow of red light in the room.
Lucy Audley bent over her husband's chair, and put
her lips to his broad forehead.
"How good you have always been to me, dear,”
she whispered softly. “You would never let any one
influence you against me, would you, my darling?"
"Influence me against you?” repeated the baronet.
"No, my love."
"Because you know, dear," pursued my lady,
"there are wicked people as well as mad people in
the world, and there may be some persons to whose
interest it would be to injure me.”
“They had better not try it then, my dear,” an-
swered Sir Michael; "they would find themselves in
rather a dangerous position if they did.”
Lady Audley laughed aloud, with a' gay, trium-
phant, silvery peal of laughter that vibrated through
the quiet room.
"My own dear darling," she said, “I know you


92
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
love me. And now I must run away, dear, for it's
past seven o'clock. I was engaged to dine at Mrs.
Montford's, but I must send a groom with a message
of apology, for Mr. Audley has made me quite unfit
for company. I shall stay at home, and nurse you,
dear. You'll go to bed very early, won't you, and
take great care of yourself?”
“Yes, dear.” ..
My lady tripped out of the room to give her orders
about the message which was to be carried to the
house at which she was to have dined. She 'paused
for a moment as she closed the library door — she
paused, and laid her hand upon her breast to check
the rapid throbbing of her heart.
“I have been afraid of you, Mr. Robert Audley,"
she thought, “but perhaps the time may come in which
you will have cause to be afraid of me."


PHEBE'S PETITION.
CHAPTER VI.
Phæbe's Petition.
The division between Lady Audley and her step-
daughter had not become any narrower in the two
months which had elapsed since the pleasant Christmas
holiday time had been kept at Audley Court. There
was no open warfare between the two women; there
was only an armed neutrality, broken every now and
then by brief feminine skirmishes and transient wordy
tempests. I am sorry to say that Alicia would very
much have preferred a hearty pitched battle to this
silent and undemonstrative disunion; but it was not
very easy to quarrel with my lady. She had soft
answers for the turning away of wrath. She could
smile bewitchingly at her step-daughter's open petu-
lance, and laugh merrily at the young lady's ill-temper.
Perhaps had she been less amiable, had she been in-
deed more like Alicia in disposition, the two ladies
might have expended their enmity in one tremendous
quarrel, and might ever afterwards have been affec-
tionate and friendly. But Lucy Audley would not
make war. She carried forward the sum of her dislike,
and put it out at a steady rate of interest, until the
breach between her step-daughter and herself widening
a little every day, became a great gulf utterly im-
passable by olive-branch-bearing doves, from either


94
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET,
side of the abyss. There can be no reconciliation
where there is no open warfare. There must be a
battle, a brave boisterous battle, with pennants waving
and cannon roaring, before there can be peaceful
treaties and enthusiastic shaking of hands. Perhaps
the union between France and England owes its great-
est force to the recollection of bygone conquest and
defeat. We have hated each other and licked each
other and had it out, as the common phrase goes, and
we can afford now to fall into each other's arms and
vow eternal friendship and everlasting brotherhood.
Let us hope that when Northern Yankeydom has deci-
mated and been decimated, blustering Jonathan may
fling himself upon his southern brother's breast, for-
giving and forgiven.
Alicia Audley and her father's pretty wife had
plenty of room for the comfortable indulgence of their
dislike in the spacious old mansion. My lady had her
own apartments, as we know — luxurious chambers,
in which all conceivable elegancies had been gathered
for the comfort of their occupant. Alicia had her own
rooms in another part of the large house. She had her
favourite mare, her Newfoundland dog, and her draw-
ing materials, and she made herself tolerably happy.
She was not very happy, this frank, generous-hearted
girl, for it was scarcely possible that she could be al-
together at ease in the constrained atmosphere of the
Court. Her father was changed — that dear father,
over whom she had once reigned supreme with the
boundless authority of a spoiled child, had accepted


PHEBE'S PETITION.
95
another ruler and submitted to a new dynasty. Little
by little my lady's pretty power made itself felt in that
narrow household, and Alicia saw her father gradually
lured across the gulf that divided Lady Audley from
her step-daughter, until he stood at last quite upon the
other side of the abyss, and looked coldly upon his
only child across that widening chasm.
Alicia felt that he was lost to her. My lady's
beaming smiles, my lady's winning words, my lady's
radiant glances and bewitching graces had done their
work of enchantment, and Sir Michael had grown to
look upon his daughter as a somewhat wilful and
capricious young person who had behaved with deter-
mined unkindness to the wife he loved.
Poor Alicia saw all this, and bore her burden as
well as she could. It seemed very hard to be a hand-
some grey-eyed heiress, with dogs and horses and ser-
vants at her command, and yet to be so much alone in
the world as to know of not one friendly ear into which
she might pour her sorrows.
"If Bob was good for anything, I could have told
him how unhappy I am,” thought Miss Audley; "but
I may just as well tell Cæsar my troubles, for any
consolation I should get from my cousin Robert."
Sir Michael Audley obeyed his pretty nurse, and
went to bed at a little after nine o'clock upon this
bleak March evening. Perhaps the baronet's bedroom
was about the pleasantest retreat that an invalid could
have chosen in such cold and cheerless weather. The
dark-green velvet curtains were drawn before the


96
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET..
windows and about the ponderous bed. The wood fire
burned redly upon the broad hearth. The reading-
lamp was lighted upon a delicious little table close to
Sir Michael's pillow, and a heap of magazines and
newspapers had been arranged by my lady's own fair
hands for the pleasure of the invalid.
Lady Audley sạt by the bedside for about ten
minutes talking to her husband, talking very seriously,
about this strange and awful question - Robert Aud-
ley's lunacy; but at the end of that time she rose and
bade him good-night. She lowered the green silk
shade before the reading-lamp, adjusting it carefully
for the repose of the baronet's eyes.
“I shall leave you, dear,” she said. “If you can
sleep, so much the better. If you wish to read, the
books and papers are close to you. I will leave the
doors between the rooms open, and I shall hear your
voice if you call me.”
Lady Audley went through her dressing-room into
the boudoir, where she had sat with her husband since
dinner.
Every evidence of womanly refinement was visible
in the elegant chamber. My lady's piano was open,
covered with scattered sheets of music and exquisitely-
bound collections of scenas and fantasias which no
master need have disdained to study. My lady's easel
stood near the window, bearing witness to my lady's
artistic talent, in the shape of a water-coloured sketch
of the Court and gardens. My lady's fairy-like em-
broideries of lace and muslin, rainbow-hued silks, and


PHCBE'S PETITION.
97
delicately-tinted wools littered the luxurious apartment;
while the looking-glasses, cunningly placed at angles
and opposite corners by an artistic upholsterer, multi-
plied my lady's image, and in that image reflected
the most beautiful object in the enchanted chamber. .
Amid all this lamplight, gilding, colour, wealth,
and beauty, Lucy Audley sat down on a low seat by
the fire to think.
If Mr. Holman Hunt could have peeped into the
pretty boudoir, I think the picture would have been
photographed upon his brain to be reproduced by and
bye upon a bishop's half-length for the glorification of
the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood. My lady in that half-
recumbent attitude, with her elbow resting on one
knee, and her perfect chin supported by her hand, the
rich folds of drapery falling away in long undulating
lines from the exquisite outline of her figure, and the
luminous rose-coloured fire-light enveloping her in a
soft haze, only broken by the golden glitter of her
yellow hair. Beautiful in herself, but made bewilder-
ingly beautiful by the gorgeous surroundings which
adorn the shrine of her loveliness. Drinking-cups of
gold and ivory, chiselled by Benvenuto Cellini; cab-
inets of buhl and porcelain, bearing the cipher of
Austrian Marie Antoinette, amid devices of rose-buds
and true-lover's knots, birds and butterflies, cupidons
and shepherdesses, goddesses, courtiers, cottagers and
milkmaids; statuettes of Parian marble and biscuit
china; gilded baskets of hot-house flowers; fantastical
caskets of Indian filagree work; fragile tea-cups of
Lady Audley's Secret. II.


98
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
turquoise china, adorned by medallion miniatures of
Louis the Great and Louis the Well-beloved, Louise de
la Vallière, and Jeanne Marie du Barry; cabinet
pictures and gilded mirrors, shimmering satin and
diaphonous lace; all that gold can buy or art devise
had been gathered together for the beautification of
this quiet chamber in which my lady sat listening to
the moaning of the shrill March wind and the flapping
of the ivy leaves against the casements, and looking
into the red chasms in the burning coals.
I should be preaching a very stale sermon, and
harping upon a very familiar moral, if I were to seize
this opportunity of declaiming against art and beauty,
because my lady was more wretched in this elegant
apartment than many a half-starved sempstress in her
dreary garret. She was wretched by reason of a wound
which lay too deep for the possibility of any solace
from such plasters as wealth and luxury; but her
wretchedness was of an abnormal nature, and I can see
no occasion for seizing upon the fact of her misery as
an argument in favour of poverty and discomfort as
opposed to opulence. The Benvenuto Cellini carvings
and the Sèvres porcelain could not give her happiness
because she had passed out of their region. She was
no longer innocent, and the pleasure we take in art
and loveliness being an innocent pleasure had passed
beyond her reach. Six or seven years before, she
would have been happy in the possession of this little
Aladdin's palace; but she had wandered out of the
circle of careless pleasure-seeking creatures, she had


PHCBE'S PETITION.
99
strayed far away into a desolate labyrinth of guilt and
treachery, terror and crime, and all the treasures that
had been collected for her could have given her no
pleasure but one, the pleasure of flinging them into a
heap beneath her feet, and trampling upon them and
destroying them in her cruel despair.
There were some things that would have inspired
her with an awful joy, a horrible rejoicing. If Robert
Audley, her pitiless enemy, her unrelenting pursuer,
had lain dead in the adjoining chamber, she would
have exulted over his bier.
What pleasures could have remained for Lucretia
Borgia and Catherine de' Medici, when the dreadful
boundary line between innocence and guilt was passed,
and the lost creatures stood upon the lonely outer side?
Only horrible vengeful joys, and treacherous delights
were left for these miserable women. With what dis-
dainful bitterness they must have watched the frivolous
vanities, the petty deceptions, the paltry sins of
ordinary offenders. Perhaps they took a horrible pride
in the enormity of their wickedness; in this “divinity
of Hell,” which made them greatest amongst sinful
creatures."
My lady, brooding by the fire in-her lonely chamber,
with her large, clear blue eyes fixed upon the yawning
gulfs of lurid crimson in the burning coals, may have
thought of many things very far away from the terribly
silent struggle in which she was engaged. She may
have thought of long-ago years of childish innocence,
childish follies and selfishnesses, or frivolous feminine
7*


100
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
sin's that had weighed very lightly upon her con-
science. Perhaps in that retrospective reverie she re-
called the early time in which she had first looked in
the glass and discovered that she was beautiful: that
fatal early time in which she had first begun to look
upon her loveliness as a right divine, a boundless pos-
session which was to be a set-off against all girlish
short-comings, a counter-balance of every youthful sin.
Did she remember the day in which that fairy dower
of beauty had first taught her to be selfish and cruel,
indifferent to the joys and sorrows of others, cold-
hearted and capricious, greedy of admiration, exacting
and tyrannical, with that petty woman's tyranny which
is the worst of despotisms? Did she trace every sin of
her life back to its true source? and did she discover
that poisoned fountain in her own exaggerated estimate
of the value of a pretty face? Surely, if her thoughts
wandered so far along the backward current of her life,
she must have repented in bitterness and despair of
that first day in which the master-passions of her life
had become her rulers, and the three demons of Vanity,
Selfishness and Ambition had joined hands and said,
“This woman is our slave; let us see what she will
become under our guidance."
How small these first youthful errors seemed as my
lady looked back upon them in that long reverie by
the lonely hearth! What small vanities, what petty
cruelties! A triumph over a schoolfellow, a flirtation
with the lover of a friend, an assertion of the right
divine invested in blue eyes and shimmering golden-


PHCBE'S PETITION.
101
tinted hair. But how terribly that narrow path-way
had widened out into the broad high-road of sin, and
how swift the footsteps had become upon the now
familiar way!
My lady twined her fingers in her loose amber
curls, and made as if she would have torn them from
her head. But even in that moment of mute despair
the unyielding dominion of beauty asserted itself, and
she released the poor tangled glitter of ringlets, leaving
them to make a halo round her head in the dim fire-
light.
"I was not wicked when I was young,” she thought,
as she stared gloomily at the fire, “I was only thought-
less. I never did any harm — at least, never wilfully.
Have I ever been really wicked, I wonder?” she mused.
“My worst wickedness have been the result of wild
impulses, and not of deeply laid plots. I am not like
the women I have read of, who have lain night after
night in the horrible dark and stillness, planning out
treacherous deeds, and arranging every circumstance of
an appointed crime. I wonder whether they suffered
– those women — whether they ever suffered as —"
Her thoughts wandered away into a weary maze
of confusion. Suddenly she drew herself up with a
proud defiant gesture, and her eyes glittered with a
light that was not entirely reflected from the fire.
“You are mad, Mr. Robert Audley," she said, "you
are mad, and your fancies are a madman's fancies. I
know what madness is. I know its signs and tokens,
and I say that you are mad.”


102
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
She put her hand to her head, as if thinking of
something which confused and bewildered her, and
which she found it difficult to contemplate with
calmness.
“Dare I defy him?" she muttered, “Dare I?
dare I? Will he stop now that he has once gone so
far? Will he stop for fear of me? Will he stop for
fear of me when the thought of what his uncle must
suffer has not stopped him? Will anything stop him
— but death?”
She pronounced the last two words in an awful
whisper, and with her head bent forward, her eyes
dilated, and her lips still parted as they had been
parted in her utterance of that final word “death,” she
sat blankly staring at the fire.
"I can't plot horrible things," she muttered pres-
ently; "my brain isn't strong enough, or I'm not
wicked enough, or brave enough. If I met Robert
Audley in those lonely gardens, as I —"
The current of her thoughts was interrupted by a
cautious knocking at her door. She rose suddenly,
startled by any sound in the stillness of her room.
She rose, and threw herself into a low chair near the
fire. She flung her beautiful head back upon the soft
cushions, and took a book from the table near her.
Insignificant as this action was it spoke very
plainly. It spoke very plainly of ever-recurring fears
- of fatal necessities for concealment — of a mind
that in its silent agonies was ever alive to the im-
portance of outward effect. It told more plainly than


PICBE'S PETITION.
103
anything else could have told, how complete an actress
my lady had been made by the awful necessity of
her life.
The modest rap at the boudoir-door was repeated.
“Come in," cried Lady Audley, in her liveliest
tone.
The door was opened with that respectful noise-
lessness peculiar to a well-bred servant, and a young
woman plainly dressed, and carrying some of the cold
March winds in the folds of her garments, crossed the
threshold of the apartment and lingered near the door,
waiting permission to approach the inner regions of
my lady's retreat.
It was Phæbe Marks, the pale-faced wife of the
Mount Stanning innkeeper.
“I beg pardon, my lady, for intruding without
leave,” she said; "but I thought I might venture to
come straight up without waiting for permission.”
“Yes, yes, Phæbe, to be sure. Take off your
bonnet, you wretched cold-looking creature, and come
and sit down here.”
Lady Audley pointed to the low ottoman upon
which she had herself been seated a few minutes be-
fore. The lady’s-maid had often sat upon it listening
to her mistress's prattle in the old days, when she had
been my lady's chief companion and confidante.
“Sit down here, Phæbe," Lady Audley repeated;
"sit down here and talk to me. I'm very glad you
came here to-night. I was horribly lonely in this
dreary place."


104
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
My lady shivered, and looked round the luxurious
chamber very much as if the Sèvres and bronze, the
buhl and ormolu, had been the mouldering adornments
of some ruined castle. The dreary wretchedness of
her thoughts had communicated itself to every object
about her, and all outer things took their colour from
that weary inner life which held its slow course of
secret anguish in her breast. She had spoken the
entire truth in saying that she was glad of her lady's-
maid's visit. Her frivolous nature clung to this weak
shelter in the hour of her fear and suffering. There
were sympathies between her and this girl, who was
like herself inwardly as well as outwardly — like her-
self, selfish, and cold, and cruel, eager for her own
advancement, and greedy of opulence and elegance,
angry with the lot that had been cast her, and weary
of dull dependence. My lady hated Alicia for her
frank, passionate, generous, daring nature; she hated
her step-daughter, and clung to this pale-faced, pale-
haired girl, whom she thought neither better nor worse
than herself.
Phoebe Marks obeyed her late mistress's com-
mands, and took off her bonnet before seating herself
on the ottoman at Lady Audley's feet. Her smooth
bands of light hair were unruffled by the March winds;
her trimly-made drab dress and linen collar were as
neatly arranged as they could have been had she only
that moment completed her toilet.
“Sir Michael is better, I hope, my lady?” she said.
“Yes, Phæbe, much better. He is asleep. You


PHEBE'S PETITION.
105
may close that door,” added Lady Audley with a
motion of her head towards the door of communication
between the rooms, which had been left open.
Mrs. Marks obeyed submissively, and then returned
to her seat.
“I am very, very unhappy, Phæbe," my lady said,
fretfully; "wretchedly miserable.”
“About the secret?” asked Mrs. Marks, in a half
whisper.
My lady did not notice that question. She re-
sumed in the same complaining tone. She was glad
to be able to complain even to this lady's-maid. She
had brooded over her fears, and had suffered so long
in secret, that it was an inexpressible relief to her to
bemoan her fate aloud.
"I am cruelly persecuted and harassed, Phæbe
Marks,” she said. “I am pursued and tormented by
a man whom I never injured, whom I have never
wished to injure. I am never suffered to rest by this
relentless tormentor, and I —".
She paused, staring at the fire again, as she had
done in her loneliness. Lost again in the dark in-
tricacies of thoughts which wandered hither and thither
in a dreadful chaos of terrified bewilderment, she could
not come to any fixed conclusion.
Phoebe Marks watched my lady's face, looking up-
ward at her late mistress with pale, anxious eyes, that
only relaxed their watchfulness when Lady Audley's
glance met that of her companion.
“I think I know whom you mean, my lady,” said


106
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
the innkeeper's wife after a pause; “I think I know
who it is who is so cruel to you."
“Oh, of course," answered my lady, bitterly; "my
secrets are everybody's secrets. You know all about
it, no doubt."
“The person is a gentleman, is he not, my lady?”
“Yes."
“A gentleman who came to the Castle Inn two
months ago, when I warned you —”.
“Yes, yes,” answered my lady impatiently.
"I thought so. The same gentleman is at our
place to-night, my lady.”
Lady Audley started up from her chair — started
up as if she would have done something desperate in
her despairing fury; but she sank back again with a
weary, querulous sigh. What warfare could such a
feeble creature wage against her fate? What could
she do but wind like a hunted hare till she found her
way back to the starting point of the cruel chace, to
be there trampled down by her pursuers?
“At the Castle Inn ?” she cried. “I might have
known as much. He has gone there to wring my
secrets from your husband. Fool!” she exclaimed,
suddenly turning upon Phæbe Marks in a transport of
anger, “do you want to destroy me that you have left
those two men together?".
Mrs. Marks clasped her hands piteously.
“I didn't come away of my own free will, my
lady,” she said; “no one could have been more un-


PH@BE'S PETITION.
107
willing to leave the house than I was this night. I
was sent here."
“Who sent you here?”
"Luke, my lady. You can't tell how hard he can
be upon me if I go against him.”
“Why did he send you?”
The innkeeper's wife dropped her eyelids under
Lady Audley's angry glances, and hesitated confusedly
before she answered this question.
"Indeed, my lady," she stammered, “I didn't want
to come. I told Luke that it was too bad for us to
worry you, first asking this favour, and then asking
that, and never leaving you alone for a month to-
gether; but — but — he drove me down with his loud
blustering talk, and he made me come.”
“Yes, yes,” cried Lady Audley, impatiently. “I
know that. I want to know why you have come.”
“Why, you know, my lady,” answered Phæbe,
half reluctantly, "Luke is very extravagant; and all I
can say to him, I can't get him to be careful or steady.
He's not sober; and when he's drinking with a lot of
rough countrymen, and drinking, perhaps, even more
than they do, it isn't likely that his head can be very
clear for accounts. If it hadn't been for me we should
have been ruined before this; and hard as I've tried,
I haven't been able to keep the ruin off. You re-
member giving me the money for the brewer's bill,
my lady?”
“Yes, I remember very well," answered Lady Aud-


108
SECRET,
LADY AUDLI
ley, with a bitter laugh, "for I wanted that money to
pay my own bills.”
"I know you did, my lady, and it was very, very hard
for me to have to come and ask you for it, after all
that we'd received from you before. But that isn't the
worst; when Luke sent me down here to beg the favour
of that help, he never told me that the Christmas rent
was still owing: but it was, my lady, and it's owing
now, and -- and there's a bailiff in the house to-night,
and we're to be sold up to-morrow unless —".
“Unless I pay your rent, I suppose,” cried Lucy
Audley. “I might have guessed what was coming."
“Indeed, indeed, my lady, I wouldn't have asked
it,” sobbed Phoebe Marks, “but he made me come.”
“Yes,” answered my lady bitterly, “he made you
come; and he will make you come whenever he pleases,
and whenever he wants money for the gratification of
his low vices; and you and he are my pensioners as
long as I live, or as long as I have any money to
give; for I suppose when my purse is empty and my
credit ruined, you and your husband will turn upon
me and sell me to the highest bidder. Do you know,
Phæbe Marks, that my jewel-case has been half emptied
to meet your claims? Do you know that my pin
money, which I thought -such a princely allowance
when my marriage settlement was made, and when I
was a poor governess at Mr. Dawson's, Heaven help
me — my pin money has been overdrawn half a year
to satisfy your demands? What can I do to appease
you? Shall I sell my Marie Antoinette cabinet, or


PHEBE'S PETITION.
109
my Pompadour china, Leroy's and Benson's ormolu
clocks, or my Gobelin tapestried chairs and ottomans ?
How shall I satisfy you next?”
"Oh, my lady, my lady,” cried Phæbe, piteously,
"don't be so cruel to me; you know, you know that it
isn't I who want to impose upon you.”
“I know nothing,” exclaimed Lady Audley, "ex-
cept that I am the most miserable of women. Let me
think,” she cried, silencing Phoebe's consolatory mur-
murs with an imperious gesture. “Hold your tongue,
girl, and let me think of this business, if I can."
She put her hands to her forehead, clasping her
slender fingers across her brow, as if she would have
controlled the action of her brain by their convulsive
pressure.
"Robert Audley is with your husband,” she said,
slowly, speaking to herself rather than to her com-
panion. “Those two men are together, and there are
bailiffs in the house, and your brutal husband is no
doubt brutally drunk by this time, and brutally ob-
stinate and ferocious in his drunkenness. If I refuse
to pay this money his ferocity will be multiplied by a
hundredfold. There's little use in discussing that
matter. The money must be paid."
“But if you do pay it, my lady,” said Phoebe,
very earnestly, “I hope you will impress upon Luke
that it is the last money you will ever give him while
he stops in that house."
“Why?” asked Lady Audley, letting her hands


110
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
fall on her lap, and looking inquiringly at Mrs.
Marks.
“Because I want Luke to leave the Castle.”
“But why do you want him to leave?”
“Oh, for ever so many reasons, my lady," an-
swered Phoebe. “He's not fit to be the landlord of a
public-house. I didn't know that when I married him,
or I would have gone against the business, and tried
to persuade him to take to the farming line. Not that
I suppose he'd have given up his own fancy, though,
either; for he's obstinate enough, as you know, my
lady. He's not fit for his present business, though.
He's scarcely ever sober after dark, and when he's
drunk he gets almost wild, and doesn't seem to know
what he does. We've had two or three narrow escapes
with him already."
“Narrow escapes!” repeated Lady Audley. “What
do you mean!”
“Why, we've run the risk of being burnt in our
beds through his carelessness."
"Burnt in your beds through his carelessness!
Why, how was that?" asked my lady, rather list-
lessly. She was too selfish, and too deeply absorbed
in her own troubles, to take much interest in any
danger which had befallen her sometime lady's-maid.
? “You know what a queer old place the Castle is,
my lady; all tumble-down wood-work, and rotten
rafters, and such like. The Chelmsford Insurance
Company won't insure it, for they say if the place did
happen to catch fire upon a windy night it would


PHEBE'S PETITION.
111
blaze away like so much tinder, and nothing in the
world could save it. Well, Luke knows this, and the
landlord has warned him of it times and often, for he
lives close against us, and he keeps a pretty sharp eye
upon all my husband's goings on, but when Luke's tipsy
he doesn't know what he's about, and only a week
ago he left a candle burning in one of the outhouses,
and the flame caught one of the rafters of the sloping
roof, and if it hadn't been for me finding it out when
I went round the house the last thing, we should have
all been burnt to death perhaps. And that's the third
time the same kind of thing has happened in the six
months we've had the place, and you can't wonder
that I'm frightened; can you, my lady?”
My lady had not wondered, she had not thought
about the business at all. She had scarcely listened
to these common place details; why should she care
for this low-born waiting woman's perils and troubles ?
Had she not her own terrors, her own soul-absorbing
perplexities to usurp every thought of which her brain
was capable.
She did not make any remark upon that which
poor Phæbe had just told her; she scarcely compre-
hended what had been said, until some moments after
the girl had finished speaking, when the words assumed
their full meaning, as some words do two or three
minutes after they have been heard without being
heeded.
“Burnt in your beds," said my lady, at last. “It
would have been a good thing for me if that precious


112
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
creature, your husband, had been burnt in his bed be-
fore to-night.”
A vivid picture flashed upon her as she spoke.
The picture of that frail wooden tenement, the Castle
Inn, reduced to a roofless chaos of lath and plaster,
vomiting flames from its black mouth and spitting
sparks of fire upward towards the cold night sky.
She gave a weaty sigh as she dismissed this image
from her restless brain. She would be no better off
even if this enemy should be for ever silenced. She
had another and far more dangerous foe — a foe who
was not to be bribed or bought off, though she had
been as rich as an empress.
“I'll give you the money to send this bailiff away,”
my lady said, after a pause. “I must give you the
last sovereign in my purse, but what of that? You
know as well as I do that I dare not refuse you."
Lady Audley rose and took the lighted lamp from
her writing-table. “The money is in my dressing-
room,” she said; “I will go and fetch it."
“Oh, my lady,” exclaimed Phæbe, suddenly. "I
forget something; I was in such a way about this
business that I quite forgot it.”
“Quite forgot what?”
“A letter that was given me to bring to you, my
lady, just before I left home."
“What letter?”
“A letter from Mr. Audley. He heard my husband
mention that I was coming down here, and he asked
me to carry this letter.”


PHEBE'S PETITION.
113
Lady Audley set the lamp down upon the table
nearest to her, and held out her hand to receive the
letter. Phoebe Marks could scarcely fail to observe
that the little jewelled hand shook like a leaf.
“Give it me — give it me,” cried my lady; "let
me see what more he has to say."
She almost snatched the letter from Phæbe's hand
in her wild impatience. She tore open the envelope
and flung it from her; she could scarcely unfold the
sheet of note-paper in her eager excitement.
The letter was very brief. It contained only these
words: —
“Should Mrs. George Talboys really have survived
the date of her supposed death, as recorded in the
public prints, and upon the tomb-stone in Ventnor
churchyard, and should she exist in the person of the
lady suspected and accused by the writer of this, there
can be no great difficulty in finding some one able and
willing to identify her. Mrs. Barkamb, the owner of
North Cottages, Wildernsea, would no doubt consent to
throw some light upon this matter, either to dispel a
delusion or to confirm a suspicion.”
“ROBERT AUDLEY.
“March 3rd, 1859.
“The Castle Inn, Mount Stanning."
My lady crushed the letter fiercely in her hand,
and flung it from her into the flames.
Lady Audley's Secret. II.


114
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
“If he stood before me now, and I could kill him,"
she muttered in a strange inward whisper, “I would do
it — I would do it!” She snatched up the lamp and
rushed into the adjoining room. She shut the door
behind her. She could not endure any witness of her
horrible despair -- she could endure nothing; neither
herself nor her surroundings.


