 CHAPTER XIV Mr. George Talboys. Any person who has met this gentleman since the Seventh Inst, or who possesses any information respecting him subsequent to that date, will be liberally rewarded on communicating with A. Z. 14, Chance R. Lane. Sir Michael Audley read the above advertisement in the second column of the Times, as he sat at breakfast with My Lady and Elysia, two or three days after Robert's return to town. Robert's friend has not yet been heard of, then," said the Baronet, after reading the advertisement to his wife and daughter. "'As for that,' replied My Lady, I cannot help wondering that any one can be silly enough to advertise for him. The young man was evidently of a restless, roving disposition—a sort of bam-field moor caroo of modern life, whom no attraction could ever keep in one spot. Though the advertisement appeared three successive times, the party at the court attached very little importance to Mr. Talboys' disappearance, and after this one occasion his name was never again mentioned by either Sir Michael, My Lady, or Elysia. Elysia Audley and her pretty stepmother were by no means any better friends after that quiet evening on which the young barrister had dined at the court. "'She is a vain, frivolous, heartless little coquette,' said Elysia, addressing herself to her Newfoundland dog Caesar, who was the sole recipient of the young lady's confidences. She is a practised and consummate flirt, Caesar, and not contented with setting her yellow ringlets and her silly giggle at half the men in Essex. She must needs make that stupid cousin of mine dance attendance upon her. I haven't common patience with her.' In proof of which last assertion Miss Alice Audley treated her stepmother with such very palpable impertinence that Sir Michael felt himself called upon to remonstrate with his only daughter. "'The poor little woman is very sensitive, you know, Elysia,' the baronet said gravely, and she feels your conduct most acutely. "'I don't believe it a bit, Papa,' answered Elysia stoutly. "'You think her sensitive because she has soft little white hands, and big blue eyes with long lashes, and all manner of affected fantastical ways which you stupid men call fascinating—sensitive—why, I've seen her do cruel things with those slender white fingers, and laugh at the pain she inflicted.' "'I'm very sorry, Papa,' she added, softened a little by her father's look of distress. Though she has come between us, and robbed poor Elysia of the love of that dear generous heart, I wish I could like her for your sake. But I can't—I can't—and no more can Caesar. She came up to him once with her red lips apart, and her little white teeth glistening between them, and stroked his great head with her soft hand. But if I had not had hold of his collar, he would have flown at her throat and strangled her. She may bewitch every man in Essex, but she'd never make friends with my dog. "'Your dog shall be shot,' answered Sir Michael angrily, if his vicious temper ever endangers Lucy. The Newfoundland rolled his eyes slowly round in the direction of the speaker, as if he understood every word that had been said. Lady Audley happened to enter the room at this very moment, and the animal cowered down by the side of his mistress with a suppressed growl. There was something in the manner of the dog which was, if anything, more indicative of terror than of fury. Incredible as it appears that Caesar should be frightened by so fragile a creature as Lucy Audley. Famicable as was my lady's nature, she could not live long at the court without discovering that Lucy is disliked to her. She never alluded to it but once. Then shrugging her graceful white shoulders, she said with a sigh, "'It seems very hard that you cannot love me, Alicia, for I have never been used to make enemies. But since it seems that it must be so, I cannot help it. If we cannot be friends, let us be neutral. You won't try to injure me.' "'Injure you,' exclaimed Alicia, "'how should I injure you?' You'll not try to deprive me of your father's affection. I may not be as amiable as you are, my lady, and I may not have the same sweet smiles and pretty words for every stranger I meet. But I am not capable of a contemptible meanness. And even if I were, I think you are so secure of my father's love that nothing but your own act will ever deprive you of it.' "'What a severe creature you are, Alicia,' said my lady, making a little grimace. I suppose you mean to infer by all that that I am deceitful. Why I can't help smiling at people, and speaking prettily to them. I know I am no better than the rest of the world. But I can't help it if I am pleasanter. It's constitutional.' Alicia, having thus entirely shut the door upon all intimacy between Lady Audley and herself, and Sir Michael being chiefly occupied in agricultural pursuits and manly sports, which kept him away from home, it was perhaps natural that my lady, being of an eminently social disposition, should find herself thrown a good deal upon her white eyelashed maid for society. Phoebe Marks was exactly the sort of a girl who was generally promoted from the post of ladies' maid to that of companion. She had just sufficient education to enable her to understand her mistress, when Lucy chose to allow herself to run riot in a species of intellectual tarantella, in which her tongue went mad to the sound of its own rattle as the Spanish dancer at the noise of his castanets. Phoebe knew enough of the French language to be able to dip into the yellow paper-covered novels which my lady ordered from the Burlington Arcade, and to discourse with her mistress upon the questionable subjects of these romances. The likeness which the ladies made bore to Lucy Audley was, perhaps, a point of sympathy between the two women. It was not to be called a striking likeness. A stranger might have seen them both together, and yet have failed to remark it. But there were certain dim and shadowy lights, in which meeting Phoebe Marks