THE RED LIGHT IN THE SKY.
115
CHAPTER VII.
The Red Light in the Sky.
The door between my lady's dressing-room and the
bedchamber in which Sir Michael lay, had been left
open. The baronet slept peacefully, his noble face
plainly visible in the subdued lamplight. His breathing
was low and regular, his lips curved in a half smile —
a smile of tender happiness which he often wore when
he looked at his beautiful wife, the smile of an all-
indulgent father, who looked admiringly at his favourite
child.
Some touch of womanly feeling, some sentiment of
compassion softened Lady Audley's glance as it fell
upon that noble reposing figure. For a moment the
horrible egotism of her own misery yielded to her
pitying tenderness for another. It was perhaps only a
semi-selfish tenderness after all, in which pity for her-
self was as powerful as pity for her husband; but for
once in a way, her thoughts ran out of the narrow
groove of her own terrors and her own troubles to
dwell with prophetic grief upon the coming sorrows of
another.
"If they make him believe, how wretched he will
be,” she thought
But intermingled with that thought there was an-
other — there was the thought of her lovely face, her
8*


116
SECRET.
LADY AUDL
bewitching manner, her arch smile, her low musical
laugh, which was like a peal of silvery bells ringing
across a broad expanse of flat pasture, and a rippling
river in the misty summer evening. She thought of all
these things with a transient thrill of triumph, which
was stronger even than her terror.
If Sir Michael Audley lived to be a hundred years
old, whatever he might learn to believe of her, however
he might grow to despise her, would he ever be able
to disassociate her from these attributes ? No; a
thousand times, no. To the last hour of his life his
memory would present her to him invested with the
loveliness that had first won his enthusiastic admiration,
his devoted affection. Her worst enemies could not rob
her of that fairy dower which had been so fatal in its
influence upon her frivolous mind.
She paced up and down the dressing-room in the
silvery lamplight, pondering upon the strange letter
which she had received from Robert Audley. She
walked backwards and forwards in that monotonous
wandering for some time before she was able to steady
her thoughts -- before she was able to bring the
scattered forces of her narrow intellect to bear upon the
one all-important subject of the threat contained in the
barrister's letter.
"He will do it,” she said, between her set teeth;
“he will do it, unless I get him into a lunatic asylum
first; or unless --"
She did not finish the thought in words. She did
not even think out the sentence; but some new and un-
walked he had to ponderin


THE RED LIGHT IN THE SKY.
117
natural pulse in her heart seemed to beat out each se-
parate syllable against her breast.
The thought was this: "He will do it, unless some
strange calamity befalls him and silences him for ever.”
The red blood flashed up into my lady's face with as
sudden and transient a blaze as the flickering flame of
a fire, and died as suddenly away, leaving her more
pale than winter snow. Her hands, which had before
been locked convulsively together, fell apart and
dropped heavily at her sides. She stopped in her rapid
pacing to and fro - stopped as Lot's wife may have
stopped, after that fatal backward glance at the
perishing city, with every pulse slackening, with every
drop of blood congealing in her veins, in the terrible
process that was to transform her from a woman into
a statue.
Lady Audley stood still for about five minutes in
that strangely statuesque attitude, her head erect, her
eyes staring straight before her – staring far beyond
the narrow boundary of her chamber wall, into dark
distances of peril and horror.
But, by-and-by, she started from that rigid attitude
almost as abruptly as she had fallen into it. She roused
herself from that semi-lethargy, and walked rapidly to
her dressing-table, and seating herself before it, pushed
away the litter of golden-stoppered bottles, and delicate
china-essence-boxes, and looked at her reflection in the
large oval glass. She was very pale; but there was no
other trace of agitation visible in her girlish face. The
lines of her exquisitely-moulded lips were so beautiful,
• dressing that semi-lethard fallen into


118
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
that it was only a very close observer who could have
perceived a certain rigidity that was unusual to them.
She saw this herself, and tried to smile away that
statue-like immobility; but to-night the rosy lips re-
fused to obey her, they were firmly locked, and were
no longer the slaves of her will and pleasure. All the
latent forces of her character concentrated themselves
in this one feature. She might command her eyes; but
she could not control the muscles of her mouth. She
rose from before her dressing-table and took a dark
velvet cloak and bonnet from the recesses of her ward-
robe, and dressed herself for walking. The little ormolu
clock on the chimney-piece struck the quarter after
eleven while Lady Audley was employed in this man-
ner; five minutes afterwards, she re-entered the room
in which she had left Phæbe Marks.
The innkeeper's wife was sitting before the low
hearth very much in the same attitude as that in which
her late mistress had brooded over that lonely hearth
earlier in the evening. Phoebe had replenished the fire,
and had reassumed her bonnet and shawl. She was
anxious to get home to that brutal husband, who was
only too apt to fall into some mischief in her absence.
She looked up as Lady Audley entered the room, and
uttered an exclamation of surprise at seeing her mistress
in a walking costume.
“My lady," she cried, "you are not going out to-
night?”
“Yes, I am, Phoebe," Lady Audley answered, very


THE RED LIGHT IN THE SKY.
119
quietly; “I am going to Mount Stanning with you, to
see this bailiff, and to pay and dismiss him myself.”
“But, my lady, you forget what the time is; you
can't go out at such an hour.”
Lady Audley did not answer. She stood, with her
fingers resting lightly upon the handle of the bell,
meditating quietly.
“The stables are always locked, and the men in
bed by ten o'clock," she murmured, “when we are at
home. It will make a terrible hubbub to get a carriage
ready; but yet I dare say one of the servants could
manage the matter quietly for me.”
“But why should you go to-night, my lady?” cried
Phoebe Marks. “To-morrow will do quite as well. A
week hence will do as well. Our landlord would take
the man away if he had your promise to settle the
debt."
Lady Audley took no notice of this interruption.
She went hastily into the dressing-room, and flung off
her bonnet and cloak, and then returned to the bou-
doir, in her simple dinner costume, with her curls
brushed carelessly away from her face. “Now, Phoebe
Marks, listen to me,” she said, grasping her confidante's
wrist, and speaking in a low, earnest voice, but with
a certain imperious air that challenged contradiction,
and commanded obedience.
"Listen to me, Phoebe,” she said, “I am going to
the Castle Inn, to-night; whether it is early or late is
of very little consequence to me; I have set my mind
upon going, and I shall go. You have asked me why,


120
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
and I have told you. I am going in order that I may
pay this debt myself, and that I may see for myself
that the money I give is applied to the purpose for
which I give it. There is nothing out of the common
course of life in my doing this. I am going to do
what other women in my position very often do. I am
going to assist a favourite servant."
“But it's getting on for twelve o'clock, my lady,"
pleaded Phæbe.
Lady Audley frowned impatiently at this inter-
ruption.
"If my going to your house to pay this man should
be known," she continued, still retaining her hold of
Phæbe's wrist, “I am ready to answer for my conduct:
but I would rather that the business should be kept
quiet. I think that I can leave this house and return
to it without being seen by any living creature, if you
will do as I tell you."
"I will do anything that you wish, my lady,"
answered Phæbe, submissively.
“Then you will wish me good-night presently,
when my maid comes into the room, and you will
suffer her to show you out of the house. You will
cross the courtyard and wait for me in the avenue
upon the other side of the archway. It may be half
an hour before I am able to join you, for I must not
leave my room till the servants have all gone to bed;
but you may wait for me patiently, for come what may,
I will join you."
Lady Audley's face was no longer pale. An un-
suffen my mom it will missively.


THE RED LIGHT IN THE SKY.
121
natural crimson spot burned in the centre of each
rounded cheek, and an unnatural lustre gleamed in
her great blue eyes. She spoke with an unnatural
clearness, and an unnatural rapidity. She had alto-
gether the appearance and manner of a person who
has yielded to the dominant influence of some over-
powering excitement. Phoebe Marks stared at her late
mistress in mute bewilderment. She began to fear that
my lady was going mad.
The bell which Lady Audley rang was answered
by the smart lady's maid, who wore rose-coloured
ribbons and black silk gowns, and other adornments
which were unknown to the humble people who sat
below the salt in the good old days when servants
.wore linsey-woolsey.
"I did not know that it was so late, Martin,” said
my lady, in that gentle tone which always won for her
the willing service of her inferiors. “I have been
talking with Mrs. Marks, and have let the time slip
by me. I shan't want anything to-night, so you may
go to bed when you please.”
“Thank you, my lady," answered the girl, who
looked very sleepy, and had some difficulty in repress-
ing a yawn even in her mistress's presence, for the
Audley household usually kept very early hours. “I'd
better show Mrs. Marks out, my lady, hadn't I," asked
the maid, “before I go to bed?”
“Oh, yes, to be sure, you can let Phæbe out. All
the other servants have gone to bed, then, I suppose ?”
“Yes, my lady."


122
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
Lady Audley laughed as she glanced at the time-
piece.
“We have been terribly dissipated up here, Phoebe,"
she said. “Good night. You may tell your husband
that his rent shall be paid.”
“Thank you very much, my lady, and good-night,”
murmured Phæbe, as she backed out of the room
followed by the lady's maid.
Lady Audley listened at the door, waiting till the
muffled sound of their footsteps died away in the oc-
tagon chamber, and on the carpeted staircase.
“Martin sleeps at the top of the house,” she said,
“ever so far away from this room. In ten minutes I
may safely make my escape.”
She went back into her dressing-room, and put on
her cloak and bonnet for the second time. The un-
natural colour still burnt like a flame in her cheeks,
the unnatural light still glittered in her eyes. The ex-
citement which she was under held her in so strong a
spell that neither her mind nor her body seemed to
have any consciousness of fatigue. However verbose I
may be in my description of her feelings, I can never
describe a tithe of her thoughts or her sufferings. She
suffered agonies that would fill closely printed volumes,
bulky with a thousand pages, in that one horrible
night. She underwent volumes of anguish, and doubt,
and perplexity. Sometimes repeating the same chapters
of her torments over and over again. Sometimes hurry-
ing through a thousand pages of her misery without
one pause, without one moment of breathing time. She


THE RED LIGHT IN THE SKY.
123
stood by the low fender in her boudoir, watching the
minute hand of the clock, and waiting till it should be
time for her to leave the house in safety.
“I will wait ten minutes,” she said, “not a moment
beyond, before I enter upon my new peril.”
She listened to the wild roaring of the March wind,
which seemed to have risen with the stillness and dark-
ness of the night.
The hand slowly made its inevitable way to the
figures which told that the ten minutes were past. It
was exactly a quarter to twelve when my lady took
her lamp in her hand, and stole softly from the room.
Her footfall was as light as that of some graceful wild
animal, and there was no fear of that airy step awaken-
ing any echo upon the carpeted stone corridors and
staircase. She did not pause until she reached the
vestibule upon the ground floor. Several doors opened
out of this vestibule, which was octagon, like my lady's
ante-chamber. One of these doors led into the library,
and it was this door which Lady Audley opened softly
and cautiously.
To have attempted to leave the house secretly by
any of the principal outlets would have been simple
madness, for the housekeeper herself superintended the
barricading of the great doors, back and front. The
secrets of the bolts, and bars, and chains, and bells
which secured these doors, and provided for the safety
of Sir Michael Audley's plate-room, the door of which
was lined with sheet-iron, were known only to the ser-
vants who had to deal with them. But although all


124
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
these precautions were taken with the principal en-
trances to the citadel, a wooden shutter and a slender
iron bar, light enough to be lifted by a child, were
considered sufficient safeguard for the half-glass door
which opened out of the breakfast-room into the gravelled
pathway and smooth turf in the courtyard.
It was by this outlet that Lady Audley meant to
make her escape. She could easily remove the bar and
unfasten the shutter, and she might safely venture to
leave the window ajar while she was absent. There
was little fear of Sir Michael's awaking for some time,
as he was a heavy sleeper in the earlier part of the
night, and had slept more heavily than usual since his
illness.
Lady Audley crossed the library, and opened the
door of the breakfast-room which communicated with
it. This latter apartment was one of the modern ad-
ditions to the Court. It was a simple, cheerful cham-
ber, with brightly-papered walls and pretty maple fur-
niture, and was more occupied by Alicia than any one
else. The paraphernalia of that young lady's favourite
pursuits were scattered about the room — drawing ma-
terials, unfinished scraps of work, tangled skeins of
silk, and all the other tokens of a careless damsel's
presence; while Miss Audley's picture-a pretty crayon
sketch of a rosy-faced hoyden in a riding-habit and
hat – hung over the quaint Wedgwood ornaments on
the chimney-piece. My lady looked upon these familiar
objects with scornful hatred flaming in her blue eyes.
“How glad she will be if any disgrace befalls me!”


THE RED LIGHT IN THE SKY.
125
she thought; "how she will rejoice if I am driven out
of this house!”
Lady Audley set the lamp upon a table near the
fireplace, and went to the window. She removed the
iron bar and the light wooden shutter, and then opened
the glass door. The March night was black and moon-
less, and a gust of wind blew in upon her as she opened
this door, and filled the room with its chilly breath,
extinguishing the lamp upon the table.
"No matter," my lady muttered, “I could not have
left it burning. I shall know how to find my way
through the house when I come back. I have left all
the doors ajar.”
She stepped quickly out upon the smooth gravel,
and closed the glass-door behind her. She was afraid
lest that treacherous wind should blow-to the door
opening into the library, and thus betray her.
She was in the quadrangle now, with that chill
wind sweeping against her, and swirling her silken
garments round her with a shrill rustling noise, like
the whistling of a sharp breeze against the sails of a
yacht. She crossed the quadrangle and looked back —
looked back for a moment at the fire-light gleaming
through the rosy-tinted curtains in her boudoir, and the
dim gleam of the lamp behind the mullioned windows,
in the room where Sir Michael Audley lay asleep.
“I feel as if I was running away,” she thought.
“I feel as if I was running away secretly in the dead
of the night, to lose myself and be forgotten. Perhaps
it would be wiser in me to run away, to take this man's


126
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
band vexat life -- the old
warning, and escape out of his power for ever. If I
were to run away and disappear — as George Talboys
disappeared. But where could I go? What would be-
come of me? I have no money: my jewels are not
worth a couple of hundred pounds, now that I have
got rid of the best part of them. What could I do? I
must go back to the old life, the old, hard, cruel,
wretched life — the life of poverty, and humiliation,
and vexation, and discontent. I should have to go
back and wear myself out in that long struggle, and
die - as my mother died, perhaps.”
My lady stood still for a moment on the smooth
lawn between the quadrangle and the archway, with
her head drooping upon her breast and her hands
locked together, debating this question in the un-
natural activity of her mind. Her attitude reflected
the state of that mind - it expressed irresolution and
perplexity. But presently a sudden change came over
her; she lifted her head – lifted it with an action
of defiance and determination.
“No, Mr. Robert Audley,” she said aloud, in a
low, clear voice; “I will not go back — I will not go
back. If the struggle between us is to be a duel to
the death, you shall not find me drop my weapon.”
She walked with a firm and rapid step under the
archway. As she passed under that massive arch, it
seemed as if she disappeared into some black gulf that
had waited open to receive her. The stupid clock
struck twelve, and the solid masonry seemed to vibrate
under its heavy strokes, as Lady Audley emerged upon


THE RED LIGHT IN THE SKY.
127
the other side, and joined Phæbe Marks, who had waited
for her late mistress very near the gateway of the
Court.
“Now, Phoebe," she said, “it is three miles from
here to Mount Stanning, isn't it?”.
“Yes, my lady."
“Then we can walk it in an hour.”
Lady Audley had not stopped to say this: she was
walking quickly along the avenue with her humble
companion by her side. Fragile and delicate as she
was in appearance, she was a very good walker. She
had been in the habit of taking long country rambles
with Mr. Dawson's children in her old days of depend-
ence, and she thought very little of a distance of
three miles.
"Your beautiful husband will sit up for you, I
suppose, Phoebe?” she said, as they struck across an
open field that was used as a short cut from Audley
Court to the high road.
“Oh, yes, my lady; he's sure to sit up. He'll be
drinking with the man, I dare say.”
“The man! What man?”
“The man that's in possession, my lady."
"Ah, to be sure,” said Lady Audley, indifferently.
It was strange that Phoebe's domestic troubles
should seem so very far away from her thoughts at
the time she was taking such an extraordinary step
towards setting things right at the Castle Inn.
The two women crossed the field and turned into
the high road. The way to Mount Stanning was very


128
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
hilly, and the long road looked black and dreary in
the dark night; but my lady walked on with a
desperate courage, which was no common constituent
in her selfish, sensuous nature; but a strange faculty
born out of her great despair. She did not speak
again to her companion until they were close upon the
glimmering lights at the top of the hill, one of which
village lights, gleaming redly through a crimson curtain,
marked out the particular window behind which it was
likely that Luke Marks sat nodding drowsily over his
liquor, and waiting for the coming of his wife.
. “He has not gone to bed, Phæbe,” said my lady,
eagerly. “But there is no other light burning at the
inn. I suppose Mr. Audley is in bed and asleep.”
“Yes, my lady, I suppose so.”
“You are sure he was going to stay at the Castle
to-night?"
“Oh, yes, my lady. I helped the girl to get his
room ready before I came away."
The wind, boisterous everywhere, was shriller and
more pitiless in the neighbourhood of that bleak hill-
top upon which the Castle Inn reared its rickety walls.
The cruel blasts danced wildly round that frail erection.
They disported themselves with the shattered pigeon-
house, the broken weathercock, the loose tiles, and
unshapely chimneys; they rattled at the window-panes,
and whistled in the crevices; they mocked the feeble
building from foundation to roof, and battered and
banged and tormented it in their fierce gambols,


THE RED LIGHT IN THE SKY.
129
until it trembled and rocked with the force of their
rough play.
Mr. Luke Marks had not troubled himself to secure
the door of his dwelling-house before sitting down to
drink with the man who held provisional possession of
his goods and chattels. The landlord of the Castle
Inn was a lazy, sensual brute, who had no thought
higher than a selfish concern for his own enjoyments,
and a virulent hatred of anybody who stood in the way
of his gratification.
Phoebe pushed open the door with her hand, and
went into the house, followed by my lady. The gas
was flaring in the bar, and smoking the low, plastered
ceiling. The door of the bar-parlour was half open,
and Lady Audley heard the brutal laughter of Mr.
Marks as she crossed the threshold of the inn.
“I'll tell him you're here, my lady,” whispered
Phoebe to her late mistress. “I know he'll be tipsy.
You — you won't be offended, my lady, if he should
say anything rude. You know it wasn't my wish that
you should come.”
“Yes, yes," answered Lady Audley, impatiently,
“I know that. What should I care for his rudeness ?
Let him say what he likes.”
Phæbe Marks pushed open the parlour door, leaving
my lady in the bar close behind her.
Luke sat with his clumsy legs stretched out upon
the hearth; with a glass of gin-and-water in one hand
and the poker in the other. He had just thrust the
poker into a great heap of black coals, and was
Lady Audley's Secret. II.


130
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
shattering them to make a blaze, when his wife ap-
peared upon the threshold of the room.
He snatched the poker from between the bars, and
made a half-drunken, half-threatening motion with it
as he saw her.
“So you've condescended to come home at last,
ma'am,” he said; “I thought you was never coming no
more.”
He spoke in a thick and drunken voice, and was
by no means too intelligible. He was steeped to the
very lips in alcohol. His eyes were dim and watery;
his hands were unsteady; his voice was choked and
muffled with drink. A brute, even when most sober;
a brute, even when on his best behaviour; he was ten
times more brutal in his drunkenness, when the few
restraints which held his ignorant, every-day brutality
in check were flung aside in the insolent recklessness
of intoxication.
"I – I've been longer than I intended to be,
Luke,” Phoebe answered, in her most conciliatory
manner; “but I've seen my lady, and she's been very
kind, and — and she'll settle this business for us."
"She's been very kind, has she?” muttered Mr.
Marks, with a drunken laugh; “thank her for nothing.
I know the vally of her kindness. She'd be oncommon
kind, I dessay, if she warn't obligated to be it."
The man in possession, who had fallen into a
maudlin and semi-unconscious state of intoxication
upon about a third of the liquor that Mr. Marks had
consumed, only stared in feeble wonderment at his


THE RED LIGHT IN THE SKY.
131
host and hostess. He sat near the table. Indeed, he
had hooked himself on to it with his elbows, as a safe-
guard against sliding under it, and he was making inane
attempts to light his pipe at the flame of a guttering
tallow candle near him.
“My lady has promised to settle the business for
us,” Phæbe repeated, without noticing Luke's remarks;
she knew her husband's dogged nature well enough by
this time to know that it was worse than useless to try
to stop him from doing or saying anything which his
own stubborn will led him to do or say; "and she's
come down here to see about it to-night, Luke," she
added.
The poker dropped from the landlord's hand, and
fell clattering amongst the cinders on the hearth.
“My lady Audley come here to-night,” he said.
“Yes, Luke."
My lady appeared upon the threshold of the door
as Phæbe spoke.
“Yes, Luke Marks,” she said, “I have come to pay
this man, and to send him about his business."
Lady Audley said these words in a strange semi-
mechanical manner, very much as if she had learned
the sentence by rote, and were repeating it without
knowing what she said.
Mr. Marks gave a discontented growl, and set his
empty glass down upon the table, with an impatient
gesture.
"You might have given the money to Phoebe,” he
said, “as well as have brought it yourself. We don't
9*


132
SECRET.
LADY AUDLE
want no fine ladies up here, pryin' and pokin' their
precious noses into everythink.”
"Luke, Luke,” remonstrated Phoebe, “when my
lady has been so kind!”
“Oh, damn her kindness!” cried Mr. Marks; "it
ain't her kindness as we want, gal, it's her money.
She won't get no snivellin' gratitood from me. What-
ever she does for us she does because she is obliged,
and if she warn’t obliged she wouldn't do it _"
Heaven knows how much more Luke Marks might
have said, had not my lady turned upon him suddenly,
and awed him into silence by the unearthly glitter of
her beauty. Her hair had been blown away from her
face, and, being of a light, feathery quality, had
spread itself into a tangled mass that sourrounded
her forehead like a yellow flame. There was another
flame in her eyes — a greenish light, such as might
flash from the changing hued orbs of an angry
mermaid.
“Stop,” she cried. “I didn't come up here in the
dead of the night to listen to your insolence. How
much is this debt?”
“Nine pound.”
Lady Audley produced her purse – a toy of
ivory, silver, and turquoise — and took from it a
bank-note and four sovereigns. She laid these upon
the table.
“Let that man give me a receipt for the money,"
she said, “before I go."
It was some time before the man could be roused


THE RED LIGHT IN THE SKY.
133
into sufficient consciousness for the performance of this
simple duty, and it was only by dipping a pen into
the ink and pushing it between his clumsy fingers,
that he was at last made to comprehend that his
autograph was wanted at the bottom of the receipt
which had been made out by Phoebe Marks. Lady
Audley took the document as soon as the ink was
dry, and turned to leave the parlour. Phæbe followed
her.
“You musn't go home alone, my lady,” she said.
“You'll let me go with you?”
“Yes, yes, you shall go home with me."
The two women were standing near the door of the
inn as my lady said this. Phoebe stared wonderingly
at her patroness. She had expected that Lady Audley
would be in a hurry to return home after settling this
business which she had capriciously taken upon her-
self; but it was not so; my lady stood leaning against
the inn door and staring into vacancy, and again Mrs.
Marks began to fear that trouble had driven her late
mistress mad.
A little Dutch clock in the bar struck one
while Lady Audley lingered in this irresolute, absent
manner.
She started at the sound and began to tremble
violently.
"I think I am going to faint, Phoebe," she said;
"where can I get some cold water?"
“The pump is in the washhouse, my lady, I'll run
and get you a glass of water.”


134
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
“No, no, no,” cried my lady, clutching Phoebe's
arm as she was about to run away upon this errand,
"I'll get it myself. I must dip my head in a basin
of water if I want to save myself from fainting. In
which room does Mr. Audley sleep?"
There was something so irrelevant in this question
that Phoebe Marks stared aghast at her mistress before
she answered it
“It was number three that I got ready, my lady
,- the front room — the room next to ours," she re-
plied, after that pause of astonishment.
"Give me a candle,” said my lady; “Ill go into
your room, and get some water for my head. Stay
where you are,” she added authoritatively, as Phæbe
Marks was about to show the way — “stay where you
are, and see that that brute of a husband of yours
doesn't follow me!"
She snatched the candle which Phæbe had lighted,
from the girl's hand; and ran up the rickety, winding
staircase which led to the narrow corridor upon the
upper floor. Five bed-rooms opened out of this low-
ceilinged, close-smelling corridor: the numbers of these
rooms were indicated by squat black figures painted
upon the upper panels of the doors. Lady Audley had
driven to Mount Stanning to inspect the house, when
she had bought the business for her servant's bride-
groom, and she knew her way about the dilapidated
old place; she knew where to find Phæbe's bed-room;
but she stopped before the door of that other chamber
which had been prepared for Mr. Robert Audley.
tidor upon
rooms a close-smellina coms opened


THE RED LIGHT IN THE SKY.
135
She stopped and looked at the number on the door.
The key was in the lock, and her hand dropped upon
it as if unconsciously. Then she suddenly began to
tremble again, as she had trembled a few minutes be-
fore at the striking of the clock. She stood for a few
moments trembling thus; with her hand still upon the
key; then a horrible expression came over her face, and
she turned the key in the lock; she turned it twice,
double locking the door.
There was no sound from within; the occupant of
the chamber made no sign of having heard that omi-
nous creaking of the rusty key in the rusty lock.
Lady Audley hurried into the next room. She set
the candle on the dressing-table, flung off her bonnet
and slung it loosely across her arm; she went to the
wash-hand-stand and filled the basin with water. She
plunged her golden hair into this water, and then stood
for a few moments in the centre of the room looking
about her, with a white earnest face, and an eager
gaze that seemed to take in every object in the poorly-
furnished chamber. Phæbe's bedroom was certainly
very shabbily furnished; she had been compelled to
select all the most decent things for those best bed-
rooms which were set apart for any chance traveller
who might stop for a night's lodging at the Castle Inn.
But Mrs. Marks had done her best to atone for the
lack of substantial furniture in her apartment by a
superabundance of drapery. Crisp curtains of cheap
chintz hung from the tent-bedstead; festooned draperies
of the same material shrouded the narrow window,


136
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
Even the storted every stood upon ico, and w
shutting out the light of day, and affording a pleasant
harbour for tribes of flies and predatory bands of spiders.
Even the looking-glass, a miserably cheap construction
which distorted every face whose owner had the hardi-
hood to look into it, stood upon a draperied altar of
starched muslin and pink glazed calico, and was adorned
with frills of lace and knitted work.
My lady smiled as she looked at the festoons and
furbelows which met her eye upon every side. She
had reason, perhaps, to smile, remembering the costly
elegance of her own apartments; but there was some-
thing in that sardonic smile that seemed to have a
deeper meaning than any natural contempt for Phoebe's
poor attempts at decoration. She went to the dressing-
table and smoothed her wet hair before the looking-
glass, and then put on her bonnet. She was obliged
to place the flaming tallow candle very close to the
lace furbelows about the glass, so close that the starched
muslin seemed to draw the flame towards it by some
power of attraction in its fragile tissue.
Phæbe waited anxiously by the inn-door for my
lady's coming. She watched the minute land of the
little Dutch clock, wondering at the slowness of its
progress. It was only ten minutes past one when Lady
Audley came downstairs, with her bonnet on and her
hair still wet, but without the candle.
Phæbe was immediately anxious about this missing
candle.


THE RED LIGHT IN THE SKY.
137
“The light, my lady,” she said; "you have left it
up-stairs!"
“The wind blew it out as I was leaving your
room," Lady Audley answered, quietly. “I left it
there."
“In my room, my lady?"
“Yes."
"And it was quite out?”.
“Yes, I tell you; why do you worry me about your
candle? It is past one o'clock. Come.”
She took the girl's arm, and, half-led, half-dragged
her from the house. The convulsive pressure of her
slight hand held her companion as firmly as an iron
vice could have held her. The fierce March wind
banged-to the door of the house, and left the two
women standing outside it. The long black road lay
bleak and desolate before them, dimly visible between
the leafless hedges.
A walk of three miles' length upon a lonely coun-
try road, between the hours of one and two on a cold
winter's morning, is scarcely a pleasant task for a deli-
cate woman — a woman whose inclinations lean to-
wards ease and luxury. But my lady hurried along
the hard dry highway, dragging her companion with
her as if she had been impelled by some horrible
demoniac force which knew no abatement. With the
black night above them with the fierce wind howling
round them, sweeping across a broad expanse of hid-
den country, blowing as if it had arisen simultaneously
from every point of the compass, and making those


138
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
oad, andaning stoode ness down the two
wretched wanderers the focus of its ferocity - the two
its ferocity, the two
women walked through the darkness down the hill
upon which Mount Stanning stood, along a mile and a
half of flat road, and then up another hill, on the
western side of which Audley Court lay in that shel-
tered-valley, which seemed to shut in the old house
from all the clamour and hubbub of the every-day
world.
My lady stopped upon the summit of this hill to
draw breath and to clasp her hands upon her heart, in
the vain hope that she might still its cruel beating.
They were now within three quarters of a mile of the
Court, and they had been walking for nearly an hour
since they had left the Castle Inn.
Lady Audley stopped to rest with her face still
turned towards the place of her destination. Phæbe
Marks, stopping also, and very glad of a moment's
pause in that hurried journey, looked back into the far
darkness beneath which lay that dreary shelter which
had given her so much uneasiness. As she did so, she
uttered a shrill cry of horror, and clutched wildly at
Lady Audley's cloak.
The night sky was no longer all dark. The thick
blackness was broken by one patch of lurid light.
“My lady, my lady,” cried Phoebe, pointing to this
lurid patch, "do you see?”
“Yes, child, I see," answered Lady Audley trying
to shake the clinging hands from her garments. “What
is the matter?”
“It is a fire! — a fire, my lady.”


THE RED LIGHT IN THE SKY.
139
to the plady." I know I was
“Yes, I'm afraid it is a fire. At Brentwood most
likely. Let me go, Phoebe, it is nothing to us.”
“Yes, yes, my lady, it's nearer than Brentwood -
much nearer; it's at Mount Stanning."
Lady Audley did not answer. She was trembling
again, with the cold, perhaps, for the wind had torn
her heavy cloak away from her shoulders, and had left
her slender figure exposed to the blast.
“It's at Mount Stanning, my lady,” cried Phæbe
Marks. “It's the Castle that's on fire — I know it is,
I know it is. I thought of fire to-night, and I was
fidgety and uneasy, for I knew this would happen
some day. I wouldn't mind if it was only the wretched
place, but there'll be life lost; there'll be life lost,"
sobbed the girl, distractedly. “There's Luke, too tipsy
to help himself, unless others help him; there's Mr.
Audley asleep —"
Phæbe Marks stopped suddenly at the mention of
Robert's name, and fell upon her knees, clasping her
uplifted hands, and appealing wildly to Lady Audley.
“Oh, my God!” she cried, “Say it's not true, my
lady; say it isn't true. It's too horrible, it's too horrible,
it's too horrible!”
"What's too horrible?”
"The thought that's in my mind; the dreadful
thought that's in my mind.”
“What do you mean, girl?” cried my lady, fiercely.
“Oh, God forgive me if I'm wrong!” the kneeling
woman gasped, in detached sentences, “and God grant
I may be! Why did you go up to the Castle to-night,


140
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
my lady? Why were you so set on going, against all
I could say — you who are so bitter against Mr. Aud-
ley and against Luke, and who knew they were both
under that roof? Oh, tell me that I do you a cruel
wrong, my lady; tell me so — tell me; for as there is
a heaven above me, I think that you went to that
place to-night on purpose to set fire to it. Tell me
that I'm wrong, my lady; tell me that I'm doing you a
wicked wrong."
“I will tell you nothing except that you are a mad
woman,” answered Lady Audley, in a cold, hard
voice. “Get up, fool, idiot, coward! Is your hus-
band such a precious bargain that you should be gro-
velling there, lamenting and groaning for him? What
is Robert Audley to you, that you behave like a maniac,
because you think he is in danger? How do you know
that the fire is at Mount Stanning? You see a red
patch in the sky, and you cry out directly that your
own paltry hovel is in flames; as if there were no place
in the world that could burn except that. The fire
may be at Brentwood, or further away — at Romford,
or still further away; on the eastern side of London,
perhaps. Get up, mad woman, and go back and look
after your goods and chattels, and your husband and
your lodger. Get up and go; I don't want you."
“Oh, my lady, my lady, forgive me," sobbed Phobe;
“there's nothing you can say to me that's hard enough
for having done you such a wrong, even in my thoughts.
I don't mind your cruel words -- I don't mind any-
thing if I'm wrong."


THE RED LIGHT IN THE SKY.
141
“Go back and see for yourself,” answered Lady
Audley, sternly. “I tell you again I don't want you.”
She walked away in the darkness, leaving Phæbe
Marks still kneeling upon the hard road, where she
had cast herself in that agony of supplication. Sir
Michael's wife walked towards the house in which her
husband slept, with the red blaze lighting up the skies
behind her, and with nothing but the blackness of the
night before.


142
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
CHAPTER VIII.
The Bearer of the Tidings.
It was very late the next morning when Lady
Audley emerged from her dressing-room, exquisitely
dressed in a morning costume of delicate muslin, ela-
borate laces, and embroideries; but with a very pale
face, and with half-circles of purple shadow under her
eyes. She accounted for this pale face and these hol-
low eyes by declaring that she had sat up reading
until a very late hour on the previous night.
Sir Michael and his young wife breakfasted in the
library at a comfortable round table, wheeled close to
the blazing fire; and Alicia was compelled to share
this meal with her step-mother, however she might
avoid that lady in the long interval between breakfast
and dinner.
The March morning was bleak and dull, and a
drizzling rain fell incessantly, obscuring the landscape,
and blotting out the distance. There were very few
letters by the morning's post; the daily newspapers did
not arrive until noon; and such aids to conversation
being missing, there was very little talk at the break-
fast-table.
Alicia looked out at the drizzling rain drifting
against the broad window-panes.
“No riding to-day,” she said; “and no chance of


THE BEARER OF THE TIDINGS.
143
any callers to enliven us; unless that ridiculous Bob
comes crawling through the wet from Mount Stanning."
Have you ever heard anybody, whom you knew
to be dead, alluded to in a light, easy-going manner
by another person who did not know of his death —
alluded to as doing that or this — as performing some
trivial every-day operation – when you know that he
has vanished away from the face of this earth, and
separated himself for ever from all living creatures and
their common-place pursuits, in the awful solemnity of
death? Such a chance allusion, insignificant though
it may be, is apt to send a strange thrill of pain through
the mind. The ignorant remark jars discordantly upon
the hyper-sensitive brain; the King of Terrors is dese-
crated by that unwitting disrespect. Heaven knows
what hidden reason my lady may have had for ex-
periencing some such revulsion of feeling on the sudden
mention of Mr. Audley's name; but her pale face
blanched to a sickly white as Alicia Audley spoke of
her cousin.
“Yes, he will come down here in the wet, per-
haps,” the young lady continued, “with his hat sleek
and shining as if it had been brushed with a pat of
fresh butter; and with white vapours steaming out of
his clothes, and making him look like an awkward
genie just let out of his bottle. He will come down
here and print impressions of his muddy boots all over
the carpet, and he'll sit on your Gobelin tapestry, my
lady, in his wet overcoat; and he'll abuse you if you
remonstrate, and will ask why people have chairs that


144
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
are not to be sat upon, and why you don't live in
Fig-tree-court, and _"
Sir Michael Audley watched his daughter with a
thoughtful countenance as she talked of her cousin.
She very often talked of him, ridiculing him and in-
veighing against him in no very measured terms. But,
perhaps, the baronet thought of a certain Signora
Beatrice who very cruelly entreated a gentleman called
Benedick, but who was, it may be, heartily in love
with him at the same time.
“What do you think Major Melville told me when
he called here yesterday, Alicia?” Sir Michael asked,
presently.
“I haven't the remotest idea," replied Alicia, rather
disdainfully. “Perhaps he told you that we should
have another war before long, by Ged, sir; or, per-
haps, he told you that we should have a new ministry,
by Ged, sir, for that those fellows are getting them-
selves into a mess, sir; or that those other fellows
were reforming this, and cutting down that, and alter-
ing the other in the army, until, by Ged, sir, we shall
have no army at all, by-and-by — nothing but a pack
of boys, sir, crammed up to the eyes with a lot of
senseless schoolmasters' rubbish, and dressed in shell-
jackets and calico helmets. Yes, sir, they're fighting
in Oudh in calico helmets at this very day, sir.”
“You're an impertinent minx, miss,” answered the
baronet. “Major Melville told me nothing of the kind;
but he told me that a very devoted admirer of yours,
a certain Sir Harry Towers, has forsaken his place in


THE BEARER OF THE TIDINGS.
145
Hertfordshire, and his hunting stable, and has gone on
the Continent for a twelvemonth's tour.”
Miss Audley flushed up suddenly at the mention of
her old adorer, but recovered herself very quickly.
“He has gone on the Continent, has he?” she said,
indifferently. “He told me that he meant to do so —
if - if he didn't have everything his own way. Poor
fellow! he's a dear, good-hearted, stupid creature, and
twenty times better than that peripatetic, patent
refrigerator, Mr. Robert Audley."
“I wish, Alicia, you were not so fond of ridiculing
Bob,” Sir Michael said, gravely. “Bob is a very good
fellow, and I'm as fond of him as if he'd been my own
son; and — and — I've been very uncomfortable about
him lately. He has changed very much within the
last few days, and he has taken all sorts of absurd
ideas into his head, and my lady has alarmed me
about him. She thinks -—"
Lady Audley interrupted her husband with a grave
shake of her head.
“It is better not to say too much about it yet
awhile,” she said; “Alicia knows what I think.”
“Yes,” rejoined Miss Audley, “my lady thinks that
Bob is going mad; but I know better than that. He's
not at all the sort of person to go mad. How should
such a sluggish ditchpond of an intellect as his ever
work itself into a tempest? He may moon about for
the rest of his life, perhaps, in a tranquil state of
semi-idiotcy, imperfectly comprehending who he is, and
• Lady Audley's Secret. II.
10


146
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
where he's going, and what he's doing; but he'll never
go mad."
Sir Michael did not reply to this. He had been
very much disturbed by his conversation with my lady
on the previous evening, and had silently debated the
painful question in his mind ever since.
His wife — the woman he best loved and most
believed in — had told him with all appearance of
regret and agitation, her conviction of his nephew's
insanity. He tried in vain to arrive at the conclusion
he wished most ardently to attain; he tried in vain to
think that my lady was misled by her own fancies,
and had no foundation for what she said. But then,
again, it suddenly flashed upon him, to think this was
to arrive at a worse conclusion; it was to transfer the
horrible suspicion from his nephew to his wife. She
appeared to be possessed with an actual conviction of
Robert's insanity. To imagine her wrong was to
imagine some weakness in her own mind. The longer
he thought of the subject the more it harassed and
perplexed him. It was most certain that the young
man had always been eccentric. He was sensible, he
was tolerably clever, he was honourable and gentle-
manlike in feeling, though perhaps, a little careless in
the performance of certain minor social duties; but
there were some slight differences, not easily to be
defined, that separated him from other men of his age
and position. Then, again, it was equally true that
he had very much changed within the period that had
succeeded the disappearance of George Talboys. He had


THE BEARER OF THE TIDINGS.
147
grown moody and thoughtful, melancholy and absent-
minded. He had held himself aloof from society; had
sat for hours without speaking; had talked at other
times by fits and starts; and had excited himself un-
usually in the discussion of subjects which apparently
lay far out of the region of his own life and interests.
Then there was even another point which seemed to
strengthen my lady's case against this unhappy young
man. He had been brought up in the frequent society
of his cousin, Alicia — his pretty, genial cousin – to
whom interest, and one would have thought affection,
naturally pointed as his most fitting bride. More than
this, the girl had shown him, in the innocent guileless-
ness of a transparent nature, that on her side at least,
affection was not wanting; and yet, in spite of all this,
he had held himself aloof, and had allowed other men
to propose for her hand, and to be rejected by her,
and had still made no sign.
Now love is so very subtle an essence, such an
indefinable metaphysical marvel, that its due force,
though very cruelly felt by the sufferer himself, is never
clearly understood by those who look on at his torments
and wonder why he takes the common fever so badly.
Sir Michael argued that because Alicia was a pretty
girl and an amiable girl it was therefore extraordinary
and unnatural in Robert Audley not to have duly
fallen in love with her. This baronet — who, close
upon his sixtieth birthday, had for the first time en-
countered that one woman who out of all the women
in the world had power to quicken the pulses of his
10*


148
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET,
heart — wondered why Robert failed to take the fever
from the first breath of contagion that blew towards
him. He forgot that there are men who go their ways
unscathed amidst legions of lovely and generous women,
to succumb at last before some harsh-featured virago,
who knows the secret of that only philter which can
intoxicate and bewitch him. He forgot that there are
certain Jacks who go through life without meeting the
Jill appointed for them by Nemesis, and die old
bachelors perhaps, with poor Jill pining an old maid
upon the other side of the party-wall. He forgot that
love, which is a madness, and a scourge, and a fever,
and a delusion, and a snare, is also a mystery, and
very imperfectly understood by every one except the
individual sufferer who writhes under its tortures.
Jones, who is wildly enamoured of Miss Brown, and
who lies awake at night until he loathes his comfort-
able pillow and tumbles his sheets into two twisted
rags of linen in his agonies, as if he were a prisoner
and wanted to wind them into impromptu ropes; this
same Jones, who thinks Russell-square a magic place
because his divinity inhabits it; who thinks the trees
in that enclosure and the sky above it greener and
bluer than any other trees or sky; and who feels a
pang, yes, an actual pang, of mingled hope, and joy,
and expectation, and terror when he emerges from
Guilford-street, descending from the heights of Islington,
into those sacred precincts; this very Jones is hard and
callous towards the torments of Smith, who adores Miss
Robinson, and cannot imagine what the infatuated


THE BEARER OF THE TIDINGS.
149
fellow can see in the girl. So it was with Sir Michael
Audley. He looked at his nephew as a sample of a
very large class of young men, and his daughter as a
sample of an equally extensive class of feminine goods;
and could not see why the two samples should not
make a very respectable match. He ignored all those
infinitesimal differences in nature which make the whole-
some food of one man the deadly poison of another.
How difficult it is to believe sometimes that a man
doesn't like such and such a favourite dish. If, at a
dinner-party, a meek-looking guest refuses early salmon
and cucumber, or green peas in February, we set him
down as a poor relation whose instincts warn him off
those expensive plates. If an alderman were to declare
that he didn't like green fat, he would be looked upon
as a social martyr, a Marcus Curtius of the dinner-
table, who immolated himself for the benefit of his
kind. His fellow aldermen would believe in anything
rather than an heretical distaste for the city ambrosia
of the soup tureen. But there are people who dislike
salmon, and whitebait, and spring ducklings, and all
manner of old-established delicacies, and there are other
people who affect eccentric and despicable dishes
generally stigmatised as nasty. .
Alas, my pretty Alicia, your cousin did not love
you! He admired your rosy English face, and had a
tender affection for you which might perhaps have
expanded by and by into something warm enough for
matrimony; that every-day jog-trot species of union
which demands no very passionate devotion; but for a


150
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
sudden check which it had received in Dorsetshire.
Yes, Robert Audley's growing affection for his cousin,
a plant of very slow growth, I am fain to confess, had
been suddenly dwarfed and stunted upon that bitter
February day on which he had stood beneath the pine-
trees talking to Clara Talboys. Since that day the
young man had experienced an unpleasant sensation
in thinking of poor Alicia. He looked at her as being
in some vague manner an incumbrance upon the free-
dom of his thoughts; he had a haunting fear that he
was in some tacit way pledged to her; that she had a
species of claim upon him, which forbade to him the
right of even thinking of another woman. I believe
it was the image of Miss Audley presented to him in
this light that goaded the young barrister into those
outbursts of splenetic rage against the female sex
which he was liable to at certain time. He was
strictly honourable, so honourable that he would rather
have immolated himself upon the altar of truth and
Alicia than have done her the remotest wrong, though
by so doing he might have secured his own happiness.
"If the poor little girl loves me," he thought, “and
if she thinks that I love her, and has been led to
think so by any word or act of mine, I am in duty
bound to let her think so to the end of time, and to
fulfil any tacit promise which I may have unconsciously
made. I thought once -- I meant once to — to make
her an offer by and by, when this horrible mystery
about George Talboys should have been cleared up
and everything peacefully settled — but now -"


THE BEARER OF THE TIDINGS.
151
His thoughts would ordinarily wander away at this
point of his reflections, carrying him where he never
had intended to go; carrying him back under the pine-
trees in Dorsetshire, and setting him once more face
to face with the sister of his missing friend, and it was
generally a very laborious journey by which he tra-
velled back to the point from which he had strayed.
It was so difficult for him to tear himself away from
the stunted turf and the pine-trees.
"Poor little girl!” he would think on coming back
to Alicia. "How good it is of her to love me; and
how grateful I ought to be for her tenderness. How
many fellows would think such a generous, loving
heart the highest boon that earth could give them.
There's Sir Harry Towers stricken with despair at his
rejection. He would give me half his estate, all his
estate, twice his estate, if he had it, to be in the shoes
which I am so anxious to shake off my ungrateful
feet. Why don't I love her? Why is it that although
I know her to be pretty, and pure, and good, and
truthful, I don't love her? Her image never haunts
me, except reproachfully. I never see her in my
dreams. I never wake up suddenly in the dead of the
night with her eyes shining upon me and her warm
breath upon my cheek, or with the fingers of her soft
hand clinging to mine. - No, I'm not in love with her;
I can't fall in love with her.”
He raged and rebelled against his ingratitude. He
tried to argue himself into a passionate attachment for
his cousin, but he failed ignominiously; and the more


152
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
he tried to think of Alicia the more he thought of
Clara Talboys. I am speaking now of his feelings in
the period that elapsed between his return from Dor-
setshire and his visit to Grange Heath.
Sir Michael sat by the library fire after breakfast
upon this wretched rainy morning, writing letters and
reading the newspapers. Alicia shut herself in her
own apartment to read the third volume of a novel.
Lady Audley locked the door of the octagon ante-
chamber, and roamed up and down the suite of rooms
from the bed-room to the boudoir all through that
weary morning
She had locked the door to guard against the
chance of any one coming in suddenly and observing
her before she was aware — before she had had suf-
ficient warning to enable her to face their scrutiny.
Her pale face seemed to grow paler as the morning
advanced. A tiny medicine chest was open upon the
dressing-table, and little stoppered bottles of red laven-
der, sal-volatile, chloroform, chlorodyne, and ether were
scattered about. Once my lady paused before this
medicine-chest, and took out the remaining bottles,
half absently perhaps, until she came to one which
was filled with a thick dark liquid, and labelled,
“Opium — Poison.”
She trifled a long time with this last bottle; hold-
ing it up to the light, and even removing the stopper
and smelling the sickly liquid. But she put it from
her suddenly with a shudder.


THE BEARER OF THE TIDINGS.
153
"If I could!” she muttered, "if I could only do it!
And yet why should I; now ?"
She clenched her small hands as she uttered the
last words, and walked to the window of the dressing-
room, which looked straight towards that ivied archway
under which any one must come who came from Mount
Stanning to the Court.
There were smaller gates in the gardens which led
into the meadows behind the Court; but there was no
other way of coming from Mount Stanning or Brent-
wood than by the principal entrance.
The solitary hand of the clock over the archway
was midway between one and two when my lady
looked at it.
"How slow the time is,” she said, wearily; "how
slow, how slow! Shall I grow old like this, I wonder,
with every minute of my life seeming like an hour?”.
She stood for a few minutes watching the arch-
way; but no one passed under it while she looked;
and she turned impatiently away from the window to
resume her weary wandering about the rooms.
Whatever fire that had been, which had reflected
itself vividly in the black sky, no tidings of it had as
yet come to Audley Court. The day was miserably
wet and windy; altogether the very last day upon
which even the most confirmed idler and gossip would
care to venture out. It was not a market-day, and
there were therefore very few passengers upon the road
between Brentwood and Chelmsford; so that as yet no
news of the fire, which had occurred in the dead of


·
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
154
the wintry night, had reached the village of Audley,
or travelled from the village to the Court.
The girl with the rose-coloured ribbons came to
the door of the ante-room to summon her mistress to
luncheon; but Lady Audley only opened the door a
little way, and intimated her intention of taking no
luncheon.
“My head aches terribly, Martin," she said; “I
shall go and lie down till dinner time. You may come
at five to dress me.”
Lady Audley said this with the predetermination
of dressing at four, and thus dispensing with the ser-
vices of her attendant. Amongst all privileged spies,
a lady’s-maid has the highest privileges. It is she
who bathes Lady Theresa's eyes with eau-de-cologne
after her ladyship's quarrel with the colonel; it is she
who administers sal-volatile to Miss Fanny when Count
Beaudesert, of the Blues, has jilted her. She has a
hundred methods for the finding out of her mistress's
secrets. She knows by the manner in which her
victim jerks her head from under the hair-brush, or
chafes at the gentlest administration of the comb, what
hidden tortures are racking her breast ~ what secret
perplexities are bewildering her brain. That well-bred
attendant knows how to interpret the most obscure
diagnoses of all mental diseases that can afflict her
mistress; she knows when the ivory complexion is
bought and paid for — when the pearly teeth are
foreign substances fashioned by the dentist – when
the glossy plaits are the relics of the dead, rather than


THE BEARER OF THE TIDINGS.
.
155
the property of the living; and she knows other and
more sacred secrets than these. She knows when the
sweet smile is more false than Madame Levison's
enamel, and far less enduring — when the words that
issue from between gates of borrowed pearl are more
disguised and painted than the lips which help to
shape them. When the lovely fairy of the ball-room
re-enters her dressing-room after the night's long
revelry, and throws aside her voluminous Burnous and
her faded bouquet, and drops her mask; and like
another Cinderella loses the glass-slipper, by whose
glitter she has been distinguished, and falls back into
her rags and dirt; the lady’s-maid is by to see the
transformation. The valet who took wages from the
prophet of Korazin, must have seen his master some-
times unveiled; and must have laughed in his sleeve
at the folly of the monster's worshippers.
Lady Audley had made no confidante of her new
maid, and on this day of all others she wished to be
alone.
She did lie down, she cast herself wearily upon the
luxurious sofa in the dressing-room, and buried her face
in the down pillows and tried to sleep. Sleep! — she
had almost forgotten what it was, that tender restorer
of tired nature, it seemed so long now since she had
slept. It was only about eight-and-forty hours, per-
haps, but it appeared an intolerable time. Her fatigue
of the night before, and her unnatural excitement, had
worn her out at last. She did fall asleep; she fell into
a heavy slumber that was almost like stupor. She had


156
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
taken a few drops out of the opium bottle in a glass
of water before lying down.
The clock over the mantelpiece chimed the quarter
before four as she woke suddenly and started up, with
the cold perspiration breaking out in icy drops upon
her forehead. She had dreamt that every member of
the household was clamouring at the door, eager to
tell her of a dreadful fire that had happened in the
night.
There was no sound but the flapping of the ivy
leaves against the glass, the occasional falling of a
cinder, and the steady ticking of the clock.
"Perhaps I shall be always dreaming these sort of
dreams," my lady thought, "until the terror of them
kills me!"
The rain had ceased, and the cold spring sunshine
was glittering upon the windows. Lady Audley dressed
herself rapidly but carefully. I do not say that even
in her supremest hour of misery she still retained her
pride in her beauty. It was not so; she looked upon
that beauty as a weapon, and she felt that she had now
double need to be well armed. She dressed herself in
her most gorgeous silk; a voluminous robe of silvery,
shimmering blue, that made her look as if she had
been arrayed in moonbeams. She shook out her hair
into feathery showers of glittering gold; and with a
cloak of white cashmere about her shoulders, went
down-stairs into the vestibule.
She opened the door of the library and looked in.
Sir Michael Audley was asleep in his easy chair. As


THE BEARER OF THE TIDINGS.
157
my lady softly closed this door Alicia descended the
stairs from her own room. The turret door was open,
and the sun was shining upon the wet grass-plat in the
quadrangle. The firm gravel-walks were already very
nearly dry, for the rain had ceased for upwards of two
hours.
“Will you take a walk with me in the quadrangle?”
Lady Audley asked, as her step-daughter approached.
The armed neutrality between the two women admitted
of any chance civility such as this.
“Yes, if you please, my lady," Alicia answered,
rather listlessly. “I have been yawning over a stupid
novel all the morning, and shall be very glad of a little
fresh air."
Heaven help the novelist whose fiction Miss Audley
had been perusing, if he had no better critics than that
young lady. She had read page after page without
knowing what she had been reading; and had flung
aside the volumes half-a-dozen times to go to the
window and watch for that visitor whom she had so
confidently expected.
Lady Audley led the way through the low door-
way and on to the smooth gravel drive, by which car-
riages approached the house. She was still very pale,
but the brightness of her dress and of her feathery
golden ringlets distracted an observer's eyes from her
pallid face. All mental distress is, with some show of
reason, associated in our minds with loose, disordered
garments, and dishevelled hair, and an appearance in
every way the reverse of my lady's. Why had she


158
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
come out into the chill sunshine of the March after-
noon to wander up and down that monotonous pathway
with the step-daughter she hated? She came because
she was under the dominion of a horrible restlessness,
which would not suffer her to remain within the house
waiting for certain tidings which she knew must too
surely come. At first she had wished to ward them off
- at first she had wished that strange convulsions of
nature might arise to hinder their coming — that ab-
normal winter lightnings might wither and destroy the
messenger who carried them — that the ground might
tremble and yawn beneath his hastening feet, and that
impassable gulfs might separate the spot from which
the tidings were to come, and the place to which they
were to be carried. She wished that the earth might
stand still, and the paralysed elements cease from their
natural functions; that the progress of time might
stop; that the Day of Judgment might come, and that
she might thus be brought before an unearthly tribunal,
and so escape the intervening shame and misery of any
earthly judgment. In the wild chaos of her brain,
every one of these thoughts had held its place, and in
her short slumber on the sofa in her dressing-room, she
had dreamed all these things and a hundred other
things, all bearing upon the same subject. She had
dreamed that a brook, a tiny streamlet when she first
saw it, flowed across the road between Mount Stanning
and Audley, and gradually swelled into a river, and
from a river became an ocean, till the village on the
hill receded far away out of sight and only a great
were to till, and the that the prosmight con


THE BEARER OF THE TIDINGS.
159
waste of waters rolled where it once had been. She
dreamt that she saw the messenger; now one person,
now another, but never any probable person; hindered
by a hundred hindrances; now startling and terrible;
now ridiculous and trivial; but never either natural or
probable; and going down into the quiet house with
the memory of these dreams strong upon her, she had
been bewildered by the stillness which had betokened
that the tidings had not yet come.
And now her mind underwent a complete change.
She no longer wished to delay that dreaded intelligence.
She wished the agony, whatever it was to be, over and
done with, the pain suffered, and the release attained.
It seemed to her as if the intolerable day would never
come to an end, as if her mad wishes had been granted,
and the progress of time had actually stopped.
“What a long day it has been!” exclaimed Alicia,
as if taking up the burden of my lady's thoughts;
"nothing but drizzle and mist and wind! And now
that it's too late for anybody to go out, it must needs
be fine,” the young lady added, with an evident sense
of injury.
Lady Audley did not answer. She was looking at
the stupid one-handed clock; and waiting for the news
which must come sooner or later; which could not
surely fail to come very speedily.
“They have been afraid to come and tell him," she
thought; "they have been afraid to break the news to
Sir Michael. Who will come to tell it, at last, I won-


160
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
der? The rector of Mount Stanning, perhaps; or the
doctor; some important person, at least."
If she could have gone out into the leafless avenues,
or on to the high road beyond them; if she could have
gone so far as that hill upon which she had so lately
parted with Phæbe, she would have gladly done so.
She would rather have suffered anything than that slow
suspense, that corroding anxiety, that metaphysical dry-
rot in which heart and mind seemed to decay under
an insufferable torture. She tried to talk; and by a
painful effort contrived now and then to utter some
common-place remark. Under any ordinary circum-
stances her companion would have noticed her embar-
rassment; but Miss Audley, happening to be very much
absorbed by her own vexations, was quite as well in-
clined to be silent as my lady herself. The mono-
tonous walk up and down the gravelled pathway suited
Alicia's humour. I think that she even took a mali-
cious pleasure in the idea that she was very likely
catching cold, and that her cousin Robert was answer-
able for her danger. If she could have brought upon
herself inflammation of the lungs, or ruptured blood-
vessels, by that exposure to the chill March atmosphere,
I think she would have felt a gloomy satisfaction in
her sufferings.
"Perhaps Robert might care for me, if I had in-
flammation of the lungs,” she thought. "He couldn't
insult me by calling me a Bouncer then. Bouncers
don't have inflammation of the lungs."


THE BEARER OF THE TIDINGS.
161
I believe she drew a picture of herself in the last
stage of consumption, propped up by pillows in a great
easy-chair, looking out of a window in the afternoon
sunshine, with medicine bottles, a bunch of grapes and
a Bible upon a table by her side; and with Robert, all
contrition and tenderness, summoned to receive her
farewell blessing. She preached a whole chapter to
him in that parting benediction, talking a great deal
longer than was in keeping with her prostrate state,
and very much enjoying her dismal castle in the air.
Employed in this sentimental manner, Miss Audley
took very little notice of her step-mother, and the one
hand of the blundering clock had slipped to six by the
time Robert had been blessed and dismissed.
“Good gracious me," she cried, suddenly - "six
o'clock, and I'm not dressed.”
The half-hour bell rang in a cupola upon the roof
while Alicia was speaking.
“I must go in, my lady,” she said, “Won't you
come?"
“Presently," answered Lady Audley. “I'm dressed
you see.”
Alicia ran off, but Sir Michael's wife still lingered
in the quadrangle; still waited for those tidings which
were so long coming.
It was nearly dark. The blue mists of evening
had slowly risen from the ground. The flat meadows
were filled with a grey vapour, and a stranger might
have fancied Audley Court a castle on the margin of
a sea. Under the archway the shadows of fast-coming
Lady Audley's Secret. 'II.
in the quang coming dark.
11


162
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
15, made a mano a geneld boot
night lurked darkly; like traitors waiting for an op-
portunity to glide stealthily into the quadrangle.
Through the archway a patch of cold blue sky glim-
mered faintly, streaked by one line of lurid crimson,
and lighted by the dim glitter of one wintry-looking
star. Not a creature was stirring in the quadrangle
but the restless woman, who paced up and down the
straight pathways, listening for a footstep, whose com-
ing was to strike terror to her soul. She heard it at
last! – a footstep in the avenue upon the other side
of the archway. But was it the footstep? Her sense
of hearing, made unnaturally acute by excitement, told
her that it was a man's footstep – told even more,
that it was the tread of a gentleman; no slouching,
lumbering pedestrian in hobnailed boots; but a gentle-
man who walked firmly and well.
Every sound fell like a lump of ice upon my lady's
heart. She could not wait, she could not contain her
self; she lost all self-control, all power of endurance,
all capability of self-restraint; and she rushed towards
the archway.
She paused beneath its shadow, for the stranger
was close upon her. She saw him: 0 God! she saw
him, in that dim evening light. Her brain reeled; her
heart stopped beating. She uttered no cry of surprise,
no exclamation of terror, but staggered backwards and
clung for support to the ivied buttress of the archway.
With her slender figure crouched into the angle formed
by this buttress and the wall which it supported, she
stood staring at the new-comer.