gliding softly through the dark oak passages of the court, or under the shrouded avenues in the garden, you might have easily mistaken her for my lady. Sharp October winds were sweeping the leaves from the limes in the Long Avenue, and driving them in withered heaps with a ghostly rustling noise along the dry gravel walks. The old well must have been half choked up with the leaves that drifted about it, and whirled in eddying circles into its black, broken mouth. On the still bosom of the fish-pond the same withered leaves slowly rotted away, mixing themselves with the tangled weeds that discoloured the surface of the water. All the gardeners Sir Michael could employ could not keep the impress of Audam's destroying hand from the grounds about the court. How I hate this desolate month! my lady said, as she walked about the garden shivering beneath her sable mantle. Everything dropping to ruin and decay, and the cold flicker of the sun lighting up the ugliness of the earth, as the glare of gas lamps lights the wrinkles of an old woman. Shall I ever grow old, Phoebe? Will my hair ever drop off as the leaves are falling from those trees, and leave me wan and bare like them? What is to become of me when I grow old? She shivered at the thought of this more than she had done at the cold, wintry breeze, and muffling herself closely in her fur, walked so fast that her maid had some difficulty in keeping up with her. Do you remember, Phoebe? she said presently, relaxing her pace. Do you remember that French story we read? The story of a beautiful woman who had committed some crime? I forget what? In the zenith of her power and loveliness, when all Paris drank to her every night, and when the people ran away from the carriage of the king to flock about hers and get a peep at her face. Do you remember how she kept the secret of what she had done, for nearly half a century, spending her old age in her family chateau, beloved and honoured by all the province, as an uncannonised saint and benefactor as to the poor? And how, when her hair was white, and her eyes almost blind with age, the secret was revealed through one of those strange accidents by which such secrets always are revealed in romances, and she was tried, found guilty, and condemned to be burned alive. The king who had worn her colours was dead and gone, the court of which she had been a star had passed away. Powerful functionaries and great magistrates, who might perhaps have helped her, were mouldering in the graves. Brave young cavaliers who would have died for her had fallen upon distant battlefields. She had lived to see the age to which she had belonged fade like a dream, and she went to the stake, followed by only a few ignorant country people who forgot all her bounties, and hooted at her for a wicked sorceress. "'I don't care for such dismal stories, my lady,' said Phoebe Marx with a shudder, "'one has no need to read books to give one the horrors in this dull place.' Lady Audley shrugged her shoulders and laughed at her maid's candour. "'It is a dull place, Phoebe,' she said, though it doesn't do to say so to my dear old husband. Though I am the wife of one of the most influential men in the county, I don't know that I wasn't nearly as well off at Mr. Dawson's, and yet it's something to wear sables that cost sixty guineas, and have a thousand pounds spent on the decoration of one's apartments.' Treated as a companion by her mistress, in the receipt of the most liberal wages, and with perquisites such as perhaps ladies maid had never had before, it was strange that Phoebe Marx should wish to leave her situation. But it was not the less of fact that she was anxious to exchange all the advantages of Audley Court for the very unpromising prospect which awaited her as the wife of her cousin Luke. The young man had contrived in some manner to associate himself with the improved fortunes of his sweetheart. He had never allowed Phoebe any peace, till she had obtained for him, by the aid of my lady's interference, a situation as undergroom of the Court. He never rode out with either Alicia or Sir Michael, but on one of the few occasions upon which my lady mounted the pretty little gray thoroughbred reserved for her use, he contrived to attend her in her ride. He saw enough, in the very first half-hour they were out, to discover that, graceful as Lucy Audley might look in her long blue-cloth habit, she was a timid horsewoman, and utterly unable to manage the animals she rode. Lady Audley remonstrated with her maid upon her folly in wishing to marry the uncouth groom. The two women were seated together over the fire in my lady's dressing room, the gray sky closing in upon the October afternoon, and the black tracery of ivy darkening the casement windows. "'You surely are not in love with the awkward ugly creature, are you Phoebe?' asked my lady sharply. The girl was sitting on a low stool at her mistress's feet. She did not answer my lady's question immediately, but sat for some time looking vacantly into the red abyss in the hollow fire. Presently she said, rather as if she had been thinking aloud than answering Lucy's question. "'I don't think I can love him. We have been together from children. And I promised, when I was little better than fifteen, that I'd be his wife. I dare not break that promise now. There have been times when I've made up the very sentence I meant to say to him, telling him that I couldn't keep my faith with him. But the words have died upon my lips, and I've sat looking at him with a choking sensation in my throat that wouldn't let me speak. I dare not refuse to marry him. I've often watched and watched him, as he has sat slicing away at a hedge-stake with his great clasp-knife, till I have thought that it is just such men as he who have decoyed their sweethearts into lonely places, and murdered them for being fast to their word. When he was a boy he was always violent and revengeful. I saw him once take up that very knife in a quarrel with