THE BEARER OF THE TIDINGS.
163
As he approached her more closely her knees sank
under her, and she dropped to the ground; not fainting,
or in any manner unconscious; but sinking into a
crouching attitude, and still crushed into the angle of
the wall; as if she would have made a tomb for herself
in the shadow of that sheltering brickwork.
“My lady!”
The speaker was Robert Audley. He whose bed-
room door she had double-locked seventeen hours
before at the Castle Inn.
“What is the matter with you?” he said, in a
strange, constrained manner. “Get up, and let me
take you in-doors.”
He assisted her to rise; and she obeyed him, very
submissively. He took her arm in his strong hand and
led her across the quadrangle and into the lamp-lit
hall. She shivered more violently than he had ever
seen any woman shiver before; but she made no attempt
at resistance to his will.
11*
-


164
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
CHAPTER IX.
My Lady tells the Truth.
"Is there any room in which I can talk to you
alone?” Robert Audley asked, as he looked dubiously
round the hall.
My lady only bowed her head in answer. She
pushed open the door of the library, which had been
left ajar. Sir Michael had gone to his dressing-room
to prepare for dinner after a day of lazy enjoyment;
perfectly legitimate for an invalid. The apartment was
quite empty, and only lighted by the blaze of the fire,
as it had been upon the previous evening.
Lady Audley entered this room, followed by Robert,
who closed the door behind him. The wretched shiver-
ing woman went to the fire-place and knelt down before
the blaze, as if any natural warmth could have power
to check that unnatural chill. The young man followed
her, and stood beside her upon the hearth, with his
arm resting upon the chimney-piece.
“Lady Audley," he said, in a voice whose icy
sternness held out no hope of any tenderness or com-
passion, “I spoke to you last night very plainly; but
you refused to listen to me. To-night I must speak
to you still more plainly; and you must no longer
refuse to listen to me."
My lady, crouching before the fire with her face


MY LADY TELLS THE TRUTH.
165
hidden in her hands, uttered a low sobbing sound which
was almost a moan, but made no other answer.
“There was a fire last night at Mount Stanning,
Lady Audley,” the pitiless voice proceeded; "the
Castle Inn, the house in which I slept, was burned to
the ground. Do you know how I escaped perishing
in that destruction?”
"No."
“I escaped by a most providential circumstance,
which seems a very simple one. I did not sleep in the
room which had been prepared for me. The place
seemed wretchedly damp and chilly; the chimney
smoked abominably when an attempt was made at
lighting a fire; and I persuaded the servant to make
me up a bed upon the sofa in the small ground-
floor sitting-room which I had occupied during the
evening."
He paused for a moment, watching the crouching
figure. The only change in my lady's attitude was
that her head had fallen a little lower.
“Shall I tell you by whose agency the destruction
of the Castle Inn was brought about, my lady?”
There was no answer.
“Shall I tell you?”
Still the same obstinate silence.
“My Lady Audley,” cried Robert, suddenly, "you
were the incendiary. It was you whose murderous
hand kindled those flames. It was you who thought
by that thrice-horrible deed to rid yourself of me, your
enemy and denouncer. What was it to you that other


166
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
lives might be sacrificed? If by a second massacre of
Saint Bartholomew you could have ridded yourself of
me, you would have freely sacrificed an army of
victims. The day is past for tenderness and mercy.
For you I can no longer know pity or compunction.
So far as by sparing your shame I can spare others
who must suffer by your shame, I will be merciful;
but no further. If there were any secret tribunal before
which you might be made to answer for your crimes,
I would have little scruple in being your accuser: but
I would spare that generous and high-born gentleman
upon whose noble name your infamy would be re-
flected.”
His voice softened as he made this allusion, and
for a moment he broke down, but he recovered himself
by an effort and continued --
"No life was lost in the fire of last night. I slept
lightly, my lady, for my mind was troubled, as it has
been for a long time, by the misery which I knew was
lowering upon this house. It was I who discovered
the breaking out of the fire in time to give the alarm
and to save the servant girl and the poor drunken
wretch, who was very much burnt in spite of my
efforts, and who now lies in a precarious state at his
mother's cottage. It was from him and from his wife
that I learned who had visited the Castle Inn in the
dead of the night. The woman was almost distracted
when she saw me, and from her I discovered the parti-
culars of last night. Heaven knows what other secrets
of yours she may hold, my lady, or how easily they


MY LADY TELLS THE TRUTH.
167
might be extorted from her if I wanted her aid, which
I do not. My path lies very straight before me. I
have sworn to bring the murderer of George Talboys
to justice: and I will keep my oath. I say that it
was by your agency my friend met with his death. If
I have wondered sometimes, as it was only natural I
should, whether I was not the victim of some horrible
hallucination; whether such an alternative was not
more probable than that a young and lovely woman
should be capable of so foul and treacherous a murder,
all wonder is past. After last night's deed of horror,
there is no crime you could commit, however vast and
unnatural, which could make me wonder. Henceforth
you must seem to me no longer a woman; a guilty
woman with a heart which in its worst wickedness has
yet some latent power to suffer and feel; I look upon
you henceforth as the demoniac incarnation of some
evil principle. But you shall no longer pollute this
place by your presence. Unless you will confess what
you are, and who you are, in the presence of the man
you have deceived so long; and accept from him and
from me such mercy as we may be inclined to extend
to you; I will gather together the witnesses who shall
swear to your identity, and at peril of any shame to
myself and those I love, I will bring upon you the
punishment of your crime.”
The woman rose suddenly and stood before him
erect and resolute; with her hair dashed away from her
face and her eyes glittering.
“Bring Sir Michael!” she cried; "bring him here,
as the demurer and feel. - kedness has
principle


168
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
and I will confess anything — everything! What do I
care? God knows I have struggled hard enough against
you, and fought the battle patiently enough; but you
have conquered, Mr. Robert Audley. It is a great
triumph, is it not? a wonderful victory! You have
used your cool, calculating, frigid, luminous intellect
to a noble purpose. You have conquered — a MAD-
WOMAN!”
"A madwoman!” cried Mr. Audley.
“Yes, a madwoman. When you say that I killed
George Talboys, you say the truth. When you say
that I murdered him treacherously and foully, you lie.
I killed him because I AM MAD! because my intellect
is a little way upon the wrong side of that narrow
boundary-line between sanity and insanity; because
when George Talboys goaded me, as you have goaded
me; and reproached me, and threatened me; my mind,
never properly balanced, utterly lost its balance; and
I was mad! Bring Sir Michael; and bring him quickly.
If he is to be told one thing, let him be told every-
thing; let him hear the secret of my life!”
Robert Audley left the room to look for his uncle.
He went in search of that honoured kinsman with God
knows how heavy a weight of anguish at his heart,
for he knew he was about to shatter the day-dream of
his uncle's life; and he knew that our dreams are none
the less terrible to lose, because they have never been
the realities for which we have mistaken them. But
even in the midst of his sorrow for Sir Michael, he
could not help wondering at my lady's last words -


MY LADY TELLS THE TRUTH.
169
“the secret of my life.” He remembered those lines in
the letter written by Helen Talboys upon the eve of
her flight from Wildernsea, which had so puzzled him.
He remembered those appealing sentences - "You
should forgive me, for you know why I have been so.
You know the secret of my life.”
He met Sir Michael in the hall. He made no at-
tempt to prepare the way for the terrible revelation
which the baronet was to hear. He only drew him
into the fire-lit library, and there for the first time ad-
dressed him quietly thus: —
“Lady Audley has a confession to make to you,
sir — a confession which I know will be a most cruel
surprise, a most bitter grief. But it is necessary for
your present honour, and for your future peace, that
you should hear it. She has deceived you, I regret to
say, most basely; but it is only right you should hear
from her own lips any excuses which she may have to
offer for her wickedness. May God soften this blow
for you,” sobbed the young man, suddenly breaking
down; "I cannot!”
Sir Michael lifted his hand as if he would have
commanded his nephew to be silent; but that imperious
hand dropped feeble and impotent at his side. He
stood in the centre of the fire-lit room, rigid and im-
movable.
“Lucy!” he cried, in a voice whose anguish struck
like a blow upon the jarred nerves of those who heard
it, as the cry of a wounded animal pains the listener


170
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
- "Lucy! tell me that this man is a madman! tell me
so, my love, or I shall kill him!”
There was a sudden fury in his voice as he turned
upon Robert, as if he could indeed have felled his
wife's accuser to the earth with the strength of his up-
lifted arm.
But my lady fell upon her knees at his feet; inter-
posing herself between the baronet and his nephew,
who stood leaning upon the back of an easy chair,
with his face hidden by his hand.
“He has told you the truth,” said my lady, “and
he is not mad! I have sent for you that I may confess
everything to you. I should be sorry for you if I
could; for you have been very, very good to me; much
better to me than I ever deserved; but I can't, I can't
- I can feel nothing but my own misery. I told you
long ago that I was selfish; I am selfish still - more
selfish than ever in my misery. Happy, prosperous
people may feel for others. I laugh at other people's
sufferings; they seem so small compared to my own.”
When first my lady had fallen on her knees, Sir
Michael had attempted to raise her, and had remon-
strated with her; but as she spoke he dropped into a
chair close to the spot upon which she knelt, and with
his hands clasped together, and with his head bent to
catch every syllable of those horrible words, he listened
as if his whole being had been resolved into that one
sense of hearing.
“I must tell you the story of my life; in order to
tell you why I have become the miserable wretch who


MY LADY TELLS THE TRUTH.
171
has no better hope than to be allowed to run away
and hide in some desolate corner of the earth. I must
tell you the story of my life,” repeated my lady, “but
you need not fear that I shall dwell long upon it. It
has not been so pleasant to me that I should wish to
remember it. When I was a very little child I re-
member asking a question which it was natural enough
that I should ask, God help me! I asked where my
mother was. I had a faint remembrance of a face, like
what my own is now, looking at me when I was very
little better than a baby; but I had missed the face
suddenly, and had never seen it since. They told me
that my mother was away. I was not happy, for the
woman who had charge of me was a disagreeable
woman, and the place in which we lived was a lonely
place, a village upon the Hampshire coast, about seven
miles from Portsmouth. My father, who was in the
navy, only came now and then to see me; and I was
left almost entirely to the charge of this woman, who
was irregularly paid; and who vented her rage upon
me when my father was behind-hand in remitting her
money. So you see that at a very early age I found
out what it was to be poor.
"Perhaps it was more from being discontented with
my dreary life than from any wonderful impulse of
affection, that I asked very often the same question
about my mother. I always received the same answer
- she was away. When I asked where, I was told
that that was a secret. When I grew old enough to
understand the meaning of the word death, I asked if


172
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
my mother was dead, and I was told – 'No, she was
not dead; she was ill, and she was away. I asked
how long she had been ill, and I was told that she had
been so some years; ever since I was a baby.
“At last the secret came out. I worried my foster-
mother with the old question one day when the re-
mittances had fallen very much in arrear, and her
temper had been unusually tried. She flew into a
passion; and told me that my mother was a mad-
woman; and that she was in a madhouse forty miles
away. She had scarcely said this when she repented,
and told me that it was not the truth, and that I was
not to believe it, or to say that she had told me such
a thing. I discovered afterwards that my father had
made her promise most solemnly never to tell me 'the
secret of my mother's fate.
"I brooded horribly upon the thought of my
mother's madness. It haunted me by day and night.
I was always picturing to myself this madwoman
pacing up and down some prison cell, in a hideous
garment that bound her tortured limbs. I had ex-
aggerated ideas of the horror of her situation. I had
no knowledge of the different degrees of madness; and
the image that haunted me was that of a distraught
and violent creature, who would fall upon me and kill
me if I came within her reach. This idea grew upon
me until I used to awake in the dead of the night,
screaming aloud in an agony of terror, from a dream
in which I had felt my mother's icy grasp upon my
throat, and heard her ravings in my ear.
of the cerent degrerat of a di


MY LADY TELLS THE TRUTH.
173
“When I was ten years old my father came to pay
up the arrears due to my protectress, and to take me
to school. He had left me in Hampshire longer than
he had intended, from his inability to pay this money.
So there again I felt the bitterness of poverty, and ran
the risk of growing up an ignorant creature amongst
coarse rustic children, because my father was poor."
My lady paused for a moment, but only to take
breath, for she had spoken rapidly, 'as if eager to tell
this hated story, and to have done with it. She was
still on her knees, but Sir Michael made no effort to
raise her.
He sat silent and immovable. What was this story
that he was listening to? Whose was it, and to what
was it to lead? It could not be his wife's; he had
heard her simple account of her youth, and had be-
lieved it as he had believed in the Gospel. She had
told him a very brief story of an early orphanage, and
a long quiet, colourless youth spent in the conventual
seclusion of an English boarding-school.
"My father came at last, and I told him what I
had discovered. He was very much affected when I
spoke of my mother. He was not what the world
generally calls a good man, but I learned afterwards
that he had loved his wife very dearly; and that he
would have willingly sacrificed his life to her, and con-
stituted himself her guardian, had he not been com-
pelled to earn the daily bread of the madwoman and
her child by the exercise of his profession. So here
again I beheld what a bitter thing it is to be poor.


174
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
My mother, who might have been tended by a devoted
husband, was given over to the care of hired nurses.
“Before my father sent me to school at Torquay,
he took me to see my mother. This visit served at
least to dispel the idea which had so often terrified me.
I saw no raving, strait-waistcoated maniac, guarded by
zealous gaolers; but a golden-haired, blue-eyed, girlish
creature, who seemed as frivolous as a butterfly, and
who skipped towards us with her yellow curls decorated
with natural flowers, and saluted us with radiant smiles,
and gay, ceaseless chatter.
"But she didn't know us. She would have spoken
in the same manner to any stranger who had entered
the gates of the garden about her prison-house. Her
madness was an hereditary disease transmitted to her
from her mother, who had died mad. She, my mother,
had been, or had appeared sane up to the hour of my
birth; but from that hour her intellect had decayed,
until she had become what I saw her.
"I went away with the knowledge of this, and
with the knowledge that the only inheritance I had to
expect from my mother was — insanity!
"I went away with this knowledge in my mind,
and with something more — a secret to keep. I was
only a child of ten years old; but I felt all the weight
of that burden. I was to keep the secret of my mother's
madness; for it was a secret that might affect me in-
juriously in after-life. I was to remember this.
“I did remember this; and it was, perhaps, this
that made me selfish and heartless; for I suppose I am


MY LADY TELLS THE TRUTH.
175
heartless. As I grew older I was told that I was pretty
- beautiful – lovely -- bewitching. I heard all
these things at first indifferently; but by-and-by I
listened to them greedily, and began to think that in
spite of the secret of my life I might be more success-
ful in the world's great lottery than my companions.
I had learnt that which in some indefinite manner or
other every school-girl learns sooner or later – I
learned that my ultimate fate in life depended upon
my marriage, and I concluded that if I was indeed
prettier than my schoolfellows, I ought to marry better
than any of them.
"I left school before I was seventeen years of age
with this thought in my mind; and I went to live at
the other extremity of England with my father, who
had retired upon his half-pay, and had established him-
self at Wildernsea, with the idea that the place was
cheap and select.
“The place was indeed select. I had not been
there a month before I discovered that even the pretti-
est girl might wait a long time for a rich husband. I
wish to hurry over this part of my life: I daresay I
was very despicable. You and your nephew, Sir
Michael, have been rich all your lives, and can
very well afford to despise me; but I knew how far
poverty can affect a life, and I looked forward with a
sick terror to a life so affected. At last the rich suitor
- the wandering prince came.”
She paused for a moment, and shuddered con-
vulsively. It was impossible to see any of the changes


176
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
of her countenance, for her face was obstinately bent
towards the floor. Throughout her long confession she
never lifted it; throughout her long confession her voice
was never broken by a tear. What she had to tell she
told in a cold, hard tone; very much the tone in which
some criminal, dogged and sullen to the last, might
have confessed to a gaol chaplain.
"The wandering prince came," she repeated; "he
was called George Talboys."
For the first time since his wife's confession had
begun, Sir Michael Audley started. He began to un-
derstand it all now. A crowd of unheeded words and
forgotten circumstances that had seemed too insignificant
for remark or recollection, flashed back upon him as
vividly as if they had been the leading incidents of his
past life.
“Mr. George Talboys was a cornet in a dragoon
regiment. He was the only son of a rich country gen-
tleman. He fell in love with me, and married me
three months after my seventeenth birthday. I think
I loved him as much as it was in my power to love
anybody; not more than I have loved you, Sir Michael;
not so much; for when you married me you elevated
me to a position that he could never have given me."
The dream was broken. Sir Michael Audley re-
membered that summer's evening, nearly two years
ago, when he had first declared his love for Mr. Daw-
son's governess; he remembered the sick, half-shuddering
sensation of regret and disappointment that had come
eveniment love for-shuddering
regret andembered the siclove for Mr. years


MY LADY TELLS THE TRUTH.
177
over him then; and he felt as if it had in some manner
dimly foreshadowed the agony of to-night.
But I do not believe that even in his misery he
felt that entire and unmitigated surprise, that utter re-
vulsion of feeling that is felt when a good woman
wanders away from herself, and becomes the lost crea-
ture whom her husband is bound in honour to abjure.
I do not believe that Sir Michael Audley had ever
really believed in his wife. He had loved her and ad-
mired her; he had been bewitched by her beauty and
bewildered by her charms; but that sense of something
wanting, that vague feeling of loss and disappointment
which had come upon him on the summer's night of
his betrothal, had been with him more or less distinctly
ever since. I cannot believe that an honest man, how-
ever pure and single may be his mind, however simply
trustful his nature, is ever really deceived by falsehood.
There is beneath the voluntary confidence an in-
voluntary distrust; not to be conquered by any effort
of the will.
“We were married," my lady continued, “and I
loved him very well, quite well enough to be happy
with him as long as his money lasted, and while we
were on the Continent, travelling in the best style and
always staying at the best hotels. But when we came
back to Wildernsea and lived with papa, and all the
money was gone, and George grew gloomy and
wretched, and was always thinking of his troubles, and
appeared to neglect me, I was very unhappy; and it
seemed as if this fine marriage had only given me a
Lady Audley's Secret. II.
12


178
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
twelve-month's gaiety and extravagance after all. I
begged George to appeal to his father; but he refused.
I persuaded him to try and get employment; and he
failed. My baby was born, and the crisis which had
been fatal to my mother arose for me. I escaped; but
I was more irritable perhaps after my recovery; less
inclined to fight the hard battle of the world; more
disposed to complain of poverty and neglect. I did
complain one day, loudly and bitterly. I upbraided
George Talboys for his cruelty in having allied a help-
less girl to poverty and misery; and he flew into a
passion with me and ran out of the house. When I
awoke the next morning I found a letter lying on the
table by my bed, telling me that he was going to the
Antipodes to seek his fortune, and that he would never
see me again until he was a rich man.
"I looked upon this as a desertion, and I resented
it' bitterly — I resented it by hating the man who had
left me with no protector but a weak, tipsy father, and
with a child to support. I had to work hard for my
living, and in every hour of labour — and what labour
is more wearisome than the dull slavery of a governess?
– I recognised a separate wrong done me by George
Talboys. His father was rich; his sister was living in
luxury and respectability; and I, his wife, and the
mother of his son, was a slave allied for ever to
beggary and obscurity. People pitied me; and I hated
them for their pity. I did not love the child; for he
had been left a burden upon my hands. The hereditary
taint that was in my blood had never until this time


MY LADY TELLS THE TRUTH.
179
showed itself by any one sign or token; but at this
time I became subject to fits of violence and despair.
At this time I think my mind first lost its balance, and
for the first time I crossed that invisible line which
separates reason from madness. I have seen my father's
eyes fixed upon me in horror and alarm. I have known
him soothe me as only mad people and children are
soothed, and I have chafed against his petty devices,
I have resented even his indulgence.
"At last these fits of desperation resolved themselves
into a desperate purpose. I determined to run away
from this wretched home which my slavery supported.
I determined to desert this father who had more fear
of me than love for me. I determined to go to London,
and lose myself in that great chaos of humanity.
“I had seen an advertisement in the Times while I
was at Wildernsea, and I presented myself to Mrs.
Vincent, the advertiser, under a feigned name. She
accepted me, waiving all question as to my antecedents.
You know the rest. I came here, and you made me
an offer, the acceptance of which would lift me at once
into the sphere to which my ambition had pointed ever
since I was a school-girl, and heard for the first time
that I was pretty.
"Three years had passed, and I had received no
token of my husband's existence; for, I argued, that if
he had returned to England, he would have succeeded
in finding me under any name and in any place. I
knew the energy of his character well enough to know
this.
12*


180
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
“I said, 'I have a right to think that he is dead,
or that he wishes me to believe him dead, and his
shadow shall not stand between me and prosperity.' I
said this, and I became your wife, Sir Michael, with
every resolution to be as good a wife as it was in my
nature to be. The common temptations that assail and
shipwreck some women had no terror for me. I would
have been your true and pure wife to the end of time,
though I had been surrounded by a legion of tempters.
The mad folly that the world calls love had never had
any part in my madness; and here at least extremes
met, and the vice of heartlessness became the virtue of
constancy.
"I was very happy in the first triumph and grandeur
of my new position, very grateful to the hand that had
lifted me to it. In the sunshine of my own happiness
I felt, for the first time in my life, for the miseries of
others. I had been poor myself, and I was now rich,
and could afford to pity and relieve the poverty of my
neighbours. I took pleasure in acts of kindness and
benevolence. I found out my father's address aud sent
him large, sums of money, anonymously, for I did not
wish him to discover what had become of me. I availed
myself to the full of the privilege your generosity
afforded me. I dispensed happiness on every side. I
saw myself loved as well as admired; and I think I
might have been a good woman for the rest of my life,
if fate would have allowed me to be so.
“I believe that at this time my mind regained its
just balance. I had watched myself very closely since


MY LADY TELLS THE TRUTH.
181
leaving Wildernsea; I had held a check upon myself.
I had often wondered, while sitting in the surgeon's
quiet family circle, whether any suspicion of that
invisible hereditary taint had ever occurred to Mr.
Dawson.
“Fate would not suffer me to be good. My destiny
compelled me to be a wretch. Within a month of my
marriage, I read in one of the Essex papers of the
return of a certain Mr. Talboys, a fortunate gold-
seeker, from Australia. The ship had sailed at the
time I read the paragraph. What was to be done?
“I said just now that I knew the energy of George's
character. I knew that the man who had gone to the
antipodes, and won a fortune for his wife, would leave
no stone unturned in his efforts to find her. It was
hopeless to think of hiding myself from him.
“Unless he could be induced to believe that I was
dead, he would never cease in his search for me.
“My brain was dazed as I thought of my peril.
Again the balance trembled; again the invisible boun-
dary was passed; again I was mad.
“I went down to Southampton and found my father,
who was living there with my child. You remember
how Mrs. Vincent's name was used as an excuse for
this hurried journey, and how it was contrived that I
should go with no other escort than Phæbe Marks,
whom I left at the hotel while I went to my father's
house.
“I confided to my father the whole secret of my
peril. He was not very much shocked at what I had


182
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
done, for poverty had perhaps blunted his sense of
honour and principle. He was not very much shocked;
but he was frightened; and he promised to do all in
his power to assist me in my horrible emergency.
"He had received a letter addressed to me at
Wildernsea, by George, and forwarded from there to
my father. This letter had been written within a few
days of the sailing of the Argus, and it announced
the probable date of the ship's arrival at Liverpool.
This letter gave us, therefore, data upon which to act.
“We decided at once upon the first step. This was
that on the date of the probable arrival of the Argus,
or a few days later, an advertisement of my death
should be inserted in the Times.
“But almost immediately after deciding upon this,
we saw that there were fearful difficulties in the
carrying out of such a simple plan. The date of the
death, and the place in which I died, must be an-
nounced, as well as the death itself. George would
immediately hurry to that place, however distant it
might be, however comparatively inaccessible, and the
shallow falsehood would be discovered.
"I knew enough of his sanguine temperament, his
courage and determination, his readiness to hope
against hope, to know that unless he saw the grave in
which I was buried, and the register of my death, he
would never believe that I was lost to him.
“My father was utterly dumfounded and helpless.
He could only shed childish tears of despair and terror.
He was of no use to me in this crisis.


MY LADY TELLS THE TRUTH.
183
"I was hopeless of any issue out of my difficulty.
I began to think that I must trust to the chapter of
accidents; and hope that amongst other obscure corners
of the earth, Audley Court might remain undreamt-of
by my hushand.
"I sat with my father, drinking tea with him in
his miserable hovel, and playing with the child, who
was pleased with my dress and jewels, but quite un-
conscious that I was anything but a stranger to him.
I had the boy in my arms, when a woman who at-
tended him came to fetch him that she might make
him more fit to be seen by the lady, as she said.
“I was anxious to know how the boy was treated,
and I detained this woman in conversation with me,
while my father dozed over the tea-table. .
“She was a pale-faced, sandy-haired woman, of
about five-and-forty; and she seemed very glad to get
the chance of talking to me as long as I pleased to allow
her. She soop left off talking of the boy, however, to
tell me her own troubles. She was in very great
trouble, she told me. Her eldest daughter had been
obliged to leave her situation from ill-health; in fact,
the doctor said the girl was in a decline; and it was a
hard thing for a poor widow who had seen better days
to have a sick daughter to support, as well as a family
of young children.
“I let the woman run on for a long time in this
manner, telling me the girl's ailments, and the girl's
age, and the girl's doctor's stuff, and piety, and
sufferings, and a great deal more. But I neither listened


184
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
to her nor heeded her. I heard her, but only in a
far-away manner, as I heard the traffic in the street,
or the ripple of the stream at the bottom of it. What
were this woman's troubles to me? I had miseries of
my own; and worse miseries than her coarse nature
could ever have to endure. These sort of people always
had sick husbands or sick children, and expected to be
helped in their illnesses by the rich. It was nothing
out of the common. I was thinking this; and I was
just going to dismiss the woman with a sovereign for
her sick daughter; when an idea flashed upon me with
such painful suddenness that it sent the blood surging
up to my brain, and set my heart beating, as it only
beats when I am mad.
"I asked the woman her name. She was a Mrs.
Plowson, and she kept a small general shop, she said,
and only ran in now and then to look after Georgey,
and to see that the little maid-of-all-work took care of
him. Her daughter's name was Matilda, I asked her
several questions about this girl Matilda, and I ascer-
tained that she was four-and-twenty, that she had al-
ways been consumptive, and that she was now, as the
doctor said, going off in a rapid decline. He had de-
clared that she could not last much more than a fort-
night.
"It was in three weeks that the ship that carried
George Talboys was expected to anchor in the
Mersey.
"I need not dwell much upon this business. I
visited the sick girl. She was fair and slender. Her


MY LADY TELLS THE TRUTH.
185
description, carelessly given, might tally nearly enough
with my own; though she bore no shadow of resem-
blance to me, except in these two particulars. I was
received by the girl as a rich lady who wished to do
her service. I bought the mother, who was poor and
greedy, and who for a gift of money, more money than
she had ever before received, consented to submit to
anything I wished. Upon the second day after my
introduction to this Mrs. Plowson, my father went over
to Ventnor, and hired lodgings for his invalid daughter
and her little boy. Early the next morning he carried
over the dying girl and Georgey, who had been bribed
to call her ‘mamma.' She entered the house as Mrs.
Talboys; she was attended by a Ventnor medical man
as Mrs. Talboys; she died, and her death and burial
were registered in that name. The advertisement was
inserted in the Times, and upon the second day after
its insertion George Talboys visited Ventnor, and
ordered the tombstone which at this hour records the
death of his wife, Helen Talboys.”
Sir Michael Audley rose slowly, and with a stiff,
constrained action, as if every physical sense had been
benumbed by that one sense of misery.
“I cannot hear any more,” he said, in a hoarse
whisper; “if there is anything more to be told, I
cannot hear it. Robert, it is you who have brought
about this discovery, as I understand. I want to know
nothing more. Will you take upon yourself the duty
of providing for the safety and comfort of this lady,
whom I have thought my wife? I need not ask you


186
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
to remember in all you do, that I have loved her very
dearly and truly. I cannot say farewell to her. I will
not say it until I can think of her without bitterness
- until I can pity her; as I now pray that God may
pity her this night.”
Sir Michael walked slowly from the room. He
did not trust himself to look at that crouching figure.
He did not wish to see the creature whom he had
cherished. He went straight to his dressing-room, rang
for his valet, and ordered him to pack a portmanteau,
and make all necessary arrangements for accompanying
his master by the last up-train.


THE HUSH THAT SUCCEEDS 187
THE .
.
THE TEMPESTTEMPESTCHAPTER X.
The Hush that succeeds the Tempest.
ROBERT AUDLEY followed his uncle into the vesti-
bule after Sir Michael had spoken those few quiet
words which sounded the death-knell of his hope and
love. Heaven knows how much the young man had
feared the coming of this day. It had come; and
though there had been no great outburst of despair,
no whirlwind of stormy grief, no loud tempest of
anguish and tears, Robert took no comforting thought
from the unnatural stillness. He knew enough to
know that Sir Michael Audley went away with the
barbed arrow, which his nephew's hand had sent home
to its aim, rankling in his tortured heart; he knew
that this strange and icy calm was the first numbness
of a heart stricken by a grief so unexpected as for a
time to be rendered almost incomprehensible by a
blank stupor of astonishment. He knew that when
this dull quiet had passed away, when little by little,
and one by one, each horrible feature of the sufferer's
sorrow became first dimly apparent and then terribly
familiar to him, the storm would burst in fatal fury,
and tempests of tears and cruel thunder-claps of agony
would rend that generous heart.
Robert had heard of cases in which men of his
uncle's age had borne some great grief, as Sir Michael


188
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
had borne this, with a strange quiet; and had gone
away from those who would have comforted them, and
whose anxieties have been relieved by this patient
stillness, to fall down upon the ground and die under
the blow which at first had only stunned them. He
remembered cases in which paralysis and apoplexy
had stricken men as strong as his uncle in the first
hour of the horrible affliction; and he lingered in the
lamp-lit vestibule, wondering whether it was not his
duty to be with Sir Michael — to be near him, in
case of any emergency, and to accompany him where-
ever he went.
Yet, would it be wise to force himself upon that
grey-headed sufferer in this cruel hour, in which he
had been awakened from the one delusion of a blame-
less life to discover that he had been the dupe of a
false face, and the fool of a nature which was too
coldly mercenary, too cruelly heartless, to be sensible
of its own infamy?,
"No," thought Robert Audley, “I will not intrude
upon the anguish of this wounded heart. There is
humiliation mingled with this bitter grief. It is better
he should fight the battle alone. I have done what I
believe to have been my solemn duty, yet I should
scarcely wonder if I had rendered myself for ever
hateful to him. It is better he should fight the battle
alone. I can do nothing to make the strife less terrible.
Better that it should be fought alone."
While the young man stood with his hand upon
the library door, still half doubtful whether he should


THE HUSH THAT SUCCEEDS THE TEMPEST.
189
follow his uncle or re-enter the room in which he had
left that more wretched creature, whom it had been his
business to unmask, Alicia Audley opened the dining-
room door, and revealed to him the old-fashioned oak-
paneled apartment, the long table covered with snowy
damask, and bright with a cheerful glitter of glass and
silver.
“Is papa coming to dinner?” asked Miss Audley.
“I'm so hungry; and poor Tomlins has sent up three
times to say the fish will be spoiled. It must be re-
duced to a species of isinglass soup by this time, I
should think,” added the young lady, as she came out
into the vestibule with the Times newspaper in her
hand.
She had been sitting by the fire reading the paper,
and waiting for her seniors to join her at the dinner-
table.
“Oh, it's you, Mr. Robert Audley,” she remarked,
indifferently. “You dine with us, of course. Pray go
and find papa. It must be nearly eight o'clock, and
we are supposed to dine at six."
Mr. Audley answered his cousin rather sternly. Her
frivolous manner jarred upon him, and he forgot in his
irrational displeasure that Miss Audley had known no-
thing of the terrible drama which had been so long
enacting under her very nose.
“Your papa has just endured a very great grief,
Alicia,” the young man said, gravely.
The girl's arch, laughing face changed in a mo-


190
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
ment to a tenderly earnest look of sorrow and anxiety.
Alicia Audley loved her father very dearly.
“A grief!" she exclaimed; "papa grieved? Oh!
Robert, what has happened?"
"I can tell you nothing yet, Alicia,” Robert an-
swered, in a low voice.
He took his cousin by the wrist, and drew her into
the dining-room as he spoke. He closed the door care-
fully behind him before he continued; —
“Alicia, can I trust you?” he asked, earnestly.
“Trust me to do what?”
"To be a comfort and a friend to your poor father
under a very heavy affliction.”
“YES!" cried Alicia, passionately. "How can you
ask me such a question? Do you think there is anything
I would not do to lighten any sorrow of my father's?
Do you think there is anything I would not suffer if
my suffering could lighten his?".
The rushing tears rose to Miss Audley's bright
grey eyes as she spoke.
"Oh, Robert! Robert! could you think so badly of
me as to think that I would not try to be a comfort to
my father in his grief?” she said, reproachfully.
“No, no, my dear," answered the young man,
quietly; “I never doubted your affection, I only doubted
your discretion. May I rely upon that?”
“You may, Robert,” said Alicia, resolutely.
“Very well, then, my dear girl, I will trust you.
Your father is going to leave the Court, for a time at
least. The grief which he has just endured — a sud-


THE HUSH THAT SUCCEEDS THE TEMPEST.
191
den and an unlooked-for sorrow, remember — has no
doubt made this place hateful to him. He is going
away; but he must not go alone, must he, Alicia?".
"Alone? no! no! But I suppose my lady —”
“Lady Audley will not go with him," said Robert,
gravely; "he is about to separate himself from her.”
“For a time?”
“No; for ever.”
“Separate himself from her for ever!” exclaimed
Alicia. “Then this grief — ".
“Is connected with Lady Audley. Lady Audley is
the cause of your father's sorrow."
Alicia's face, which had been pale before, flushed
crimson. Sorrow, of which my lady was the cause —
a sorrow which was to separate Sir Michael for ever
from his young wife! There had been no quarrel be-
tween them – there had never been anything but
harmony and sunshine between Lucy Audley and her
generous husband. This sorrow must surely then have
arisen from some sudden discovery; it was, no doubt,
a sorrow associated with disgrace. Robert Audley un-
derstood the meaning of that vivid blush.
“You will offer to accompany your father wherever
he may choose to go, Alicia,” he said. “You are his
natural comforter at such a time as this, but you will
best befriend him in this hour of trial by avoiding all
intrusion upon his grief. Your very ignorance of the
particulars of that grief will be a security for your
discretion. Say nothing to your father that you might
not have said to him two years ago, before he married
ssociated w of that vivia our father Ware his


192
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
a second wife. Try and be to him what you were be-
fore the woman in yonder room came between you and
your father's love."
"I will,” murmured Alicia, “I will.”
“You will naturally avoid all mention of Lady
Audley's name. If your father is often silent, be pa-
tient; if it sometimes seem to you that the shadow
of this great sorrow will never pass away from his life,
be patient still; and remember that there can be no
better hope of a cure for his grief than the hope that
his daughter's devotion may lead him to remember
there is one woman upon this earth who will love him
truly and purely until the last.”
“Yes, yes, Robert, dear cousin, I will remember.”
Mr. Audley, for the first time since he had been a
schoolboy, took his cousin in his arms and kissed her
broad forehead.
“My dear Alicia,” he said, “do this, and you will
make me happy. I have been in some measure the
means of bringing this sorrow upon your father. Let
me hope that it is not an enduring one. Try and
restore my uncle to happiness, Alicia, and I will love
you more dearly than brother ever loved a noble-
hearted sister and a brotherly affection may be worth
having, perhaps, after all, my dear, though it is very
different to poor Sir Harry's enthusiastic worship.”
Alicia's head was bent and her face hidden from
her cousin while he spoke; but she lifted her bead
when he had finished, and looked him full in the face


THE HUSH THAT SUCCEEDS THE TEMPEST.
193
with a smile that was only the brighter for her eyes
being filled with tears.
“You are a good fellow, Bob,” she said: “and I've
been very foolish and wicked to feel angry with you,
because —"
The young lady stopped suddenly.
“Because what, my dear?” asked Mr. Audley.
“Because I'm silly, cousin Robert,” Alicia said
quickly; “never mind that, Bob; I'll do all you wish,
and it shall not be my fault if my dearest father
doesn't forget his troubles before long. I'd go to the
end of the world with him, poor darling, if I thought
there was any comfort to be found for him in the jour-
ney. I'll go and get ready directly. Do you think
papa will go to-night?”
“Yes, my dear; I don't think Sir Michael will rest
another night under this roof, yet awhile.”
“The mail goes at twenty minutes past nine,” said
Alicia; "we must leave the house in an hour if we
are to travel by it. I shall see you again before we
go, Robert.”
“Yes, dear."
Miss Audley ran off to her room to summon her
maid, and make all necessary preparations for the
sudden journey, of whose ultimate destination she was
as yet quite ignorant.
She went heart and soul into the carrying out of
the duty which Robert had dictated to her. She
assisted in the packing of her portmanteaus, and hope-
lessly bewildered her maid by stuffing silk dresses into
Lady Audley's Secret. II.
13


194
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
her bonnet boxes, and satin shoes into her dressing-
case. She roamed about her rooms gathering together
drawing materials, music- books, needlework, hair-
brushes, jewellery, and perfume-bottles, very much as
she might have done had she been about to sail for
some savage country devoid of all civilised resources.
She was thinking all the time of her father's unknown
grief; and perhaps a little of the serious face and
earnest voice which had that night revealed her cousin
Robert to her in a new character.
Mr. Audley went up-stairs after his cousin, and
found his way to Sir Michael's dressing-room. He
knocked at the door and listened, heaven knows how
anxiously, for the expected answer. There was a mo-
ment's pause, during which the young man's heart
beat loud and fast, and then the door was opened by
the baronet himself. Robert saw that his uncle's valet
was already hard at work preparing for his master's
hurried journey.
Sir Michael came out into the corridor.
“Have you anything more to say to me, Robert?"
he asked, quietly.
“I only came to ascertain if I could assist in any
of your arrangements. You go to London by the
mail?”
“Yes."
"Have you any idea of where you will stay?”
“Yes, I shall stop at the Clarendon; I am known
there. Is that all you have to say?"
“Yes; except that Alicia will accompany you.”


THE HUSH THAT SUCCEEDS THE TEMPEST.
"Alicia!"
“She could not very well stay here, you know,
just now. It would be best for her to leave the Court
until -"
“Yes, yes, I understand," interrupted the baronet;
“but is there nowhere else that she could go, — must
she be with me?”
“She could go nowhere else so immediately; and
she would not be happy anywhere else.”
“Let her come, then,” said Sir Michael, “let her
come.”
He spoke in a strange subdued voice, and with an
apparent effort; as if it were painful to him to have to
speak at all. As if all this ordinary business of life
were a cruel torture to him; and jarred so much upon
his grief as to be almost worse to bear than that grief
itself.
“Very well, my dear uncle, then all is arranged;
Alicia will be ready to start at nine o'clock.”
“Very good, very good," muttered the baronet;
“let her come if she pleases; poor child, let her come.”
He sighed heavily as he spoke in that half-pitying
tone of his daughter. He was thinking how compara-
tively indifferent he had been towards that only child
for the sake of the woman now shut in the fire-lit room
below.
"I shall see you again before you go, sir," said
Robert; “I will leave you till then.”
"Stay!” said Sir Michael, suddenly; "have you
told Alicia?"
13*


196
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
“I have told her nothing; except that you are
about to leave the Court for some time.”
“You are very good, my boy, you are very good,"
the baronet murmured in a broken voice.
He stretched out his hand. His nephew took it in
both his own, and pressed it to his lips.
“Oh, sir! how can I ever forgive myself?” he said;
“how can I ever cease to hate myself for having
brought this grief upon you?”
“No, no, Robert, you did right — you did right;
I wish that God had been so merciful to me as to take
my miserable life before this night; but you did
right.”
“Sir Michael re-entered his dressing-room, and
Robert slowly returned to the vestibule. He paused
upon the threshold of that chamber in which he had
left Lucy, Lady Audley; otherwise Helen Talboys, the
wife of his lost friend.
She was lying upon the floor; upon the very spot
on which she had crouched at her husband's feet telling
her guilty story. Whether she was in a swoon; or
whether she lay there in the utter helplessness of her
misery; Robert scarcely cared to know. He went out
into the vestibule, and sent one of the servants to look
for her maid, the smart be-ribboned damsel, who was
loud in wonder and consternation at the sight of her
mistress.
“Lady Audley is very ill,” he said; "take her to
her room and see that she does not leave it to-night.
You will be good enough to remain near her; but do


THE HUSH THAT SUCCEEDS THE TEMPEST.
197
not either talk to her, or suffer her to excite herself
by talking.”
My lady had not fainted; she allowed the girl to
assist her, and rose from the ground upon which she
had grovelled. Her golden hair fell in loose, dishev-
elled masses about her ivory throat and shoulders;
her face and lips were colourless; her eyes terrible in
their unnatural light.
"Take me away,” she said, “and let me sleep!
Let me sleep, for my brain is on fire!"
As she was leaving the room with her maid, she
turned and looked at Robert: “Is Sir Michael gone?"
she asked.
“He will leave in half an hour.”
“There were no lives lost in the fire at Mount
Stanning?”
"None."
“I am glad of that.”
“The landlord of the house, Marks, was very ter-
ribly burned, and lies in a precarious state at his
mother's cottage; but he may recover.”
“I am glad of that — I am glad no life was lost.
Good-night, Mr. Audley.”
"I shall ask to see you for half an hour's conver-
sation in the course of to-morrow, my lady?”
“Whenever you please. Good-night.”
“Good-night.”
She went away, quietly leaning upon her maid's
shoulder, and leaving Robert with a sense of strange
bewilderment that was very painful to him.


198
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
He sat down by the broad hearth upon which the
red embers were fading, and wondered at the change
in that old house which, until the day of his friend's
disappearance, had been so pleasant a home for all
who sheltered beneath its hospitable roof. He sat
brooding over that desolate hearth, and trying to
decide upon what must be done in this sudden crisis.
He sat, helpless and powerless to determine upon any
course of action, lost in a dull reverie, from which he
was aroused by the sound of carriage wheels driving
up to the little turret entrance.
The clock in the vestibule struck nine as Robert
opened the library-door. Alicia had just descended the
stairs with her maid, a rosy-faced country girl.
“Good-by, Robert,” said Miss Audley, holding out
her hand to her cousin; "good-by, and God bless you!
You may trust me to take care of papa." .
"I am sure I may. God bless you, my dear.”
For the second time that night Robert Audley
pressed his lips to his cousin's candid forehead; and
for the second time the embrace was of a brotherly or
paternal character; rather than the rapturous proceed-
ing which it would have been had Sir Harry Towers
been the privileged performer.
It was five minutes past nine when Sir Michael
came down-stairs, followed by his valet, grave and
grey-haired like himself. The baronet was pale, but
calm and self-possessed. The hand which he gave to
his nephew was as cold as ice; but it was with a steady
voice that he bade the young man good-by.


THE HUSH THAT SUCCEEDS THE TEMPEST.
199
“I leave all in your hands, Robert,” he said, as he
turned to leave the house in which he had lived so
long. “I may not have heard the end; but I have
heard enough. Heaven knows I have no need to hear
more. I leave all to you, but you will not be cruel --
you will remember how much I loved —”
His voice broke huskily before he could finish the
sentence.
“I will remember you in everything, sir,” the
young man answered. “I will do everything for the
best.”
A treacherous mist of tears blinded him and shut
out his uncle's face, and in another minute the carriage
had driven away, and Robert Audley sat alone in the
dark library, where only one red spark glowed amongst
the pale-grey ashes. He sat alone, trying to think
what he ought to do, and with the awful responsibility
of a wicked woman's fate upon his shoulders.
"Good heavens,” he thought; “surely this must be
God's judgment upon the purposeless, vacillating life
I led up to the seventh day of last September. Surely
this awful responsibility has been forced upon me in
order that I may humble myself to an offended Pro-
vidence, and confess that a man cannot choose his own
life. He cannot say, 'I will take existence lightly, and
keep out of the way of the wretched, mistaken, ener-
getic creatures, who fight so heartily in the great battle.'
He cannot say, 'I will stop in the tents while the strife
is fought, and laugh at the fools who are trampled
down in the useless struggle. He cannot do this. He


200
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
can only do, humbly and fearfully, that which the
Maker who created him has appointed for him to do.
If he has a battle to fight, let him fight it faithfully;
but woe betide him if he skulks when his name is
called in the mighty muster-roll; woe betide him if he
hides in the tents when the tocsin summons him to the
scene of war!"
One of the servants brought candles into the library,
and relighted the fire; but Robert Audley did not stir
from his seat by the hearth. He sat as he had often
sat in his chambers in Fig-tree Court, with his elbows
resting upon the arms of his chair, and his chin upon
his hand.
But he lifted his head as the servant was about to
leave the room.
“Can I send a telegram from here to London ?” he
asked.
"It can be sent from Brentwood, sir, — not from
here."
Mr. Audley looked at his watch, thoughtfully.
“One of the men can ride over to Brentwood, sir,
if you wish any message to be sent."
"I do wish to send a message; will you manage it
for me, Richards?”
“Certainly, sir.”
“You can wait, then, while I write the message?”
“Yes, sir."
The man brought writing materials from one of the
side-tables, and placed them before Mr. Audley.
Robert dipped a pen in the ink, and stared thought-


THE HUSH THAT SUCCEEDS THE TEMPEST.
201
fully at one of the candles for a few moments before
he began to write.
The message ran thus: --
“From Robert Audley, of Audley Court, Essex, to
Francis Wilmington, of Paper Buildings, Temple.
“Dear Wilmington, if you know any physician,
experienced in cases of mania, and to be trusted with
a secret, be so good as to send me his address by tele-
graph.”
Mr. Audley sealed this document in a stout enve-
lope, and handed it to the man, with a sovereign.
“You will see that this is given to a trustworthy
person, Richards," he said, “and let the man wait at
the station for the return message. He ought to get it
in an hour and a half.”
Mr. Richards, who had known Robert Audley in
jackets and turn-down collars, departed to execute his
commission. Heaven forbid that we should follow him
into the comfortable servants' hall at the Court, where
the household sat round the blazing fire, discussing in
utter bewilderment the events of the day.
Nothing could be wider from the truth than the
speculations of these worthy people. What clue had
they to the mystery of that fire-lit room in which a
guilty woman had knelt at their master's feet to tell
the story of her sinful life? They only knew that
which Sir Michael's valet had told them of this sudden
journey. How his master was as pale as a sheet, and
spoke in a strange voice that didn't sound like his
own, somehow, and how you might have knocked him


202
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
. The hael hace
were noi
- Mr. Parsons, the valet – down with a feather, if
you had been minded to prostrate him by the aid of
so feeble a weapon.
The wiseheads of the servants' hall decided that
Sir Michael had received sudden intelligence through
Mr. Robert — they were wise enough to connect the
young man with the catastrophe, - either of the death
of some near and dear relation - the elder servants
decimated the Audley family in their endeavours to
find a likely relation - or of some alarming fall in
the funds; or of the failure of some speculation or bank
in which the greater part of the baronet's money was
invested. The general leaning was towards the failure
of a bank; and every member of the assembly seemed
to take a dismal and raven-like delight in the fancy;
though such a supposition involved their own ruin in
the general destruction of that liberal household.
Robert sat by the dreary hearth, which seemed
dreary even now when the blaze of a great wood-fire
roared in the wide chimney, and listened to the low
wail of the March wind, moaning round the house and
lifting the shivering ivy from the walls it sheltered.
He was tired and worn out, for remember that he had
been awakened from his sleep at two o'clock that
morning by the hot breath of blazing timber and the
sharp crackling of burning wood-work. But for his
presence of mind and cool decision, Mr. Luke Marks
would have died a dreadful death. He still bore the
traces of the night's peril, for the dark hair had been
singed upon one side of his forehead, and his left hand


THE HUSH THAT SUCCEEDS THE TEMPEST.
203
was red and inflamed from the effect of the scorching
atmosphere, out of which he had dragged the landlord
of the Castle Inn. He was thoroughly exhausted with
fatigue and excitement, and he fell into a heavy sleep
in his easy-chair before the bright fire, from which he
was only awakened by the entrance of Mr. Richards
with the return message.
This return message was very brief.
“Dear Audley, always glad to oblige. Alwyn
Mosgrave, M.D., 12, Saville Row. Safe.”
This, with names and addresses, was all that it
contained.
“I shall want another message taken to Brentwood
to-morrow morning, Richards,” said Mr. Audley, as he
folded the telegram. “I should be glad if the man
would ride over with it before breakfast. He shall
have half-a-sovereign for his trouble.”
Mr. Richards bowed.
"Thank you, sir — not necessary, sir; but as you
please, of course, sir,” he murmured. "At what hour
might you wish the man to go?”
Mr. Audley might wish the man to go as early
as he could; so it was decided that he should go
at six.
“My room is ready I suppose, Richards?” said
Robert.
“Yes, sir — your old room."
“Very good. I shall go to bed at once. Bring me
a glass of brandy-and-water as hot as you can make
it, and wait for the telegram.”


204
LADY AUNLEY'S SECRET.
The second message was only a very earnest
request to Doctor Mosgrave to pay an immediate visit
to Audley Court on a matter of serious moment.
Having written this message, Mr. Audley felt that
he had done all that he could do. He drank his
brandy-and-water. He had actual need of the diluted
alcohol, for he had been chilled to the bone by his
adventures during the fire. He slowly sipped the pale
golden liquid and thought of Clara Talboys, of that
earnest girl whose brother's memory was now avenged,
whose brother's destroyer was humiliated in the dust. Had
she heard of the fire at the Castle Inn! How could she
have done otherwise than hear of it in such a place as
Mount Stanning? But had she heard that he had been in
danger, and that he had distinguished himself by the
rescue of a drunken boor? I fear that, even sitting by
that desolate hearth, and beneath the roof, whose noble
owner was an exile from his own house, Robert Audley
was weak enough to think of these things — weak
enough to let his fancy wander away to the dismal
fir-trees under the cold February sky, and the dark-
brown eyes that were so like the eyes of his lost friend.


DR. MOSGRAVE'S ADVICE. -
205
CHAPTER XI.
Dr. Mosgrave's Advice.
My lady slept. Through that long winter night
she slept soundly. Criminals have often so slept their
last sleep upon earth; and have been found in the grey
morning slumbering peacefully by the gaoler who came
to wake them.
The game had been played and lost. I do not
think that my lady had thrown away a card, or missed
the making of a trick which she might by any pos-
sibility have made: but her opponent's hand had been
too powerful for her, and he had won.
She was more at peace now than she had ever been
since that day — so soon after her second marriage -
on which she had seen the announcement of the return
of George Talboys from the gold-fields of Australia.
She might rest now, for they now knew the worst of
her. There were no new discoveries to be made. She
had flung the horrible burden of an almost unendurable
secret off her shoulders, and her selfish sensuous nature
resumed its mastery of her. She slept, peacefully nes-
tled in her downy bed, under the soft mountain of
silken coverlet, and in the sombre shade of the green
velvet curtains. She had ordered her maid to sleep on
a low couch in the same room, and she had also
ordered that a lamp should be kept burning all night.


206
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
Not that I think she had any fear of shadowy
visitations in the still hours of the night. She was too
thoroughly selfish to care very much for anything that
could not hurt her; and she had never heard of a ghost
doing any actual and palpable harm. She had feared
Robert Audley, but she feared him no longer. He had
done his worst; she knew that he could do no more
without bringing everlasting disgrace upon the name
he venerated.
“They'll put me away somewhere, I suppose,”
my lady thought, “that is the worst they can do
for me.”
She looked upon herself as a species of state pri-
soner, who would have to be taken good care of. A
second Iron Mask who must be provided for in some
comfortable place of confinement. She abandoned her-
self to a dull indifference. She had lived a hundred
lives within the space of the last few days of her ex-
istence, and she had worn out her capacity for suffer--
ing; for a time at least.
She took a cup of strong green tea, and a few
delicate fragments of toast the next morning with the
same air of quiet relish common to condemned crea-
tures who eat their last meal, while the gaolers look
on to see that they do not bite fragments off the
crockery, or swallow the tea-spoon, or do any other
violent act tending to the evasion of Mr. Jack Ketch.
She ate her breakfast, and took her morning bath, and
emerged, with perfumed hair, and in the most ex-
quisitely careless of morning toilets, from her luxurious


DR. MOSGRAVE'S ADVICE.
207
dressing-room. She looked round at all the costly ap-
pointments of the room with a yearning lingering gaze
before she turned to leave it; but there was not one
tender recollection in her mind of the man who had
caused the furnishing of the chamber, and who in every
precious toy that was scattered about in the reckless
profusion of magnificence, had laid before her a mute
evidence of his love. My lady was thinking how much
the things had cost, and how painfully probable it was
that the luxurious apartment would soon pass out of
her possession.
She looked at herself in the cheval-glass before she
left the room. A long night's rest had brought back
the delicate rose-tints of her complexion, and the
natural lustre of her blue eyes. That unnatural light
which had burned so fearfully the day before had gone,
and my lady smiled triumphantly as she contemplated
the reflection of her beauty. The days were gone in
which her enemies could have branded her with white-
hot irons, and burned away the loveliness which had
done such mischief. Whatever they did to her, they
must leave her her beauty, she thought. At the worst
they were powerless to rob her of that.
The March day was bright and sunny, with a
cheerless sunshine certainly. My lady wrapped her-
self in an Indian shawl; a shawl that had cost Sir
Michael a hundred guineas. I think she had an idea
that it would be well to wear this costly garment; so
that if hustled suddenly away, she might carry at least
one of her possessions with her. Remember how much


208
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
she had perilled for a fine house and gorgeous furni-
ture, for carriages and horses, jewels and laces; and
do not wonder if she clung with a desperate tenacity
to gauds and gew-gaws in the hour of her despair. If
she had been Judas she would have held to her thirty
pieces of silver to the last moment of her shameful
life.
Mr. Robert Audley breakfasted in the library. He
sat long over his solitary cup of tea, smoking his meer-
schaum pipe, and meditating darkly upon the task that
lay before him.
"I will appeal to the experience of this Dr. Mos-
grave," he thought, "physicians and lawyers are the
confessors of this prosaic nineteenth century. Surely
he will be able to help me."
The first fast train from London arrived at Audley
at half-past ten o'clock, and at five minutes before
eleven, Richards, the grave servant, announced Dr.
Alwyn Mosgrave.
The physician from Saville Row was a tall man,
of about fifty years of age. He was thin and sallow,
with lantern jaws, and eyes of a pale feeble grey, that
seemed as if they had once been blue, and had faded
by the progress of time to their present neutral shade.
However powerful the science of medicine as wielded
by Dr. Alwyn Mosgrave, it had not been strong enough
to put flesh upon his bones, or brightness into his face.
He had a strangely expressionless, and yet strangely
attentive countenance. He had the face of a man who
had spent the greater part of his life in listening to


DR. MOSGRAVE'S ADVICE.
209
other people, and who had parted with his own indi-
viduality, and his own passions at the very outset of
his career.
He bowed to Robert Audley, took the opposite
seat indicated by him, and addressed his attentive face
to the young barrister. Rober saw that the physician's
glance for a moment lost its quiet look of attention,
and became earnest and searching
"He is wondering whether I am the patient,"
thought Mr. Audley, “and is looking for the diagnoses
of madness in my face.”
Dr. Mosgrave spoke as if in answer to this
thought.
"It is not about your own — health — that you
wish to consult me?” he said interrogatively,
“Oh, no!"
Dr. Mosgrave looked at his watch, a fifty guinea
Benson-made chronometer, which he carried loose in
his waistcoat pocket as carelessly as if it had been a
potato.
"I need not remind you that my time is precious,"
he said, “your telegram informed me that my services
were required in a case of — danger - as I apprehend,
or I should not be here this morning."
Robert Audley had sat looking gloomily at the
fire, wondering how he should begin the conversation,
and had needed this reminder of the physician's pre-
sence.
“You are very good, Dr. Mosgrave," he said,
rousing himself by an effort, "and I thank you very
- Lady Audley's Secret. II.


210
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
much for having responded to my summons. I am
about to appeal to you upon a subject which is more
painful to me than words can describe. I am about
to implore your advice in a most difficult case, and I
trust, almost blindly, to your experience to rescue me,
and others who are very dear to me, from à cruel and
complicated position.”
The business-like attention in Dr. Mosgrave's face
grew into a look of interest as he listened to Robert
Audley.
“The revelation made by the patient to the phy-
sician is I believe as sacred as the confession of a
penitent to his priest?” Robert asked gravely. .
“Quite as sacred.”
“A solemn confidence, to be violated under no cir-
cumstances?”
“Most certainly."
Robert Audley looked at the fire again. How much
should he tell, or how little, of the dark history of his
uncle's second wife.
“I have been given to understand, Dr. Mosgrave,
that you have devoted much of your attention to the
treatment of insanity.”
“Yes, my practice is almost confined to the treat-
ment of mental diseases."
: "Such being the case, I think I may venture to
conclude that you sometimes receive strange, and even
terrible revelations."
Dr. Mosgrave bowed.
He looked like a man who could have carried,


DR. MOSGRAVE'S ADVICE.
211
safely locked in his passionless breast, the secrets of a
nation, and who would have suffered no inconvenience
from the weight of such a burden.
“The story which I am about to tell you is not
my own story,” said Robert, after a pause, "you will
forgive me therefore if I once more remind you that I
can only reveal it upon the understanding that under
no circumstances, or upon no apparent justification, is
that confidence to be betrayed.”
Dr. Mosgrave bowed again. A little sternly per-
haps this time.
"I am all attention, Mr. Audley,” he said, coldly.
Robert Audley drew his chair nearer to that of the
physician, and in a low voice began the story which
my lady had told upon her knees in the same chamber
upon the previous night. Dr. Mosgrave's listening face,
turned always towards the speaker, betrayed no sur-
prise at that strange revelation. He smiled once, a
grave quiet smile, when Mr. Audley came to that part
of the story which told of the conspiracy at Ventnor,
but he was not surprised. Robert Audley ended his
story at the point at which Sir Michael Audley had
interrupted my lady's confession. He told nothing of
the disappearance of George Talboys, nor of the
horrible suspicions that had grown out of that dis-
appearance. He told nothing of the fire at the Castle
Inn.
Dr. Mosgrave shook his head gravely when Mr.
Audley came to the end of his story.
“You have nothing further to tell me?” he said.
14*


212
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
“No I do not think there is anything more that
need be told,” Robert answered, rather evasively.
“You would wish to prove that this lady is mad,
and therefore irresponsible for her actions, Mr. Audley?”
said the physician.
Robert Audley stared wondering at the mad doctor.
By what process had he so rapidly arrived at the young
man's secret desire.
“Yes, I would rather, if possible, think her mad.
I should be glad to find that excuse for her.”
“And to save the esclandre of a Chancery suit, I
suppose, Mr. Audley,” said Dr. Mosgrave.
Robert shuddered, as he bowed an assent to this
remark. It was something worse than a Chancery suit
that he dreaded, with a horrible fear. It was a trial
for murder that so long had haunted his dreams. How
often he had awoke in an agony of shame from a
vision of a crowded court-house, and his uncle's wife,
in a criminal dock, hemmed in on every side by a sea
of eager faces.
“I fear that I shall not be of any use to you,” the
physician said quietly, “I will see the lady if you
please, but I do not believe that she is mad."
“Why not?”
“Because there is no evidence of madness in
anything that she has done. She ran away from her
home, because her home was not a pleasant one, and
she left it in the hope of finding a better. There is
no madness in that. She committed the crime of
bigamy, because by that crime she obtained fortune


DR. MOSGRAVE'S ADVICE.
213
and position. There is no madness there. When she
found herself in a desperate position, she did not grow
desperate. She employed intelligent means, and she
carried out a conspiracy which required coolness and
deliberation in its execution. There is no madness in
that."
“But the taints of hereditary insanity ".
"May descend to the third generation and appear
in the lady's children, if she have any. Madness is
not necessarily transmitted from mother to daughter.
I should be glad to help you, if I could, Mr. Audley,
but I do not think there is any proof of insanity in
the story you have told me. I do not think any jury
in England would accept the plea of insanity in such
a case as this. The best thing that you can do with
this lady is to send her back to her first husband; if
he will have her.”
Robert started at this sudden mention of his friend.
“Her first husband is dead –” he answered, “at least
he has been missing for some time — and I have
reason to believe that he is dead."
Dr. Mosgrave saw the startled movement, and heard
the embarrassment in Robert Audley's voice as he
spoke of George Talboys.
"The lady's first husband is missing," he said,
with a strange emphasis on the word — "you think
that he is dead.”
He paused for a few moments and looked at the
fire, as Robert had looked before.
“Mr. Audley,” he said presently, "there must be


214
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
no half-confidences between us. You have not told
me all.”
, Robert, looking up suddenly, plainly expressed in
his face the surprise he felt at these words.
“I should be very poorly able to meet the con-
tingencies of my professional experience,” said Dr.
Mosgrave, “if I could not perceive where confidence
ends and reservation begins. You have only told me
half this lady's story, Mr. Audley. You must tell me
more before I can offer you any advice. What has
become of the first husband?”
He asked this question in a decisive tone. As if
he knew it to be the key-stone of an arch.
"I have already told you, Dr. Mosgrave, that I
do not know."
“Yes," answered the physician, “but your face has
told me what you would have withheld from me; it
has told me that you suspect !"
Robert Audley was silent.
"If I am to be of use to you, you must trust me,
Mr. Audley," said the physician. “The first husband
disappeared — how and when? I want to know the
history of his disappearance.”
Robert paused for some time before he replied to
this speech; but by and by, he lifted his head, which
had been bent in an attitude of earnest thought, and
addressed the physician.
“I will trust you, Dr. Mosgrave,” he said, “I will
confide entirely in your honour and goodness. I do
not ask you to do any wrong to society; but I ask


DR. MOSGRAVE'S ADVICE.
215
you to save our stainless name from degradation and
shame, if you can do so conscientiously.”
He told the story of George's disappearance, and
of his own doubts and fears, heaven knows how
reluctantly. .
Dr. Mosgrave listened as quietly as he had listened
before. Robert concluded with an earnest appeal to
the physician's best feelings. He implored him to
spare the generous old man, whose fatal confidence in
a wicked woman had brought such misery upon his
declining years.
It was impossible to draw any conclusion either
favourable or otherwise from Dr. Mosgrave's attentive
face. He rose when Robert had finished speaking, and
looked at his watch once more.
“I can only spare you twenty minutes,” he said,
“I will see the lady if you please. You say her mother
died in a mad-house."
"She did. Will you see Lady Audley alone?".
“Yes, alone if you please.”
Robert rang for my lady's maid, and under convoy
of that smart young damsel the physician found his
way to the octagon ante-chamber, and the fairy boudoir
with which it communicated.
Ten minutes afterwards he returned to the library
in which Robert sat waiting for him.
"I have talked to the lady,” he said quietly, “and
we understand each other very well. There is latent
insanity! Insanity which might never appear; or which
might appear only once or twice in a life-time. It
vou please. maid, and on found hire


216
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
would be dementia in its worst phase perhaps: acute
mania; but its duration would be very brief, and it
would only arise under extreme mental pressure. The
lady is not mad; but she has the hereditary taint in
her blood. She has the cunning of madness, with the
prudence of intelligence. I will tell you what she is,
Mr. Audley. She is dangerous!"
Dr. Mosgrave walked up and down the room once
or twice before he spoke again.
"I will not discuss the probabilities of the suspicion
that distresses you, Mr. Audley,” he said presently,
“but I will tell you this much. I do not advise any
esclandre. This Mr. George Talboys has disappeared,
but you have no evidence of his death. If you could
produce evidence of his death, you could produce no
evidence against this lady, beyond the one fact that
she had a powerful motive for getting rid of him. No
jury in the United Kingdom would condemn her upon
such evidence as that."
Robert Audley interrupted Doctor Mosgrave hastily.
“I assure you, my dear Sir, he said, “that my
greatest fear is the necessity of any exposure — any
disgrace."
“Certainly, Mr. Audley,” answered the physician
coolly, “but you cannot expect me to assist you to
condone one of the worst offences against society. If
I saw adequate reason for believing that a murder had
been committed by this woman, I should refuse to
assist you in smuggling her away out of the reach of
justice, although the honour of a hundred noble families


DR. MOSGRAVE'S ADVICE.
217
might be saved by my doing so. But I do not see
adequate reason for your suspicions; and I will do my
best to help you."
Robert Audley grasped the physician's hands in
both his own.
"I will thank you when I am better able to do so,"
he said, with emotion, “I will thank you in my uncle's
name as well as in my own.”
“I have only five minutes more, and I have a letter
to write,” said Dr. Mosgrave, smiling at the young
man's energy.
He seated himself at a writing table in the window,
dipped his pen in the ink and wrote rapidly for about
seven minutes. He had filled three sides of a sheet of
note paper when he threw down his pen and folded
his letter.
He put this letter into an envelope and delivered it,
unsealed, to Robert Audley.
The address which it bore was —
Monsieur Val,
Villebrumeuse,
Belgium.
Mr. Audley looked rather doubtfully from this
address to the doctor, who was putting on his gloves
as deliberately as if his life had never known a more
solemn purpose than the proper adjustment of them.
“That letter," he said, in answer to Robert Audley's
inquiring look, “is written to my friend Monsieur Val,


218
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
the proprietor and medical superintendent of a very
excellent maison de santé in the town of Villebrumeuse.
We have known each other for many years, and he
will no doubt willingly receive Lady Audley into his
establishment, and charge himself with the full re-
sponsibility of her future life; it will not be a very
eventful one!"
Robert Audley would have spoken, he would have
once more expressed his gratitude for the help which
had been given to him, but Dr. Mosgrave checked him
with an authoritative gesture.
“From the moment in which Lady Audley enters
that house,” he said, “her tife, so far as life is made
up of action and variety, will be finished. Whatever
secrets she may have will be secrets of ever! Whatever
crimes she may have committed she will be able to
commit no more. If you were to dig a grave for her
in the nearest churchyard and bury her alive in it,
you could not more safely shut her from the world
and all worldly associations. But as a physiologist
and as an honest man I believe you could do no
better service to society than by doing this; for physi-
ology is a lie if the woman I saw ten minutes ago is
a woman to be trusted at large. If she could have
sprung at my throat and strangled me with her little
hands, as I sat talking to her just now, she would have
done it."
“She suspected your purpose, then!"
“She knew it. 'You think I am mad like my


DR. MOSGRAVE'S ADVICE.
219
mother, and you have come to question me,' she said.
'You are watching for some sign of the dreadful taint
in my blood. Good day to you, Mr. Audley," the
physician added hurriedly, “my time was up ten
minutes ago, it is as much as I shall do to catch the
train."


220
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
CHAPTER XII.
Buried Alive.
ROBERT AUDLEY sat alone in the library with the
physician's letter upon the table before him, thinking
of the work which was still to be done.
The young barrister had constituted himself the
denouncer of this wretched woman. He had been her
judge; and he was now her gaoler. Not until he had
delivered the letter which lay before him to its proper
address, not until he had given up his charge into the
safe keeping of the foreign mad-house doctor, not until
then would the dreadful burden be removed from him
and his duty done.
He wrote a few lines to my lady, telling her that
he was going to carry her away from Audley Court to
a place from which she was not likely to return, and
requesting her to lose no time in preparing for the
journey. He wished to start that evening, if possible,
he told her.
Miss Susan Martin, the lady’s-maid, thought it a
very hard thing to have to pack her mistress's trunks
in such a hurry, but my lady assisted in the task. It
seemed a pleasant excitement to her, this folding and
refolding of silks and velvets, this gathering together of
jewels and millinery. They were not going to rob her
of her possessions, she thought. They were going to


BURIED ALIVE.
221
send her away to some place of exile; but even exile
was not hopeless, for there was scarcely any spot upon
this wide earth in which her beauty would not con-
stitute a little royalty, and win her liege knights and
willing subjects. She toiled resolutely in directing and
assisting her servant, who scented bankruptcy and ruin
in all this packing up and hurrying away, and was
therefore rather languid and indifferent in the discharge
of her duties; and at six o'clock in the evening she
sent her attendant to tell Mr. Audley that she was
ready to depart as soon as he pleased.
Robert had consulted a volume of Bradshaw, and
had discovered that Villebrumeuse lay out of the track
of all railway traffic, and was only approachable by
diligence from Brussels. The mail for Dover left Lon-
don Bridge at nine o'clock, and could be easily caught
by Robert and his charge, as the seven o'clock up-
train from Audley reached Shoreditch at a quarter
past eight. Travelling by the Dover and Calais route,
they would reach Villebrumeuse by the following after-
noon or evening.
What need have we to follow them- upon that
dismal night journey? My lady lay on one of the
narrow cabin couches, comfortably wrapped in her furs;
she had not forgotten her favourite Russian sables even
in this last hour of shame and misery. Her mercenary
soul hankered greedily after the costly and beautiful
things of which she had been mistress. She had hidden
away fragile tea-cups and covered vases of Sèvres and
Dresden among the folds of her silken dinner dresses.


222
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
She had secreted jewelled and golden drinking cups
amongst her delicate linen. She would have taken the
pictures from the walls, and the Gobelin tapestry from
the chairs, had it been possible for her to do so. She
had taken all she could, and she accompanied Mr.
Audley with a sulky submission, that was the des-
pondent obedience of despair.
Robert Audley paced the deck of the steamer as
the Dover clocks were striking twelve, and the town
glimmered like a luminous crescent across the widening
darkness of the sea. The vessel few swiftly through
the rolling waters towards the friendly Gallic shore,
and Mr. Audley sighed a long sigh of relief as he re-
membered how soon his work would be done. He
thought of the wretched creature lying forlorn and
friendless in the cabin below. But when he pitied her
most, and he could not but sometimes pity her for her
womanhood and her helplessness, his friend's face came
back upon him, bright and hopeful as he had seen it
only on that first day of George's return from the
Antipodes, and with that memory there returned his
horror of the shameful lie that had broken the hus-
band's heart.
“Can I ever forget it?” he thought; “can I ever
forget his blank white face as he sat opposite to me at
the coffee-house, with the Times newspaper in his hand ?
There are some crimes that can never be atoned for,
and this is one of them. If I could bring George
Talboys to life to-morrow, I could never heal that hor-


BURIED ALIVE.
223
rible heart-wound; I could never make him the man
he was before he read that printed lie."
It was late in the afternoon of the next day when
the diligence bumped and rattled over the uneven
paving of the principal street in Villebrumeuse. The
old ecclesiastical town, always dull and dreary, seemed
more than ordinarily dreary under the grey evening
sky. The twinkling lamps, lighted early, and glim-
mering feebly, long distances apart, made the place
seem darker rather than lighter, as glow-worms intensify
the blackness of a hedge by their shining presence.
The remote Belgian city was a forgotten, old world
place, and bore the dreary evidence of decay upon
every façade in the narrow streets, on every dilapidated
roof, and feeble pile of chimneys. It was difficult to
imagine for what reason the opposite rows of houses
had been built so close together as to cause the
lumbering diligence to brush the foot passengers off the
wretched trottoir, unless they took good care to scrape
the shop windows with their garments, for there was
building room enough and to spare upon the broad ex-
panse of flat country that lay behind the old city.
Hypercritical travellers might have wondered why the
narrowest and most uncomfortable streets were the
busiest and most prosperous, while the nobler and
broader thoroughfares were empty and deserted. But
Robert Audley thought of none of these things. He
sat in a corner of the mouldy carriage, watching my
lady in the opposite corner, and wondering what the


BURIED ALIVE.
225
ordinary-sized animal — with wild shrieks and whoops
that had a demoniac sound in the darkness.
Mr. Audley left my lady in a dreary coffee-room in
the care of a drowsy attendant while he drove away to
some distant part of the quiet city. There was official
business to be gone through before Sir Michael's wife
could be quietly put away in the place suggested by
Dr. Mosgrave. Robert had to see all manner of im-
portant personages; and to take numerous oaths; and
to exhibit the English physician's letter; and to go
through much ceremony of signing and countersigning,
before he could take his lost friend's cruel wife to the
home which was to be her last upon earth. Upwards
of two hours elapsed before all this was arranged and
the young man was. free to return to the hotel, where
he found his charge staring absently at a pair of wax
candles, with a cup of untasted coffee standing cold
and stagnant before her.
Robert handed my lady into the hired vehicle, and
took his seat opposite to her once more.
“Where are you going to take me?" she asked, at
last. “I am tired of being treated like some naughty
child, who is put into a dark cellar as a punishment
for its offences. Where are you taking me?”
“To a place in which you will have ample leisure
to repent the past, Mrs. Talboys," Robert answered,
gravely.
They had left the paved streets behind them, and
had emerged out of a great gaunt square, in which
there appeared to be about half a dozen cathedrals,
Lady Audley's Secret. II.
15


226
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
into a smooth boulevard, a broad lamp-lit road, on
which the shadows of the leafless branches went and
came tremblingly, like the shadows of paralytic skele-
tons. There were houses here and there upon this
boulevard; stately houses, entre cour et jardin, and with
plaster vases of geraniums on the stone pillars of the
ponderous gateways. The rumbling hackney-carriage
drove upwards of three-quarters of a mile along this
smooth roadway before it drew up against a gateway,
older and more ponderous than any of those they had
passed.
My lady gave a little scream as she looked out
of the coach window. The gaunt gateway was lighted
by an enormous lamp; a great structure of iron and
glass, in which one poor little shivering flame strug-
gled with the March wind.
The coachman rang the bell, and a little wooden
door at the side of the gate was opened by a grey-
haired man, who looked out at the carriage, and then
retired. He reappeared three minutes afterwards be-
hind the folding iron gates which he unlocked and
threw back to their full extent, revealing a dreary des-
ert of stone-paved courtyard.
The coachman led his wretched horses into this
courtyard, and piloted the vehicle to the principal door-
way of the house, a great mansion of grey stone, with
several long ranges of windows, many of which were
dimly lighted, and looked out like the pale eyes of
weary watchers upon the darkness of the night.
My lady, watchful and quiet as the cold stars in


BURIED ALIVE.
227
the wintry sky, looked up at these casements with an
earnest and scrutinising gaze. One of the windows
was shrouded by a scanty curtain of faded red; and
upon this curtain there went and came a dark shadow,
the shadow of a woman with a fantastic head-dress,
the shadow of a restless creature, who paced perpetu-
ally backwards and forwards before the window.
Sir Michael Audley's wicked wife laid her hand
suddenly upon Robert's arm, and pointed with the other
hand to this curtained window.
“I know where you have brought me," she said.
“This is a Mad-HOUSE."
Mr. Audley did not answer her. He had been
standing at the door of the coach when she addressed
him, and he quietly assisted her to alight, and led her
up a couple of shallow stone-steps, and into the en-
trance-hall of the mansion. He handed Doctor Mos-
grave's letter to a neatly-dressed, cheerful-looking,
middle-aged woman, who came tripping out of a little
chamber which opened out of the hall, and was very
much like the bureau of an hotel. This person smil-
ingly welcomed Robert and his charge; and after dis-
patching a servant with the letter, invited them into
her pleasant little apartment, which was gaily furnished
with bright amber curtains and heated by a tiny stove.
“Madame finds herself very much fatigued,” the
Frenchwoman said, interrogatively, with a look of in-
tense sympathy, as she placed an arm-chair for my
lady.
“Madame" shrugged her shoulders wearily, and
15*


228
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
me should call imings better in repeated."
looked round the little chamber with a sharp glance of
scrutiny that betokened no very great favour.
“What is this place, Robert Audley?" she cried
fiercely. “Do you think I am a baby, that you may
juggle with and deceive me — what is it? It is
what I said just now, is it not?”
“It is a maison de santé, my lady,” the young man
answered gravely. “I have no wish to juggle with or
to deceive you."
My lady paused for a few moments, looking reflect-
ively at Robert.
"A maison de santé," she repeated. “Yes, they
manage these things better in France. In England
we should call it a mad-house. This is a house for
mad people, this, is it not, Madame?” she said, in
French, turning upon the woman, and tapping the
polished floor with her foot.
"Ah, but no, Madame,” the woman answered, with
a shrill scream of protest. “It is an establishment of
the most agreeable, where one amuses oneself—"
She was interrupted by the entrance of the princi-
pal of this agreeable establishment, who came beaming
into the room with a radiant smile illuminating his
countenance, and with Dr. Mosgrave's letter open in
his hand.
It was impossible for him to say how enchanted he
was to make the acquaintance of M'sieu. There was
nothing upon earth which he was not ready to do for
M'sieu in his own person, and nothing under heaven
which he would not strive to accomplish for him, as


230
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
a stately suite of apartments, which included a lobby,
paved with alternate diamonds of black and white
marble, but of a dismal and cellarlike darkness; a
saloon furnished with gloomy velvet draperies, and
with a certain funeral splendour which is not peculiarly
conducive to the elevation of the spirits; and a bed-
chamber, containing a bed so wondrously made, as to
appear to have no opening whatever in its coverings,
unless the counterpane had been split asunder with a
penknife.
My lady stared dismally round at the range of
rooms, which looked dreary enough in the wan light
of a single wax candle. This solitary flame, pale and
ghostlike in itself, was multiplied by paler phantoms
of its ghostliness, which glimmered everywhere about
the rooms; in the shadowy depths of the polished
floors and wainscot, or the window panes, in the
looking-glasses, or in those great expanses of glimmer-
ing something which adorned the rooms, and which
my lady mistook for costly mirrors, but which were in
reality wretched mockeries of burnished tin.
Amid all the faded splendour of shabby velvet,
and tarnished gilding, and polished wood, the woman
dropped into an arm-chair, and covered her face with
her hands. The whiteness of them, and the starry
light of diamonds trembling about them glittered in
the dimly-lighted chamber. She sat silent, motionless,
despairing, sullen, and angry, while Robert and the
French doctor retired into an outer chamber, and
talked together in undertones. Mr. Audley had very


BURIED ALIVE.
231
little to say that had not been already said for him,
with a far better grace than he himself could have
expressed it, by the English physician. He had, after
great trouble of mind, hit upon the name of Taylor,
as a safe and simple substitute for that other name to
which alone my lady had a right. He told the French-
man that this Mrs. Taylor was distantly related to
him — that she had inherited the seeds of madness
from her mother, as indeed Dr. Mosgrave had informed
Monsieur Val, and that she had shown some fearful
tokens of the lurking taint that was latent in her
mind; but that she was not to be called “mad." He
begged that she might be treated with all tenderness
and compassion; that she might receive all reasonable
indulgences; but he impressed upon Monsieur Val, that
under no circumstances was she to be permitted to
leave the house and grounds without the protection of
some reliable person, who should be answerable for her
safe keeping. He had only one other point to urge,
and that was that Monsieur Val, who, as he had
understood, was himself a Protestant – the doctor
bowed – would make arrangements with some kind
and benevolent Protestant clergyman, through whom
spiritual advice and consolation might be secured for
the invalid lady; who had especial need, Robert added,
gravely, of such advantages.
This — with all necessary arrangements as to
pecuniary matters, which were to be settled from time
to time between Mr. Audley and the doctor, unassisted
by any agents whatever – was the extent of the con-


232
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
versation between the two men, and occupied about a
quarter of an hour. My lady sat in the same attitude
when they re-entered the bedchamber in which they
had left her, with her ringed hands still clasped over
her face.
Robert bent over her to whisper in her ear.
“Your name is Madame Taylor here," he said.
“I do not think you would wish to be known by your
real name."
She only shook her head in answer to him, and
did not even remove her hands from over her face."
***Madame will have an attendant entirely devoted
to her service,” said Monsieur Val. “Madame will
have all her wishes obeyed; her reasonable wishes, but
that goes without saying,” Monsieur adds, with a
quaint shrug. “Every effort will be made to render
Madame's sojourn at Villebrumeuse agreeable, and as
much profitable as agreeable. The inmates dine to-
gether when it is wished. I dine with the inmates,
sometimes; my subordinate, a clever and a worthy
man, always. I reside with my wife and children in
a little pavilion in the grounds; my subordinate resides
in the establishment. Madame may rely upon our
utmost efforts being exerted to ensure her comfort."
Monsieur is saying a great deal more to the same
effect, rubbing his hands and beaming radiantly upon
Robert and his charge, when Madame rises suddenly,
erect and furious, and dropping her jewelled fingers
from before her face, tells him to hold his tongue.
effektert and his charanà dropping hold his


BURIED ALIVE.
233
“Leave me alone with the man who has brought me
here,” she cried between her set teeth. “Leave me!"
She points to the door with a sharp imperious
gesture; so rapid that the silken drapery about her
arm makes a swooping sound as she lifts her hand.
The sibillant French syllables hiss through her teeth
as she utters them, and seem better fitted to her mood
and to herself than the familiar English she has spoken
hitherto.
The French doctor shrugs his shoulders as he goes
out into the dark lobby, and mutters something about
a “beautiful devil," and a gesture worthy of "the
Mars.” My lady walked with a rapid footstep to the
door between the bedchamber and the saloon; closed
it, and with the handle of the door still in her hand,
turned and looked at Robert Audley.
“You have brought me to my grave, Mr. Audley,”
she cried; "you have used your power basely and
cruelly, and have brought me to a living grave.”
“I have done that which I thought just to others
and merciful to you," Robert answered, quietly; “I
should have been a traitor to society had I suffered
you to remain at liberty after — after the disappear-
ance of George Talboys and the fire at the Castle Inn.
I have brought you to a place in which you will be
kindly treated by people who have no knowledge of
your story — no power to taunt or to reproach you.
You will lead a quiet and peaceful life, my lady, such
a life as many a good and holy woman in this catholic
country freely takes upon herself, and happily endures


234
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
unto the end. The solitude of your existence in this
place will be no greater than that of a king's daughter,
who, flying from the evil of the time, was glad to take
shelter in a house as tranquil as this. Surely it is a
small atonement which I ask you to render for your
sins, a light penance which I call upon you to per-
form. Live here and repent; nobody will assail you,
nobody will torment you. I only say to you, repent!”
“I cannot!” cried my lady, pushing her hair
fiercely from her white forehead, and fixing her dilated
eyes upon Robert Audley, “I cannot! Has my beauty
brought me to this? Have I plotted and schemed to
shield myself, and laid awake in the long deadly
nights trembling to think of my dangers, for this?
I had better have given up at once, since this was to
be the end. I had better have yielded to the curse
that was upon me, and given up when George Talboys
first came back to England.”
She plucked at the feathery golden curls as if she
would have torn them from her head. It had served
her so little after all, that gloriously glittering hair;
that beautiful nimbus of yellow light that had con-
trasted so exquisitely with the melting azure of her
eyes. She hated herself and her beauty.
“I would laugh at you and defy you if I dared,"
she cried; “I would kill myself and defy you if I
dared. But I am a poor, pitiful coward, and have
been so from the first. Afraid of my mother's horrible
inheritance; afraid of poverty; afraid of George Tal-
boys; afraid of you."


BURIED ALIVE.
235
She was silent for a little while, but she still held
her place by the door, as if determined to detain
Robert as long as it was her pleasure to do so.
"Do you know what I am thinking of?” she said
presently. “Do you know what I am thinking of, as
I look at you in the dim light of this room? I am
thinking of the day upon which George Talboys —
disappeared.”
Robert started as she mentioned the name of his
lost friend; his face turned pale in the dusky light,
and his breathing grew quicker and louder.
"He was standing opposite me as you are standing
now," continued my lady. “You said that you would
raze the old house to the ground; that you would root
up every tree in the gardens to find your dead friend.
You would have had no need to do so much; the body
of George Talboys lies at the bottom of the old well,
in the shrubbery beyond the lime-walk.”
Robert Audley flung up his hands and clasped
them above his head, with one loud cry of horror.
“Oh, my God!” he said, after a dreadful pause,
“have all the ghastly things that I have thought pre-
pared me so little for the ghastly truth, that it should
come upon me like this at last?"
“He came to me in the lime-walk," resumed my
lady, in the same hard, dogged tone as that in which
she had confessed the wicked story of her life. "I
knew that he would come, and I had prepared myself,
as well as I could, to meet him. I was determined to
bribe him, to cajole him, to defy him; to do anything


236
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
sooner than abandon the wealth and the position I had
won, and go back to my old life. He came, and he
reproached me for the conspiracy at Ventnor. He de-
clared that so long as he lived he would never forgive
me for the lie that had broken his heart. He told me
that I had plucked his heart out of his breast and
trampled upon it; and that he had now no heart in
which to feel one sentiment of mercy for me. That
he would have forgiven me any wrong upon earth,
but that one deliberate and passionless wrong that I
had done him. He said this and a great deal more,
and he told me that no power on earth should turn
him from his purpose, which was to take me to the
man I had deceived, and make me tell my wicked
story. He did not know the hidden taint that I had
sucked in with my mother's milk. He did not know
that it was possible to drive me mad. He goaded me
as you have goaded me; he was as merciless as you
have been merciless. We were in the shrubbery at
the end of the lime-walk. I was seated upon the
broken masonry at the mouth of the well. George
Talboys was leaning upon the disused windlass, in
which the rusty iron splindle rattled loosely whenever
he shifted his position. I rose at last, and turned
upon him to defy him, as I had determined to defy
him at the worst. I told him that if he denounced me
to Sir Michael, I would declare him to be a madman
or a liar, and I defied him to convince the man who
loved me — blindly as I told him — that he had any
claim to me. I was going to leave him after having


BURIED ALIVE.
237
told him this, when he caught me by the wrist and
detained me by force. You saw the bruises that his
fingers made upon my wrist and noticed them, and
did not believe the account I gave of them. I could
see that, Mr. Robert Audley, and I saw that you were
a person I should have to fear.”
She paused, as if she had expected Robert to
speak; but he stood silent and motionless waiting for
the end.
“George Talboys treated me as you treated me,”
she said presently. “He swore that if there was but
one witness of my identity, and that witness was re-
moved from Audley Court by the width of the whole
earth, he would bring him there to swear to my iden-
tity, and to denounce me. It was then that I was
mad. It was then that I drew the loose iron spindle
from the shrunken wood, and saw my first husband
sink with one horrible cry into the black mouth of the
well. There is a legend of its enormous depth. I do
not know how deep it is. It is dry, I suppose; for I
heard no splash; only a dull thud. I looked down
and I saw nothing but black emptiness. I knelt down
and listened, but the cry was not repeated, though I
waited for nearly a quarter of an hour — God knows
how long it seemed to me — by the mouth of the
well.”
Robert Audley uttered no word of horror when
the story was finished. He moved a little nearer
towards the door against which Helen Talboys stood.
Had there been any other means of exit from the


238
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
room, he would gladly have availed himself of it. He
shrank from even a momentary contact with this crea-
ture.
“Let me pass you, if you please,” he said, in an
icy voice.
“You see I do not fear to make my confession to
you,” said Helen Talboys, "for two reasons. The first
is that you dare not use it against me, because you
know it would kill your uncle to see me in a criminal
dock; the second is, that the law could pronounce no
worse sentence than this, a life-long imprisonment in a
mad-house. You see I do not thank you for your
mercy, Mr. Robert Audley, for I know exactly what it
is worth.”
She moved away from the door, and Robert passed
her, without a word, without a look.
Half an hour afterwards he was in one of the
principal hotels at Villebrumeuse, sitting at a neatly-
ordered supper-table, with no power to eat; with no
power to distract his mind, even for a moment, from
the image of that lost friend who had been treacher-
ously murdered in the thicket at Audley Court.


GHOST-NIAUNTED.
239
CHAPTER XIII.
Ghost-IIaunted.
No feverish sleeper travelling in a strange dream
ever looked out more wonderingly upon a world that
seemed unreal than Robert Audley, as he stared ab-
sently at the flat swamps and dismal poplars between
Villebrumeuse and Brussels. Could it be that he was
returning to his uncle's house without the woman who
had reigned in it for nearly two years as queen and
mistress? He felt as if he had carried off my lady,
and had made away with her secretly and darkly, and
must now render up an account to Sir Michael of
the fate of that woman, whom the baronet had so
dearly loved.
“What shall I tell him," he thought; "shall I tell
the truth — the horrible ghastly truth? No; that would
be too cruel. His generous spirit would sink under
the hideous revelation. Yet, in his ignorance of the
extent of this wretched woman's wickedness, he may
think perhaps that I have been hard with her.”
Brooding thus, Mr. Robert Audley absently watched
the cheerless landscape from his seat in the shabby
coupé of the diligence, and thought how great a leaf
had been torn out of his life, now that the dark story
of George Talboys was finished.
What had he to do next? A crowd of horrible


240
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
thoughts rushed into his mind as he remembered the
story that he had heard from the white lips of Helen
Talboys. His friend — his murdered friend - lay
hidden amongst the mouldering ruins of the old well at
Audley Court. He had lain there for six long months,
unburied, unknown; hidden in the darkness of the old
convent well. What was to be done ?
To institute a search for the remains of the murdered
man was to inevitably bring about a coroner's inquest.
Should such an inquest be held, it was next to im-
possible that the history of my lady's crime could fail
to be brought to light. To prove that George Talboys
met with his death at Audley Court was to prove al-
most as surely that my lady had been the instrument
of that mysterious death; for the young man had been
known to follow her into the lime-walk upon the day
of his disappearance.
“My God!” Robert exclaimed, as the full horror of
this position became evident to him, "is my friend to
rest in his unhallowed burial-place because I have
condoned the offences of the woman who murdered
him?"
He felt that there was no way out of this difficulty.
Sometimes he thought that it little mattered to his
dead friend whether he lay entombed beneath a marble
monument, whose workmanship should be the wonder
of the universe, or in that obscure hiding-place in the
thicket at Audley Court. At another time he would
be seized with a sudden horror at the wrong that had
been done to the murdered man, and would fain have


GHOST-HAUNTED.
241
;
travelled even more rapidly than the express between
Brussels and Paris could carry him, in his eagerness
to reach the end of his journey, that he might set right
this cruel wrong.
He was in London at dusk on the second day after
that on which he had left Audley Court, and he drove
straight to the Clarendon, to inquire after his uncle.
He had no intention of seeing Sir Michael, as he had
not yet determined how much or how little he should
tell him, but he was very anxious to ascertain how the
old man had sustained the cruel shock he had so lately
endured.
“I will see Alicia,” he thought; "she will tell me
all about her father. It is only two days since he left
Audley. I can scarcely expect to hear of any favour-
able change.”
But Mr. Audley was not destined to see his 'cousin
that evening, for the servants at the Clarendon told
him that Sir Michael and his daughter had left by the
morning mail for Paris, on their way to Vienna.
Robert was very well pleased to receive this in-
telligence; it afforded him a welcome respite, for it
would be decidedly better to tell the baronet nothing
of his guilty wife until he returned to England, with
his health unimpaired, and his spirits re-established, it
was to be hoped.
Mr. Audley drove to the Temple. The chambers
which had seemed dreary to him ever since the disap-
pearance of George Talboys were doubly so to-night.
For that which had been only a dark suspicion had
Lady Audley's Secret. II.


242
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
now become a horrible certainty. There was no longer
room for the palest ray, the most transitory glimmer
of hope. His worst terrors had been too well founded.
George Talboys had been cruelly and treacherously
murdered by the wife he had loved and mourned.
There were three letters waiting for Mr. Audley at
his chambers. One was from Sir Michael, and another
from Alicia. The third was addressed in a hand the
young barrister knew only too well, though he had
seen it but once before. His face flushed redly at the
sight of the superscription, and he took the letter in
his hand, carefully and tenderly, as if it had been a
living thing, and sentient to his touch. He turned it
over and over in his hands, looking at the crest upon
the envelope, at the post-mark, at the colour of the
paper, and then put it into the bosom of his waistcoat
with a strange smile upon his face.
“What a wretched and unconscionable fool I am,"
he thought. "Have I laughed at the follies of weak
men all my life, and am I to be more foolish than the
weakest of them at last? The beautiful brown-eyed
creature! Why did I ever see her? Why did my re-
lentless Nemesis ever point the way to that dreary
house in Dorsetshire?”
He opened the two first letters. He was foolish
enough to keep the last for a delicious morsel — à
fairy-like dessert after the commonplace substantialities
of a dinner.
Alicia's letter told him that Sir Michael had borne
his agony with such a persevering tranquillity that she


GHOST-HAUNTED.
243
stormy metly called old in any and to
had become at last far more alarmed by his patient
calmness than by any stormy manifestation of despair.
In this difficulty she had secretly called upon the phy-
sician who attended the Audley household in any cases
of serious illness, and had requested this gentleman to
pay Sir Michael an apparently accidental visit. He
had done so, and after stopping half an hour with the
baronet, had told Alicia that there was no present
danger of any serious consequence from this quiet
grief, but that it was necessary that every effort should
be made to arouse Sir Michael, and to force him, how-
ever unwillingly, into action.
Alicia had immediately acted upon this advice, had
resumed her old empire as a spoiled child, and reminded
her father of a promise he had made of taking her
through Germany. With considerable difficulty she
had induced him to consent to fulfilling this old prom-
ise, and having once gained her point, she had con-
trived that they should leave England as soon as it
was possible to do so, and she told Robert, in conclu-
sion, that she would not bring her father back to his
old house until she had taught him to forget the
sorrows associated with it.
The Baronet's letter was very brief. It contained
half a dozen blank cheques on Sir Michael Audley's
London bankers.
“You will require money, my dear Robert,” he
wrote, “for such arrangements as you may think fit to
make for the future comfort of the person I committed
to your care. I need scarcely tell you that those
16*


244
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
arrangements cannot be too liberal. But perhaps it is
as well that I should tell you now, for the first and
only time, that it is my earnest wish never again to
hear that person's name. I have no wish to be told
the nature of the arrangements you may make for her.
I am sure that you will act conscientiously and merci-
fully. I seek to know no more. Whenever you want
money, you will draw upon me for any sums that you
may require; but you will have no occasion to tell me
for whose use you want that money."
Robert Audley breathed a long sigh of relief as he
folded this letter. It released him from a duty which
it would have been most painful for him to perform,
and it for ever decided his course of action with regard
to the murdered man.
George Talboys must lie at peace in his unknown
grave, and Sir Michael Audley must never learn that
the woman he had loved bore the red brand of murder
on her soul.
Robert had only the third letter to open — the
letter which he had placed in his bosom while he read
the others; he tore open the envelope, handling it care-
fully and tenderly as he had done before.
The letter was as brief as Sir Michael's. It con-
tained only these few lines: —
"Dear Mr. Audley, —
“The rector of this place has been twice to see
Marks, the man you saved in the fire at the Castle Inn.
He lies in a very precarious state at his mother's


GHOST-HAUNTED.
245
cottage, near Audley Court, and is not expected to live
many days. His wife is attending him, and both he
and she have expressed a most earnest desire that you
should see him before he dies. Pray come without
delay.
“Yours very sincerely,
“CLARA TALBOYS.
"Mount Stanning Rectory, March 6."
Robert Audley folded this letter very reverently, -
and replaced it underneath that part of his waistcoat
which might be supposed to cover the region of his
heart. Having done this, he seated himself in his
favourite arm-chair, filled and lighted a pipe, and
smoked it out, staring reflectively at the fire as long as
his tobacco lasted. The lazy light that glimmered in
his handsome grey eyes told of a dreamy reverie that
could have scarcely been either gloomy or unpleasant.
His thoughts wandered away upon the blue clouds of
hazy tobacco smoke, and carried him into a bright
region of unrealities, in which there was neither death
nor trouble, grief nor shame; only himself and Clara
Talboys in a world that was made all their own by
the great omnipotence of their loves.
It was not till the last shred of pale Turkish
tobacco had been consumed, and the grey ashes
knocked out upon the topmost bar of the grate, that
this pleasant dream floated off into the great storehouse
in which the visions of things that never have been
and never are to be, are kept locked and guarded by


246
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
some stern enchanter, who only turns the keys now
and then and opens the door of his treasure-house a
little way for the brief delight of mankind. But the
dream fled, and the heavy burden of dismal realities
fell again upon Robert's shoulders, more tenacious than
any old man of the sea. “What can that man Marks
want with me?" thought the barrister. “He is afraid
to die until he has made a confession, perhaps. He
wishes to tell me that which I know already, — the
story of my lady's crime. I knew that he was in the
secret. I was sure of it even upon the night on which
I first saw him. He knew the secret, and he traded
on it.”
Robert Audley shrank strangely from returning to
Essex. How should he meet Clara Talboys now that
he knew the secret of her brother's fate. How many
lies he should have to tell, or how much equivocation
he must use in order to keep the truth from her. Yet
would there be any mercy in telling her that horrible
story, the knowledge of which must cast a blight upon
her youth, and blot out every hope she had ever
secretly cherished. He knew by his own experience
how possible it was to hope against hope, and to hope
unconsciously; and he could not bear that her heart
should be crushed as his had been by the knowledge
of the truth. “Better that she should hope vainly to
the last," he thought; “better that she should go
through life seeking the clue to her lost brother's fate,
than that I should give that clue into her hands and
say, 'Our worst fears are realised. The brother you


GHOST-HAUNTED.
247
loved has been foully murdered in the early promise
of his youth.""
But Clara Talboys had written to him imploring
bim to return to Essex without delay. Could he refuse
to do her bidding, however painful its accomplishment
might be. And again, the man was dying, perhaps,
and had implored to see him. Would it not be cruel
to refuse to go, to delay an hour unnecessarily? He
looked at his watch. It wanted only five minutes to
nine. There was no train to Audley after the Ipswich
mail, which left London at half-past eight; but there
was a train that left Shoreditch at eleven, and stopped
at Brentwood between twelve and one. Robert decided
upon going by this train, and walking the distance
between Brentwood and Audley, which was upwards
of six miles.
He had a long time to wait before it would be
necessary to leave the Temple on his way to Shoreditch,
and he sat brooding darkly over the fire and wondering
at the strange events which had filled his life within
the last year and a half, coming like angry shadows
between his lazy inclinations and himself, and investing
him with purposes that were not his own.
"Good heavens!” he thought, as he smoked his
second pipe, "how can I believe that it was I who
used to lounge all day in this easy chair reading Paul
de Kock, and smoking mild Turkish, who used to drop
in at half-price to stand amongst the press men at the
back of the boxes, and see a new burlesque, and finish
the evening with the "Chough and Crow," and chops


248
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
and pale ale at Evans's. Was it I to whom life was
such an easy merry-go-round? Was it I who was
one of the boys who sit at ease upon the wooden horses,
while other boys run barefoot in the mud, and work
their hardest in the hope of a ride when their work is
done? Heaven knows I have learnt the business of
life since then; and now I must needs fall in love and
swell the tragic chorus which is always being sung by
the poor addition of my pitiful sighs and groans.
Clara Talboys! Clara Talboys! Is there any merciful
smile latent beneath the earnest light of your brown
eyes. What would you say to me if I told you that I
love you as earnestly and truly as I have mourned for
your brother's fate — that the new strength and pur-
pose of my life which has grown out of my friendship
for the murdered man grows even stronger as it turns
to you, and changes me until I wonder at myself.
What would she say to me? Ah! Heaven knows. If
she happened to like the colour of my hair, or the tone
of my voice, she might listen to me, perhaps. But
would she hear me any more because I love her truly
and purely; because I would be constant, and honest,
and faithful to her? Not she! These things might
move her, perhaps, to be a little pitiful to me; but they
would move her no more! If a girl with freckles and
white eyelashes adored me, I should only think her a
nuisance; but if Clara Talboys had a fancy to trample
upon my uncouth person I should think she did me a
favour. I hope poor little Alicia may pick up with
some fair-haired Saxon in the course of her travels. I


GHOST-HAUNTED.
249
ced away anything dead
hope —” His thoughts wandered away wearily, and
lost themselves. How could he hope for anything, or
think of anything, while the memory of his dead
friend's unburied body haunted him like a horrible
spectre? He remembered a story — a morbid, hideous,
yet delicious story, which had once pleasantly con-
gealed his blood on a social winter's evening -- the
story of a man, a monomaniac, perhaps, who had been
haunted at every turn by the image of an unburied
kinsman who could not rest in his unhallowed hiding-
place. What if that dreadful story had its double in
reality? What if he were henceforth to be haunted by
the phantom of murdered George Talboys?
He pushed his hair away from his face with both
his hands, and looked rather nervously around the snug
little apartment. There were lurking shadows in the
corners of the room that he scarcely liked. The door
opening into his little dressing-room was ajar; he got
up to shut it, and turned the key in the lock with a
sharp click.
"I haven't read Alexandre Dumas and Wilkie
Collins for nothing,” he muttered. “I'm up to their
tricks, sneaking in at doors behind a fellow's back,
and flattening their white faces against window panes,
and making themselves all eyes in the twilight. It's
a strange thing that your generous-hearted fellow,
who never did a shabby thing in his life, is capable of
any meanness the moment he becomes a ghost. I'll
have the gas laid on to-morrow, and engage Mrs.
Malony's eldest son to sleep under the letter-box in the


GHOST-HAUNTED.
251
officer, stained with vile associations, and unfit company
for honest gentlemen. He had drawn himself away
from all familiar haunts, and had shut himself in his
lonely rooms with the perpetual trouble of his mind for
his sole companion, until he had grown as nervous as
habitual solitude will eventually make the strongest
and the wisest man, however he may vaunt himself of
his strength and wisdom.
The clock of the Temple Church and the clocks
of St. Dunstan's, St. Clement's Danes, and a crowd of
other churches, whose steeples uprear themselves above
the house-tops by the river, struck ten at last, and Mr.
Audley, who had put on his hat and overcoat nearly
half an hour before, let himself out of the little lobby,
and locked his door behind him. He mentally re-
iterated his determination to engage "Parthrick," as
Mrs. Malony's eldest son was called by his devoted
mother. The youth should enter upon his functions
the very next night after, and if the ghost of hapless
George Talboys should invade these gloomy apart-
ments, the phantom must make its way across Patrick's
body before it could reach the inner chamber in which
the proprietor of the premises slept.
Do not laugh at poor Robert because he grew hypo-
chondriacal, after hearing the horrible story of his
friend's death. There is nothing so delicate, so fragile,
as that invisible balance upon which the mind is always
trembling. Mad to-day and sane to-morrow.
Who can forget that almost terrible picture of Dr.
Samuel Johnson? The awful disputant of the club-


252
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
room, solemn, ponderous, severe, and merciless, the
admiration and the terror of humble Bozzy, the stern
monitor of gentle Oliver, the friend of Garrick and
Reynolds to-night: and before sunset to-morrow a weak
miserable old man, discovered by good Mr. and Mrs.
Thrale, kneeling upon the floor of his lonely chamber,
in an agony of childish terror and confusion, and
praying to a merciful God for the preservation of his
wits. I think the memory of that dreadful afternoon,
and of the tender care he then received, should have
taught the doctor to keep his hand steady at Streatham,
when he took his bed-room candlestick, from which it
was his habit to shower rivulets of molten wax upon
the costly carpet of his beautiful protectress; and might
have even had a more enduring effect, and taught him
to be merciful, when the brewer's widow went mad in
her turn, and married that dreadful creature, the Italian
singer. Who has not been, or is not to be, mad in
some lonely hour of life? Who is quite safe from the
trembling of the balance ?
Fleet Street was quiet and lonely at this late hour,
and Robert Audley being in a ghost-seeing mood would
have been scarcely astonished had he seen Johnson's
set come roystering westward in the lamp-light, or
blind John Milton groping his way down the steps be-
fore Saint Bride's church.
Mr. Audley hailed a Hansom at the corner of
Farringdon Street, and was rattled rapidly away across
tenantless Smithfield market, and into a labyrinth of


GHOST-HAUNTED.
253
dingy streets that brought him out upon the broad
grandeur of Finsbury Pavement.
“Nobody ever saw a ghost in a Hansom cab,” Ro-
bert thought, "and even Dumas hasn't done that as
yet. Not but that he's capable of doing it if the idea
occurred to him. Un revenant en fiacre. Upon my word,
the title doesn't sound bad. The story would be some-
thing about a dismal gentleman, in black, who took
the vehicle by the hour, and was contumacious upon
the subject of fares, and beguiled the driver into lonely
neighbourhoods, beyond the barriers, and made him-
self otherwise unpleasant.”
The Hansom rattled up the steep and stony ap-
proach to the Shoreditch station, and deposited Robert
at the doors of that unlovely temple. There were very
few people going to travel by this midnight train, and
Robert walked up and down the long wooden platform,
reading the huge advertisements whose gaunt lettering
looked wan and ghastly in the dim lamp-light.
He had the carriage in which he sat all to himself.
All to himself, did I say? Had he not lately sum-
moned to his side that ghostly company which of all
companionship is the most tenacious? The shadow of
George Talboys pursued him, even in the comfortable
first class carriage, and was behind him when he looked
out of the window, and was yet far away ahead of him
and the rushing engine, in that thicket towards which
the train was speeding, by the side of the unhallowed


254
LADY ACDLEY'S SECRET.
hiding place in which the mortal remains of the dead
man lay, neglected and uncared for.
“I must give my lost friend decent burial,” Robert
thought, as a chill wind swept across the flat landscape,
and struck him with such frozen breath as might have
emanated from the lips of the dead. "I must do it;
or I shall die of some panic like this which has seized
upon me to-night. I must do it; at any peril; at any
cost. Even at the price of that revelation which will
bring the mad woman back from her safe hiding-place,
and place her in a criminal dock.” He was glad when
the train stopped at Brentwood at a few minutes after
twelve. Only one other person got out at the little
station, --- a burly grazier, who had been to one of the
theatres to see a tragedy. Country people always go
to see tragedies. None of your flimsy vaudevilles for
them! None of your pretty drawing-room, moderator
lamp and French window pieces, with a confiding hus-
band, a frivolous wife, and a smart lady's maid, who
is always accommodating enough to dust the furniture
and announce visitors; no such gauzy productions; but
a good monumental five act tragedy, in which their
ancestors have seen Garrick and Mrs. Abington, and
in which they themselves can remember the O'Neil, the
beautiful creature whose lovely neck and shoulders be-
came suffused with a crimson glow of shame and in-
dignation, when the actress was Mrs. Beverley, and
insulted by Stukeley in her poverty and sorrow. I think
our modern O'Neils scarcely feel their stage wrongs so


GHOST-HAUNTED.
255
keenly; or, perhaps, those brightly indignant blushes
of to-day struggle ineffectually against the new art of
Madame Rachel, and are lost to the public beneath
the lily purity of priceless enamel.
Robert Audley looked hopelessly about him as he
left the pleasant town of Brentwood, and descended
the lonely hill into the valley which lay between the
town he had left behind him and that other hill, upon
which that frail and dismal tenement - the Castle
Inn – had so long struggled with its enemy, the wind,
only to succumb at last, and to be shrivelled and con-
sumed away like a withered leaf, by the alliance of
that old adversary with a newer and a fiercer foe.
"It's a dreary walk," Mr. Audley said, as he looked
along the smooth high road that lay before him, lonely
as the track across a desert. “It's a dreary walk for a
dismal wretch to take between twelve and one, upon a
cheerless March night, with not so much moonlight in
all the black sky as might serve to convince one of the
existence of such a luminary. But I'm very glad I
came," thought the barrister, “if this poor creature is
dying, and really wishes to see me. I should have
been a wretch had I held back. Besides, she wishes
it; she wishes it; and what can I do but obey her,
Heaven help me!”
He stopped by the wooden fence which surrounded
the gardens of Mount Stanning rectory, and looked
across a laurel hedge towards the lattice windows of
that simple habitation. There was no glimmer of light
in any one of these windows, and Mr. Audley was fain


256
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
to go away, after having had no better satisfaction
than such cold comfort as was to be obtained from a
long lingering contemplation of the house that sheltered
the one woman before whose invincible power the im-
pregnable fortress of his heart had surrendered. Only
a heap of blackened ruins stood upon the spot on which
the Castle Inn had once done battle with the winds of
Heaven. The cold night breezes had their way with
the few fragments that the fire had left, and whirled
them hither and thither as they would, scattering a
shower of dust and cinders and crumbling morsels of
charred wood upon Robert Audley as he passed.
It was half- past 'one 'o'clock when the night wan-
derer entered the village of Audley, and it was only
there that he remembered that Clara Talboys had
omitted to give him any direction by which he might
find the cottage in which Luke Marks lay.
"It was Dawson who recommended that the poor
creature should be taken to his mother's cottage,”
Robert thought, by-and-by, “and I dare say, Dawson
has attended him ever since the fire. He'll be able to
tell me the way to the cottage.”
Acting upon this idea, Mr. Audley stopped at the
house in which Helen Talboys had lived before her
second marriage. The door of the little surgery was
ajar, and there was a light burning within. Robert
pushed the door open and peeped in. The surgeon
was standing at the mahogany counter, mixing a
draught in a glass measure, with his hat close beside


GHOST-HAUNTED.
257
him. Late as it was, he had evidently only just come
in. The harmonious snoring of his assistant sounded
from a little room within the surgery.
“I am sorry to disturb you, Mr. Dawson,” Robert
said, apologetically, as the surgeon looked up and re-
cognised him, “but I have come down to see Marks,
who, I hear, is in a very bad way, and I want you to
tell me the way to his mother's cottage.”
“I'll show you the way, Mr. Audley," answered
the surgeon, “I am going there this minute.”
“The man is very bad then?”
“So bad that he can be no worse. The only change
that can happen is that change which will take him
beyond the reach of any earthly suffering.”
“Strange!" exclaimed Robert. "He did not appear
to be much burnt.”
"He was not much burnt. Had he been, I should
never have recommended his being removed from Mount
Stanning. It is the shock that has done the business.
His health had been long undermined by habits of in-
toxication, and has completely given way under the
sudden terror of that night. He has been in a raging
fever for the last two days; but to-night he is much
calmer, and I'm afraid, before to-morrow night we shall
have seen the last of him.”
"He has asked to see me, I am told," said Mr.
Audley.
“Yes," answered the surgeon, carelessly. “A sick
man's fancy, no doubt. You dragged him out of the
house, and did your best to save his life. I dare say,
Lady Audley's Secret. II.
17


258
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
rough and boorish as the poor fellow is, he thinks a
good deal of that.”
They had left the surgery, the door of which Mr.
Dawson had locked behind him. There was money in
the till, perhaps, for surely the village apothecary could
not have feared that the most daring housebreaker
would imperil his liberty in the pursuit of blue pill
and colocynth, or salts and senna.
The surgeon led the way along the silent street,
and presently turned into a lane at the end of which
Robert Audley saw the wan glimmer of a light. A
light which told of the watch that is kept by the sick
and dying; a pale, melancholy light, which always has
a dismal aspect when looked upon in this silent hour
betwixt night and morning. It shone from the window
of the cottage in which Luke Marks lay, watched by
his wife and mother.
Mr. Dawson lifted the latch, and walked into the
common room of the little tenement, followed by Robert
Audley. It was empty, but a feeble tallow candle,
with a broken back and a long, cauliflower-headed
wick sputtered upon the table. The sick man lay in
the room above.
"Shall I tell him you are here?” asked Mr.
Dawson.
“Yes, yes, if you please. But be cautious how
you tell him, if you think the news likely to agitate
him. I am in no hurry. I can wait. You can call
me when you think I can safely come up-stairs.”
The surgeon nodded, and softly ascended the narrow


GHOST-HAUNTED.
259
wooden stairs leading to the upper chamber. Mr.
Dawson was a good man, and indeed a parish surgeon
has need to be good, and tender, and kindly, and
gentle, or the wretched patients who have no neatly
folded fees of gold and silver to offer, may suffer petty
slights and insignificant cruelties, not easily to be
proved before a board of well-to-do poor-law guardians,
but not the less bitter to bear in the fretful and feverish
hours of sickness and pain.
Robert Audley seated himself in a Windsor chair,
by the cold hearth-stone, and stared disconsolately
about him. Small as the room was, the corners were
dusky and shadowy in the dim light of the cauliflower-
headed candle. The faded face of an eight-day clock,
which stood opposite Robert Audley, seemed to stare
him out of countenance. The awful sounds which can
emanate from eight-day clocks after midnight are too
generally known to need description. The young man
listened in awe-stricken silence to the heavy, monoto-
nous ticking, which sounded as if the clock had been
counting out the seconds which yet remained for the
dying man, and checking them off with gloomy satis-
faction. “Another minute gone! another minute gone!
another minute gone!” the clock seemed to say, until
Mr. Audley felt inclined to throw his hat at it, in the
wild hope of stopping that melancholy and monotonous
noise.
But he was relieved at last by the low voice of the
surgeon, who looked down from the top of the little
17*


260
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
staircase to tell him that Luke Marks was awake and
would be glad to see him.
Robert immediately obeyed this summons. He crept
softly up the stairs and took off his hat before he bent
his head to enter at the low doorway of the humble
rustic chamber. He took off his hat in the presence of
this common peasantman because he knew that there
was another and a more awful presence hovering about
the room, and eager to be admitted.
Phoebe Marks was sitting at the foot of the bed,
with her eyes fixed upon her husband's face. Not with
any very tender expression in their pale light, but with
a sharp, terrified anxiety, which showed that it was
the coming of death itself that she dreaded, rather than
the loss of her husband. The old woman was busy at
the fire-place, airing linen, and preparing some mess
of broth which it was not likely the patient would ever
eat. The sick man lay with his head propped up by
pillows, his coarse face deadly pale, and his great
hands wandering uneasily about the coverlet. Phæbe
had been reading to him, for an open Testament lay
amongst the medicine and lotion bottles upon the table
near the bed. Every object in the room was neat and
orderly, and bore witness of that delicate precision
which had always been a distinguishing characteristic
of Phoebe.
The young woman rose as Robert Audley crossed
the threshold, and hurried towards him.
“Let me speak to you for a moment, sir, before


GHOST-HAUNTED.
261
you talk to Luke,” she said, in an eager whisper.
"Pray let me speak to you first.”.
“What's the gal a sayin', there?” asked the invalid
in a subdued roar, which died away hoarsely on his
lips. He was feebly savage, even in his weakness.
The dull glaze of death was gathering over his eyes,
but they still watched Phæbe with a sharp glance of
dissatisfaction. “What's she up to there?” he said.
“I won't have no plottin' and no hatchin' agen me. I
want to speak to Mr. Audley my own self; and whatever
I done I'm a goin' to answer for. If I done any
mischief, I'm a goin' to try and undo it. What's she a
sayin'?"
“She ain't a sayin' nothin', lovey,” answered the
old woman, going to the bed-side of her son, who,
even when made more interesting than usual by illness,
did not seem a very fit subject for this tender appel-
lation.
“She's only a tellin' the gentleman how bad you've
been, my pretty.”
“What I'm a goin' to tell I'm only a goin' to tell
to him, remember,” growled Mr. Marks; "and ketch
me a tellin' of it to him if it warn't for what he done
for me the other night.”
“To be sure not, lovey,” answered the old woman,
soothingly.
Her intellect was rather limited in its scope, and
she attached no more importance to her son's eager
words now, than she had attached to the wild ravings
of delirium. That horrible delirium in which Luke had


262
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
described himself as being dragged through miles of
blazing brick and mortar: and flung down wells; and
dragged out of deep pits by the hair of the head; and
suspended in the air by giant hands that came out of
the clouds to pluck him from off the solid earth and
hurl him into chaos; with many other wild terrors and
delusions which ran riot in his distempered brain.
Phæbe Marks had drawn Mr. Audley out of the
room and on to the narrow landing at the top of the
little staircase. This landing was a platform of about
three feet square, and it was as much as the two could
manage to stand upon it without pushing each other
against the whitewashed wall, or backwards down
the stairs.
“Oh, sir, I wanted to speak to you so badly,"
Phoebe whispered eagerly; "you know what I told you
when I found you safe and well upon the night of
the fire?”
“Yes, yes."
"I told you what I suspected; what I think still."
“Yes, I remember.”
“But I never breathed a word of it to anybody but
you, sir; and I think that Luke has forgotten all about
that night; I think that what went before the fire has
gone clean out of his head altogether. He was tipsy
you know when my la — when she came to the Castle;
and I think he was so dazed and scared like by the
fire that it all went out of his memory. He doesn't
suspect what I suspect at any rate, or he'd have spoken
of it to anybody and everybody; but he's dreadful spite-


GHOST-HAUNTED.
263
ful against my lady, for he says if she'd have let him
have a place at Brentwood or Chelmsford, this wouldn't
have happened. So what I wanted to beg of you, sir,
is not to let a word drop before Luke."
“Yes, yes, I understand; I will be careful.”
“My lady has left the Court, I hear, sir?”
"Yes."
“Never to come back, sir?"
“Never to come back.”
“But she has not gone where she'll be cruelly
treated: where she'll be ill-used ?”
“No, she will be very kindly treated.”
“I'm glad of that, sir; I beg your pardon for troub-
ling you with the question, sir, but my lady was a
kind mistrespoice, husky a period of the d have done
Luke's voice, husky and feeble, was heard within
the little chamber at this period of the conversation,
demanding angrily when “that gal would have done
jawing,” upon which Phoebe put her finger to her lips,
and led Mr. Audley back into the sick room.
“I don't want you,” said Mr. Marks, decisively, as
his wife re-entered the chamber, “I don't want you,
you've no call to hear what I've got to say; I only
want Mr. Audley, and I wants to speak to him all
alone, with none o' your sneakin' listenin' at doors,
d'ye hear, so you may go down stairs and keep there
till you're wanted; and you may take mother – no
mother may stay, I shall want her presently."
The sick man's feeble hand pointed to the door,
through which his wife departed very submissively.


264
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
“I've no wish to hear anything, Luke,” she said,
“but I hope you won't say anything against those that
have been good and generous to you."
“I shall say what I like," answered Mr. Marks,
fiercely, “and I'm not agoin' to be ordered by you.
You ain't the parson, as I've ever heerd of; nor the
lawyer neither.”
The landlord of the Castle inn had undergone no
moral transformation by his death-bed sufferings, fierce
and rapid as they had been. Perhaps some faint
glimmer of a light that had been far off from his life,
now struggled feebly through the black obscurities of
ignorance that darkened his soul. Perhaps a half
angry, half sullen penitence urged him to make some
rugged effort to atone for a life that had been selfish
and drunken and wicked. Be it how it might, he
wiped his white lips, and turning his haggard eyes
earnestly upon Robert Audley, pointed to a chair by
the bedside.
“You've made game of me in a general way, Mr.
Audley,” he said, presently, “and you've drawed me
out, and you've tumbled and tossed me about like in
a gentlemanly way, till I was nothink or anythink in
your hands; and you've looked me through and through,
and turned me inside out till you thought you knowed
as much as I knowed. I'd no particular call to be
grateful to you, not before the fire at the Castle t'other
night. But I am grateful to you for that. I'm not
grateful to folks in a general way, p’raps, because the
things as gentlefolks have give me have a’most allus


GHOST-HAUNTED.
265
been the very things I didn't want. They've give me
soup, and tracks, and flannel, and coals; but, Lord,
they've made such a precious noise about it that I'd
have been glad to send 'em all back to 'em. But when
a gentleman goes and puts his own life in danger to
save a drunken brute like me, the drunkenest brute as
ever was feels grateful like to that gentleman, and
wishes to say before he dies — which he sees in the
doctor's face as he ain't got long to live — "Thank
ye, sir, I'm obliged to you.'"
Luke Marks stretched out his left hand — the right
had been injured by the fire, and was wrapped in
linen — and groped feebly for that of Mr. Robert
Audley.
The young man took the coarse but shrunken hand
in both his own, and pressed it cordially.
"I need no thanks, Luke Marks,” he said, "I was
very glad to be of service of you."
Mr. Marks did not speak immediately. He was
lying quietly upon his side, staring reflectingly at Ro-
bert Audley.
"You was oncommon fond of that gent as dis-
appeared at the Court, warn't you, sir," he said at
last.
Robert started at the mention of his dead friend.
“You was oncommon fond of this Mr. Talboys, I've
heerd say, sir," repeated Luke.
“Yes, yes,” answered Robert, rather impatiently,
"he was my very dear friend."
"I've heerd the servants at the Court say how you


266
LADY ALDLET'S SECRET.
took on when you couldn't find him. I've heerd the
landlord of the Sun Inn say how cut up you was when
you first missed him. If the two gents had been
brothers,' the landlord said, “our gent,' meanin' you,
sir, couldn't have been more cut up when he missed
the other.'”
“Yes, yes, I know, I know,” said Robert; "pray
do not speak any more of this subject; I cannot tell
you how much it distresses me.”
Was be to be haunted for ever by the ghost of his
unburied friend? He came here to comfort this sick
man, and even here he was pursued by that relentless
shadow; even here he was reminded of the secret crime
which had darkened his life.
“Listen to me, Marks," he said, earnestly; "be-
lieve me, that I appreciate your grateful words, and
that I am very glad to have been of service to you.
But before you say anything more, let me make one
most solemn request. If you have sent for me that
you may tell me anything of the fate of my lost friend,
I entreat you to spare yourself and to spare me that
horrible story. You can tell me nothing which I do
not already know. The worst you can tell me of the
woman who was once in your power, has already been
revealed to me by her own lips. Pray then be silent
upon this subject; I say again, you can tell me nothing
which I do not know.”
Luke Marks looked musingly at the earnest face of
his visitor, and some shadowy expression which was


GHOST-HAUNTED.
267
almost like a smile flitted feebly across the sick man's
haggard features.
"I can't tell you nothin' you don't know ?” he
asked.
“Nothing."
“Then it ain't no good for me to try," said the in-
valid, thoughtfully. “Did she tell you ?” he asked
after a pause.
"I must beg, Marks, that you will drop the sub-
ject,” Robert answered, almost sternly, "I have already
told you that I do not wish to hear it spoken of.
Whatever discoveries you made, you made your market
out of them. Whatever guilty secrets you got pos-
session of, you were paid for keeping silence. You
had better keep silence to the end."
"Had I?” cried Luke Marks in an eager whisper.
"Had I really now better hold my tongue to the
last?"
"I think so, most decidedly. You traded on your
secret, and you were paid to keep it. It would be
more honest to hold to your bargain, and keep it
still.”
“Would it now?” said Mr. Marks with a ghastly
grin; “but suppose my lady had one secret and I
another. How then?”
“What do you mean?”.
"Suppose I could have told something all along;
and would have told it, perhaps, if I'd been a little
better treated; if what was give to me had been give


1
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
270
. “Who would have been sorry for me? No one but
my poor little Alicia,” he thought, “and hers would
have only been an April sorrow. Would Clara Talboys
have been sorry? No! She would have only regretted
me as a lost link in the mystery of her brother's death.
She would only —”


272
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
Luke Marks shrugged his shoulders impatiently.
“You're a good un to do what's asked you, mo-
ther," he said, peevishly. “Didn't I tell you to re-
.member that day? Didn't I tell you as the time might
come when you'd be called upon to bear witness about
it, and put upon your Bible oath about it? Didn't I
tell you that, mother?”.
The old woman shook her head hopelessly.
“If you say so, I make no doubt you did, Luke,"
she said, with a conciliatory smile; “but I can't call it
to mind, lovey. My memory's been failin' me this nine
year, sir,” she added, turning to Robert Audley, “and
I'm but a poor crittur.”
Mr. Audley laid his hand upon the sick man's arm.
“Marks,” he said, “I tell you again, you have no
cause to worry yourself about this matter. I ask you
no questions, I have no wish to hear anything."
“But suppose I want to tell somethin',” cried Luke,
with feverish energy, “suppose I feel that I can't die
with a secret on my mind, and have asked to see you
on purpose that I might tell you; Suppose that, and
you'll suppose nothing but the truth. I'd have been
burnt alive before I'd have told her," he spoke these
words between his set teeth, and scowled savagely as
he uttered them. “I'd have been burnt alive first. I
made her pay for her pretty insolent ways; I made her
pay for her airs and graces; I'd never have told her —
never, never! I had my power over her, and I kept
it; I had my secret, and I was paid for it; and there
it; I'm never! I had races; I'd never


THAT WHICH THE DYING MAN HAD TO TELL. 273
wasn't a petty slight as she ever put upon me or mine
that I didn't pay her out for twenty times over!”
“Marks, Marks, for heaven's sake be calm,” said
Robert, earnestly; "what are you talking of? What
is it that you could have told?”
“I'm agoin' to tell you,” answered Luke, wiping
his dry lips. “Give us a drink, mother.”
The old woman poured out some cooling drink into
a mug, and carried it to her son.
He drank it in an eager hurry, as if he felt that
the brief remainder of his life must be a race with the
pitiless pedestrian, Time.
"Stop where you are,” he said to his mother, point-
ing to a chair at the foot of the bed.
The old woman obeyed, and seated herself meekly
opposite to Mr. Audley. She took out her spectacle
case, polished her spectacles, put them on and beamed
placidly upon her son, as if she cherished some faint
hope that her memory might be assisted by this pro-
cess.
“I'll ask you another question, mother,” said Luke,
"and I think it'll be strange if you can't answer it.
Do you remember when I was at work upon Atkinson's
farm; before I was married, you know, and when I was
livin' down here along of you?"
“Yes, yes,” Mrs. Marks answered, nodding trium-
phantly, “I remember that, my dear. It were last fall,
just about as the apples was bein' gathered in the
orchard across our lane, and about the time as you
Lady Audley's Secret. II.
18


274
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
had your new sprigged wesket. I remember, Luke, I
remember.”
Mr. Audley wondered where all this was to lead
to, and how long he would have to sit by the sick
man's bed hearing a conversation that had no meaning
to him.
"If you remember that much, maybe you'll re-
member more, mother,” said Luke. “Can you call to
mind my bringing some one home here one night,
while Atkinsons was stackin' the last o' their corn?”
Once more Mr. Audley started violently, and this
time he looked up earnestly at the face of the speaker,
and listened, with a strange, breathless interest, that
he scarcely understood himself, to what Luke Marks
was saying. . .
"I rek'lect your bringin' home Phæbe," the old
woman answered with great animation, “I rek'lect
your bringin' Phæbe home to take a cup o' tea, or a
little snack o' supper, a mort o' times.”
“Bother Phoebe,” cried Mr. Marks, “who's a talkin'
of Phoebe? what's Phæbe that anybody should go to
put theirselves out about her? Do you remember my
bringin' home a gentleman arter ten o'clock one Sep-
tember night; a gentleman as was wet through to the
skin, and was covered with mud and slush, and green
slime and black muck, from the crown of his head to
the sole of his foot, and had his arm broke, and his
shoulder swelled up awful; and was such a objeck that
nobody would ha' knowed him. A gentleman as had
to have his clothes cut off him in some places, and as


276
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
what I'm goin' to give you as a proof that a drunken
brute can feel thankful to them as is kind to him.”
He took out two folded papers, which he gave into
Robert Audley's hands.
They were two leaves torn out of a pocket-book,
and they were written upon in pencil, and in a hand-
writing that was quite strange to Mr. Audley. A
cramped, stiff and yet scrawling hand, such as some
ploughman might have written.
"I don't know this writing,” Robert said, as he
eagerly unfolded the first of the two papers, “What
has this to do with my friend? Why do you show me
these?”
“Suppose you read 'em first,” said Mr. Marks, "and
ask me questions about 'em afterwards."
The first paper which Robert Audley had unfolded
contained the following lines, written in that cramped,
yet scrawling hand which was so strange to him.
“My dear friend, - I write to you in such utter
confusion of mind as perhaps no man ever before
suffered. I cannot tell you what has happened to me,
I can only tell you that something has happened which
will drive me from England, a broken-hearted man,
to seek some corner of the earth in which I may live
and die unknown and forgotten. I can only ask you
to forget me. If your friendship could have done me
any good, I would have appealed to it. If your counsel
could have been of any help to me, I would have con-
fided in you. But neither friendship nor counsel can
help me; and all I can say to you is this, God bless


THAT WHICH THE DYING MAN HAD TO TELL. 277
you for the past, and teach you to forget me, in the
future.
G. T.”
The second paper was addressed to another per-
son, and its contents were briefer than those of the
first.
“Helen, — May God pity and forgive you for
that which you have done to-day, as truly as I do.
Rest in peace. You shall never hear of me again; to
you and to the world, I shall henceforth be that which
you wished me to be to-day. You need fear no molesta-
tion from me; I leave England, never to return.
“G. T.”
Robert Audley sat staring at these lines in hope-
less bewilderment. They were not in his friend's
familiar hand; and yet they purported to be written
by him, and were signed with his initials.
He looked scrutinisingly at the face of Luke Marks,
thinking that perhaps some trick was being played
upon him.
“This was not written by George Talboys,” he
said.
"It was,” answered Luke Marks, “it was written
by Mr. Talboys, every line of it; he wrote it with his
own hand; but it was his left hand, for he couldn't use
his right because of his broken arm.”
Robert Audley looked up suddenly, and the shadow
of suspicion passed away from his face.
“I understand,” he said, "I understand. Tell
me all; tell me how it was that my poor friend was
saved.”


THAT WHICH THE DYING MAN HAD TO TELL. 279
agen the lime-walk, so I went round to the other
side o' the gardens and jumped across the dry ditch;
for I wanted partic'ler to see her that night, as I
was goin' away to work upon a farm beyond Chelms-
ford the next day. Audley church clock struck nine
as I was crossin' the meadows between Atkinson's and
the Court, and it must have been about a quarter past
nine when I got into the kitchen garden.
"I crossed the garden, and went into the limewalk;
the nighest way to the servants' hall took me through
the shrubbery and past the dry well. It was a dark
night, but I knew my way well enough about the old
place, and the light in the window of the servants' hall
looked red and comfortable through the darkness. I
was close against the mouth of the dry well when I
heard a sound that made my blood creep. It was a
groan; a groan of a man in pain, as was lyin' some-
where hid among the bushes. I warn't afraid of ghosts,
and I warn't afraid of anythink in a general way, but
there was somethin' in hearin' this groan as chilled
me to the very heart, and for a minute I was struck
all of a heap and didn't know what to do. But I
heard the groan again, and then I began to search
amongst the bushes. I found a man lyin' hidden un-
der a lot o' laurels, and I thought at first he was up
to no good, and I was a goin' to collar him and take
him to the house, when he caught me by the wrist
without gettin' up from the ground, but lookin' at me
very earnest, as I could see by the way his face was
turned towards me in the darkness, and asked me who


280
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
I was, and what I was, and what I had to do with the
folks at the Court.
“There was somethin' in the way he spoke that
told me he was a gentleman, though I didn't know him
from Adam, and couldn't see his face; and I answered
his questions civil.
“'I want to get away from this place,' he said,
'without bein' seen by any livin' creetur, remember
that. I've been lyin' here ever since four o'clock to-
day, and I'm half dead, but I want to get away with-
out bein' seen, mind that.''
"I told him that was easy enough, but I began to
think my first thoughts of him might have been right
enough after all, and that he couldn't have been up to
no good to want to sneak away so precious quiet.
“Can you take me to any place where I can get
a change of dry clothes,' he says, 'without half a dozen
people knowin' it.'
"He'd got up into a sittin' attitude by this time,
and I could see that his right arm hung loose by his
side, and that he was in pain.
"I pointed to his arm, and asked him what was the
matter with it; but he only answered very quiet like,
‘Broken, my lad, broken. Not that that's much,' he
says in another tone, speaking to himself like more,
than to me. "There's broken hearts as well as broken
limbs, and they're not so easy mended.'
"I told him I could take him to mother's cottage,
and that he could dry his clothes there and welcome.
"Can your mother keep a secret?' he asked.


THAT WHICH THE DYING MAN HAD TO TELL. 281
ja no answer
I could sen fine mar
“Well she could keep one well enough, if she
could remember it,' I told him; 'but you might tell her
the secrets of all the Freemasons, and Foresters, and
Buffalers, and Oddfellers as ever was, to-night; and
she'd have forgotten all about 'em to-morrow mornin'.'
"He seemed satisfied with this, and he got himself
up by holdin' on to me, for it seemed as if his limbs
was so cramped, the use of 'em was almost gone. I
felt as he came agen me, that his clothes was wet and
mucky.
“You haven't been and fell into the fish-pond,
have you, sir?' I asked.
“He made no answer to my question; he didn't
seem even to have heard it. I could see now he was
standin' upon his feet that he was a tall, fine made
man, a head and shoulders higher than me.
“Take me to your mother's cottage,' he said, “and
get me some dry clothes if you can; I'll pay you well
for your trouble.'
“I knew that the key was mostly left in the wooden
gate in the garden wall, so I led him that way. He
could scarcely walk at first, and it was only by leanin'
heavily upon my shoulder that he managed to get
along. I got him through the gate, leavin' it unlocked
behind me, and trustin' to the chance of that not bein?
noticed by the undergardener, who had the care of the
key, and was a careless chap enough. I took him
across the meadows, and brought him up here, still
keepin' away from the village, and in the fields, where
there wasn't a creature to see us at that time o' night;


282
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
and so I got him into the room down-stairs, where
mother was a sittin' over the fire gettin' my bit o' sup-
per ready for me.
"I put the strange chap in a chair agen the fire,
and then for the first time I had a good look at him.
I never see anybody in such a state before. He was
all over green damp and muck, and his hands was
scratched and cut to pieces. I got his clothes off him
how I could, for he was like a child in my hands, and
sat starin' at the fire as helpless as any baby; only
givin' a long heavy sigh now and then, as if his heart
was a goin' to bust. He didn't seem to know where
he was; he didn't seem to hear us nor to see us; he
only sat starin' straight before him, with his poor
broken arm hanging loose by his side. .
“Thinkin' he was in a very bad way, I wanted to
go and fetch Mr. Dawson to him, and I said somethin'
about it to mother. But queer as he seemed in his
mind, he looked up quickly, as sharp as possible, and
said No, No; nobody was to know of his bein' there
except us two.
"I asked if I should run and fetch a drop of
brandy; and he said, yes, I might do that. It was
close upon eleven o'clock when I went into the public-
house, and it was strikin' eleven as I got back home.
“It was a good thing I'd fetched the brandy, for
he was shiverin' awful, and the edge of the mug rattled
against his teeth. I had to force the spirit between
’em, they were so tight locked, before he could drink
it. At last he dropped into a kind of a dose, a stupid
he said, ook when I as I got


THAT WHICH THE DYING MAN HAD TO TELL. 283
sort of sleep, and began to nod over the fire, so I ran
and got a blanket and wrapped him in it, and got him
to lie down upon the press bedstead in the room under
this. I sent mother to bed, and I sat by the fire and
watched him, and kep' the fire up till it was just upon
daybreak, when he 'woke up all of a sudden with a
start, and said he must go, directly minute.
"I begged him not to think of such a thing, and
told him he warn't fit to move for ever so long; but
he said he must go, and he got up, and though he
staggered like, and at first could hardly stand steady
two minutes together, he wouldn't be beat, and he got
me to dress him in his clothes as I'd dried and cleaned
as well as I could while he laid asleep. I did manage
it at last, but the clothes was awful spoiled, and he
looked a dreadful objeck, with his pale face and a
great cut on his forehead that I'd washed and tied up
with a handkercher. He could only get his coat on
by buttoning on it round his neck, for he couldn't put
a sleeve upon bis broken arm. But he held out agen
everything, though he groaned every now and then;
and what with the scratches and bruises on his hands,
and the cut upon his forehead and his stiff limbs and
his broken arm he'd plenty of call to groan; and by
the time it was broad daylight he was dressed and
ready to go.
“What's the nearest town to this upon the London
road?' he asked me.
“I told him as the nighest town was Brentwood.
“Very well then,' he says, "if you'll go with me


286
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
to me, 'Come along o' me to the railway-station and
I'll give you what I've promised.'
“So I went to the station with him. We was in
time to catch the train as stops at Brentwood at half-
after eight, and we had five minutes to spare. So he
takes me into a corner of the platform, and he says:
'I wants you to deliver these here letters for me,' which
I told him I was willin'. 'Very well then,' he says,
'look here, you know Audley Court?' 'Yes,' I says,
'I ought to, for my sweetheart lives lady’s-maid there.'
'Whose lady's-maid?' he says. So I tells him 'My
lady's, the new lady what was governess at Mr. Daw-
son's.” “Very well, then,' he says, 'this here letter with
the cross upon the envelope is for Lady Audley, but
you're to be sure to give it into her own hands; and
remember to take care as nobody sees you give it.
I promises to do this, and he hands me the first letter.
And then he says, “Do you know Mr. Audley, as is
nevy to Sir Michael?' and I said, 'Yes, I've heerd tell
on him, and I'd heerd as he was a reg'lar swell, but
affable and free spoken' (for I had heerd tell on you, you
know),” Luke added parenthetically. "Now look
here,” the young chap says, 'You're to give this other
letter to Mr. Robert Audley, whose a stayin' at the
Sun Inn, in the village;' and I tells him it's all right,
as I've know'd the Sun ever since I was a baby. So
then he gives me the second letter, what's got nothink
wrote upon the envelope, and he gives me a five-pound
note, accordin' to promise; and then he says 'Good
day, and thank you for all your trouble,' and he gets


THAT WHICH THE DYING MAN HAD TO TELL. 287
opeat, ead." Georgets to ked
into a second-class carriage, and the last I sees of him
is a face as white as a sheet of writin' paper, and a
great patch of stickin' plaster criss-crossed upon his
forehead.”
“Poor George! poor George!"
“I went back to Audley, and I went straight to
the Sun Inn, and asked for you, meanin' to deliver
both letters faithful, so help me God, then; but the
landlord told me as you'd started off that mornin' for
London, and he didn't know when you'd come back,
and he didn't know the name o' the place where you
lived in London, though he said he thought it was in
one o' them Law Courts, such as Westminster Hall or
Doctors' Commons, or somethin' like that. So what
was I to do? I couldn't send the letter by post, not
knowin' where to direct to, and I couldn't give it into
your own hands, and I'd been told partikler not to let
anybody else know of it; so I'd nothin' to do but to
wait and see if you come back, and bide my time for
givin' of it to you.
“I thought I'd go over to the Court in the evenin'
and see Phoebe, and find out from her when there'd be
a chance of my seein' her lady, for I know'd she could
manage it if she liked. So I didn't go to work that
day, though I ought to ha' done, and I lounged and
idled about until it was nigh upon dusk, and then I
goes down to the meadows behind the Court, and there
I finds Phoebe sure enough waitin'agen the wooden door
in the wall, on the look-out for me.
“Well I went into the shrubbery with her, and


290
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
“Instead of answering of me like a Christian, my
cousin Phæbe bursts out a cryin', and wrings her hands
and goes on awful, until I'm dashed if I can make out
what she's up to.
“But little by little I got it out of her, for I
wouldn't stand no nonsense; and she told me how she'd
been sittin' at work at the window of her little room,
which was at the top of the house, right up in one of
the gables, and overlooked the lime-walk and the
shrubbery and the well, when she see my lady walkin'
with a strange gentleman, and they walked together
for a long time, until by-and-by they —”.
“Stop,” cried Robert Audley, “I know the rest.”
“Well Phæbe told me all about what she see, and
she told me as she'd met her lady almost directly
afterwards, and somethin' had passed between 'em, not
much, but enough to let her missus know that the
servant what she looked down upon had found out that
as would put her in that servant's power to the last
day of her life.
“And she is in my power, Luke,' says Phæbe,
'and she'll do anythin' in the world for us if we keep
her secret.
“So you see both my Lady Audley and her maid
thought as the gentleman as I'd seen safe off by the
London train was lyin' dead at the bottom of the well.
If I was to give the letter they'd find out the contrairy
of this, and if I was to give the letter, Phæbe and me
would lose the chance of gettin' started in life by her
missus.


THAT WHICH THE DYING MAN HAD TO TELL. 291
“So I kep' the letter and kep' my secret, and my
lady kep' hern. But I thought if she acted liberal by
me, and gave me the money I wanted, free like, I'd
tell her everythink and make her mind easy.
“But she didn't. Whatever she give me she throwed
me as if I'd been a dog. Whenever she spoke to me,
she spoke as she might have spoken to a dog; and a
dog she couldn't abide the sight on. There was no
word in her mouth that was too bad for me. There
was no toss as she could give her head that was too
proud and scornful for me; and my blood biled agen
her, and I kep' my secret, and let her keep hern. I
opened the two letters and I read 'em, but I couldn't
make much sense out of 'em, and I hid 'em away; and
not a creature but me has see 'em until this night."
Luke Marks had finished his story, and lay quietly
enough, exhausted by having talked so long. He
watched Robert Audley's face, fully expecting some
reproof, some grave lecture; for he had a vague con-
sciousness that he had done wrong.
But Robert did not lecture him; he had no fancy
for an office which he did not think' himself fitted to
perform.
“The clergyman will talk to him and comfort him
when he comes to-morrow morning," Mr. Audley
thought; "and if the poor creature needs a sermon it
will come better from his lips than from mine. What
should I say to him? His sin has recoiled upon his
own head; for had my lady's mind been set at ease,
the Castle Inn would not have been burned down.
some graad done wron.mn: he had
19%


292
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
Who shall dare to try and order his own life after
this? who can fail to recognise God's hand in this
strange story?”
He thought very humbly of the deductions he had
made and acted upon. He remembered how implicitly
he had trusted in the pitiful light of his own reason;
but he was comforted by remembering also that he had
tried simply and honestly to do his duty; faithfully
alike to the dead and to the living.
Robert Audley sat until long after daybreak with
the sick man, who fell into a heavy slumber a short
time after he had finished his story. The old woman
had dozed comfortably throughout her son's confession.
Phæbe was asleep upon the press bedstead in the
room below; so the young barrister was the only
watcher.
He could not sleep; he could only think of the
story he had heard. He could only thank God for his
friend's preservation, and pray that he might be able
to go to Clara Talboys, and say, "Your brother still
lives, and has been found.”
Phoebe came up-stairs at eight o'clock, ready to
take her place at the sick bed, and Robert Audley
went away to get a bed at the Sun Inn. He had had
no more comfortable rest than such odd snatches of
sleep as are to be got in railway carriages and on
board steamers, during the last three nights, and he
was completely worn out. It was nearly dusk when
he awoke out of a long dreamless slumber, and dressed
himself before dining in the little sitting-room, in which


THAT WHICH THE DYING MAN HAD TO TELL.
he and George had sat together a few months
before.
The landlord waited upon him at dinner, and told
him that Luke Marks had died at five o'clock that
afternoon. "He went off rather sudden like,” the
man said, “but very quiet.”
Robert Audley wrote a long letter that evening,
addressed to Madame Taylor, care of Monsieur Val,
Villebrumeuse; a long letter in which he told the
wretched woman who had borne so many names and
was to bear a false one for the rest of her life, the
story that the dying man had told him.
"It may be some comfort to her to hear that her
husband did not perish in his youth by her wicked
hand," he thought, “if her selfish soul can hold any
sentiment of pity or sorrow for others."


294
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
CHAPTER XV.
Restored.
CLARA TALBOYS returned to Dorsetshire to tell her
father that his only son had sailed for Australia upon
the 9th of September, and that it was most probable
he yet lived, and would return to claim the forgiveness
of the father he had never very particularly injured;
except in the matter of having made that terrible
matrimonial mistake which had exercised so fatal an in-
fluence upon his youth.
Mr. Harcourt Talboys was fairly nonplussed.
Junius Brutus had never been placed in such a posi-
tion as this, and seeing no way of getting out of this
dilemma, by acting after his favourite model, Mr. Tal-
boys was fain to be natural for once in his life, and
to confess that he had suffered much uneasiness and
pain of mind about his only son, since his conversa-
tion with Robert Audley; and that he would be hear-
tily glad to take his poor boy to his arms, whenever
he should return to England. But when was he likely
to return? and how was he to be communicated with?
That was the question. Robert Audley remembered
the advertisements which he had caused to be inserted
in the Melbourne and Sydney papers. If George had
re-entered either city alive, how was it that no notice
had ever been taken of that advertisement? Was it


RESTORED.
295
likely his friend would be indifferent to his uneasiness?
But then, again, it was just possible that George Tal-
boys had not happened to see this advertisement; and,
as he had travelled under a feigned name, neither his
fellow-passengers nor the captain of the vessel would
have been able to identify him with the person ad-
vertised for. What was to be done? Must they wait
patiently till George grew weary of his exile, and
returned to the friends who loved him; or were there
any means to be taken by which his return might be
hastened? Robert Audley was at fault! Perhaps in
the unspeakable relief of mind which he had experienced
upon the discovery of his friend's escape, he was un-
able to look beyond the one fact of that providential
preservation.
In this state of mind he went down to Dorsetshire
to pay a visit to Mr. Talboys, who had given way to
a perfect torrent of generous impulses, and had gone
so far as to invite his son's friend to share the prim
hospitality of the square, red-brick mansion.
Mr. Talboys had only two sentiments upon the
subject of George's story; one was a natural relief and
happiness in the thought that his son had been saved;
the other was an earnest wish that my lady had been
his wife, and that he might thus have had the pleasure
of making a signal example of her.
"It is not for me to blame you, Mr. Audley,” he
said, "for having smuggled this guilty woman out of
the reach of justice, and thus, as I may say, paltered
with the laws of your country; I can only remark


296
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
There wa the streamst-bound the
that, had the lady fallen into my hands, she would
have been very differently treated.”
It was in the middle of April when Robert Audley
found himself once more under those black fir-trees
beneath which his wandering thoughts had so often
strayed since his first meeting with Clara Talboys.
There were primroses and early violets in the hedges
now, and the streams, which, upon his first visit, had
been hard and frost-bound as the heart of Harcourt
Talboys, had thawed, like that gentleman, and ran
merrily under the black thorn bushes in the capricious
April sunshine.
Robert had a prim bed-room, and an uncompromi-
sing dressing-room allotted to him in the square house,
and he woke every morning upon a metallic spring-
mattress which always gave him the idea of sleeping
upon some musical instrument, to see the sun glaring
in upon him through the square white blinds, and
lighting up the two lacquered urns which adorned the
foot of his blue iron bedstead, until they blazed like
two tiny brazen lamps of the Roman period.
A visit to Mr. Harcourt Talboys was perhaps
rather more like a return to boyhood and boarding-
school than is quite consonant with the Sybarite view
of human enjoyment. There were the same curtainless
windows, and narrow strips of bedside carpet; the
same clanging bell in the early morning; the same un-
compromising servants filing into a long dining-room
to assist at perhaps the same prayers; and there was
altogether rather too much of the “private academy


RESTORED.
297
for the sons of gentlemen preparing for the church and
the army,” in the Talboys establishment.
But if the square-built, red-brick mansion had been
the palace of Armida, and the prim, linen-jacketed
man represented by a legion of houris, Robert Audley
could have scarcely seemed better satisfied with his
entertainment.
He awoke to the sound of the clanging bell, and
made his toilet in the cruel early morning sunshine,
which is bright without being cheerful, and makes you
wink without making you warm. He emulated Mr.
Harcourt Talboys in the matter of shower-baths and
cold water, and emerged prim and blue as that gentle-
man himself, as the clock in the hall struck seven, to
join the master of the house in his ante-breakfast con-
stitutional under the fir-trees in the stiff plantation.
But there was generally a third person who assisted
in these constitutional promenades, and that third per-
son was Clara Talboys, who used to walk by her
father's side, more beautiful than the morning, — for
that was sometimes dull and cloudy, while she was
always fresh and bright, -- in a broad-leaved straw
hat and flapping blue ribbons, one quarter of an inch
of which Mr. Audley would have esteemed a 'prouder
decoration than ever adorned a favoured creature's
button-hole.
Absent George was often talked of in these morn-
ing walks, and Robert Audley seldom took his place
at the long breakfast table without remembering the
morning upon which he had first sat in that room,
in these coClara Talbog utiful than idy, while


300
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
was bright and placid in the low sunlight, and the
little children had gone home to their tea.
“Do you think I can read French novels and smoke
mild Turkish until I am three-score-and-ten, Miss
Talboys?” he asked. “Do you think that there will
not come a day in which my meerschaums will be
foul, and the French novels more than usually stupid,
and life altogether such a dismal monotony that I shall
want to get rid of it somehow or other?”
I am sorry to say that while this hypocritical
young barrister was holding forth in this despondent
way, he had mentally sold up his bachelor possessions,
including all Michel Levy's publications and half a
dozen solid silver-mounted meerschaums, pensioned off
Mrs. Malony, and laid out two or three thousand
pounds in the purchase of a few acres of verdant
shrubbery and sloping lawn, embosomed amid which
Thema che
there should be a fairy cottage ornée, whose rustic
ha fair
casements should glimmer out of bowers of myrtle and
clematis to see themselves reflected in the purple bosom
of a lake.
Of course Clara Talboys was far from discovering
the drift of these melancholy lamentations. She re-
commended Mr. Audley to read hard and think
seriously of his profession, and begin life in real
earnest. It was a hard, dry sort of existence perhaps
which she recommended; a life of serious work and ap-
plication, in which he should strive to be useful to his
fellow-creatures, and win a reputation for himself. Mr.


302
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
refrain from saying I take as an especial compliment
to myself.”
Robert bowed. How thankful he was to the good
fortune which had never suffered him to oversleep the
signal of the clanging bell, or led him away beyond
the ken of clocks at Mr. Talboys's luncheon hour.
“I trust as we have got on so remarkably well
together,” Mr. Talboys resumed, “you will do me the
honour of repeating your visit to Dorsetshire whenever
you feel inclined. You will find plenty of sport
amongst my farms, and you will meet with every
politeness and attention from my tenants, if you like
to bring your gun with you.”
Robert responded most heartily to these friendly
overtures. He declared that there was no earthly
occupation that was more agreeable to him than
partridge shooting, and that he should be only too
delighted to avail himself of the privileges so kindly
offered to him. He could not help glancing towards
Clara as he said this. The perfect lids drooped a little
over the brown eyes, and the faintest shadow of a
blush illuminated the beautiful face.
But this was the young barrister's last day in
Elysium, and there must be a dreary interval of days
and nights and weeks and months before the first of
September would give him an excuse for returning to
Dorsetshire. A dreary interval which fresh-coloured
young squires, or fat widowers of eight-and-forty might
use to his disadvantage. It was no wonder, therefore,
that he contemplated this dismal prospect with moody


RESTORED.
303
despair, and was bad company for Miss Talboys that
morning
But in the evening after dinner, when the sun
was low in the west, and Harcourt Talboys closeted
in his library upon some judicial business with his
lawyer and a tenant farmer, Mr. Audley grew a little
more agreeable. He stood by Clara's side in one of
the long windows of the drawing-room watching the
shadows deepening in the sky and the rosy light
growing every moment rosier as the day died out.
He could not help enjoying that quiet tête-à-tête,
though the shadow of the next morning's express which
was to carry him away to London loomed darkly
across the pathway of his joy. He could not help
being happy in her presence; forgetful of the past,
reckless of the future.
They talked of the one subject which was always
a bond of union between them. They talked of her
lost brother George. She spoke of him in a very
melancholy tone this evening. How could she be
otherwise than sad, remembering that if he lived –
and she was not even sure of that -- he was a lonely
wanderer far away from all who loved him, and carry-
ing the memory of a blighted life wherever he went.
In the sombre twilight stillness she spoke of him thus,
with her hands clasped and the tears trembling in her
eyes.
"I cannot think how papa can be so resigned to
my poor brother's absence,” she said, "for he does
love him, Mr. Audley; even you must have seen lately


RESTORED.
305
could never be. By what right could I accept such a
sacrifice.”
“By the right which makes me your bounden slave
for ever and ever, whether you will or no. By the
right of the love I bear you, Clara,” cried Mr. Audley,
dropping on his knees, - rather awkwardly, it must
be confessed — and covering a soft little hand, that
he had found half-hidden among the folds of a silken
dress, with passionate kisses.
"I love you, Clara,” he said, “I love you. You
may call for your father, and have me turned out of
the house this moment, if you like; but I shall go on
loving you all the same; and I shall love you for ever
and ever, whether you will or no.”
The little hand was drawn away from his, but
not with a sudden or angry gesture, and it rested
for one moment lightly and tremulously upon his dark
hair.
“Clara, Clara!” he murmured, in a low pleading
voice, "shall I go to Australia to look for your
brother?”
There was no answer. I don't know how it is,
but there is scarcely anything more delicious than
silence in such cases. Every moment of hesitation is
a tacit avowal; every pause is a tender confession.
"Shall we both go, dearest? Shall we go as man
and wife? Shall we go together, my dear love, and
bring our brother back between us?”
Mr. Harcourt Talboys coming into the lamp-lit
Lady Audley's Secret. II.
20


308
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET.
in. The canaries were singing their farewell to the
setting sun, and the faint, yellow light was flickering
upon the geranium leaves. The visitor, whoever he
was, sat with his back to the window and his head
bent upon his breast. But he started up as Robert
Audley entered the room, and the young man uttered
a great cry of delight and surprise, and opened his
arms to his lost friend, George Talboys.
Mrs. Malony had to fetch more wine and more
dinner from the tavern which she honoured with her
patronage, and the two young men sat deep into the
night by the hearth which had so long been lonely.
We know how much Robert had to tell. He
touched lightly and tenderly upon that subject which
he knew was cruelly painful to his friend; he said
very little of the wretched woman who was wearing
out the remnant of her wicked life in the quiet surburb
of the forgotten Belgian city.
George Talboys spoke very briefly of that sunny
seventh of September, upon which he had left his
friend sleeping by the trout stream while he went to
accuse his false wife of that conspiracy which had well
nigh broken his heart.
“God knows that from the moment in which I
sank into the black pit, knowing the treacherous hand
that had sent me to what might have been my death,
my chief thought was of the safety of the woman who
had betrayed me. I fell upon my feet upon a mass
of slush and mire, but my shoulder was bruised, and
my arm broken against the side of the well. I was


310
LADÝ AUDLEY'S SECRET.
"Jonathan was very kind to me, Bob,” he said;
"I had enough money to enable me to get on pretty
well in my own quiet way, and I meant to have started
on the Californian gold-fields to get more when that
was gone. I might have made plenty of friends had I
pleased, but I carried the old bullet in my breast;
and what sympathy could I have with men who knew
nothing of my grief? I yearned for the strong grasp
of your hand, Bob; the friendly touch of the hand
which had guided me through the darkest passage of
my life.”





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