his mother. I tell you, my lady, I must marry him. "'You silly girl! You shall do nothing of the kind,' answered Lucy. "'You think he'll murder you, do you? Do you think, then, if murder is in him, you would be any safer as his wife? If you thwarted him or made him jealous, if he wanted to marry another woman, or to get hold of some poor pitiful bit of money of yours, couldn't he murder you, then?' I tell you, you shan't marry him, Phoebe. In the first place I hate the man, and in the next place I can't afford to part with you. We'll give him a few pounds and send him about his business.' Phoebe Marks caught my lady's hand in hers, and clasped them convulsively. "'My lady, my good, kind mistress,' she cried vehemently. Don't try to thwart me in this. Don't ask me to thwart him. I tell you, I must marry him. You don't know what he is. It will be my ruin, and the ruin of others, if I break my word. I must marry him.' "'Very well, then, Phoebe,' answered her mistress. "'I can't oppose you. There must be some secret at the bottom of all this.' "'There is, my lady,' said the girl, with her face turned away from Lucy. I shall be very sorry to lose you, but I have promised to stand your friend in all things. What does your cousin mean to do for a living when you are married?' He would like to take a public house. Then he shall take a public house, and the sooner he drinks himself to death the better. Sir Michael dines at a bachelor's party at Major Margraves this evening, and my step-daughter is away with her friends at the Grange. You can bring your cousin into the drawing-room after dinner, and I'll tell him what I mean to do for him.' "'You are very good, my lady,' Phoebe answered with a sigh. Lady Audley sat in the glow of fire-light and wax-candles in the luxurious drawing-room, the amber-damisk cushions of the sofa contrasting with her dark violet velvet dress, and her rippling hair falling about her neck in a golden haze. Everywhere around her were the evidences of wealth and splendor, while in strange contrast to all this and to her own beauty. The awkward groom stood rubbing his bullet-head as my lady explained to him what she intended to do for her confidential maid. Lucy's promises were very liberal, and she had expected that, uncouth as the man was, he would, in his own rough manner, have expressed his gratitude. To her surprise, he stood staring at the floor without uttering a word and answered her offer. Phoebe was standing close to his elbow, and seemed distressed at the man's rudeness. "'Tell my lady how thankful you are, Luke,' she said. "'But I'm not so over and above thankful,' answered her lover savagely. "'Fifty pound ain't much to start a public. You'll make it a hundred, my lady.' "'I shall do nothing of the kind,' said Lady Audley, her clear blue eyes flashing with indignation, and I wonder at your impertinence in asking it.' "'Oh yes, you will, though,' answered Luke, with quiet insolence that had a hidden meaning. "'You'll make it a hundred, my lady.' Lady Audley rose from her seat, looked the man steadfastly in the face till his determined gaze sunk under hers, then walking straight up to her maid. She said in a high, piercing voice, peculiar to her in moments of intense agitation, "'Pheebe Marks, you have told this man!' The girl fell on her knees at my lady's feet. "'Oh, forgive me, forgive me,' she cried. He forced it from me, or I would never, never have told.' End of Chapter 14. Chapter 15 of Lady Audley's Secret. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Elizabeth Clutt. Lady Audley's Secret. By Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Chapter 15. On the Watch. Upon a lowering morning late in November, with the yellow fog low upon the flat meadows, and the blinded cattle groping their way through the dim obscurity, and blundering stupidly against black and leafless hedges, or stumbling into ditches, undistinguishable in the hazy atmosphere, with the village church looming brown and dingy through the uncertain light, with every winding path and cottage door, every gable end and gray old chimney, every village child and straggling curse seeming strange and weird of aspect in the semi-darkness, Phoebe Marks and her cousin Luke made their way through the churchyard of Audley, and presented themselves before a shivering curate, whose surplus hung in damp folds soddened by the morning mist, and whose temper was not improved by his having waited five minutes for the bride and bridegroom. Luke Marks, dressed in his ill-fitting Sunday clothes, looked by no means handsomer than in his everyday apparel. But Phoebe, arrayed in a rustling silk of delicate gray, that had been worn about half a dozen times by her mistress, looked, as the few spectators of the ceremony remarked, quite the lady. A very dim and shadowy lady, vague of outline and faint of coloring, with eyes, hair, complexion and dress, all melting into such pale and uncertain shades, that, in the obscure light of the foggy November morning, a superstitious stranger, might have mistaken the bride for the ghost of some other bride, dead and buried in the vault below the church. Mr. Luke Marks, the hero of the occasion, thought very little of all this. He had secured the wife of his choice, and the object of his lifelong ambition, a public house. My lady had provided the seventy-five pounds necessary for the purchase of the goodwill and fixtures, with the stock of ales and spirits, of a small inn in the center of a lonely little village, perched on the summit of a hill, called Mount Standing. It was not a very pretty house to look at. It had something of a tumble-down, weather-beaten appearance, standing as it did upon high ground, sheltered only by four or five bare and overgrown poplars, that had shot up too rapidly for their strength, and had a blighted forlorn look and consequence. The wind had had its own way with the castle in, and had sometimes made cruel use of its power. It was the wind that battered and bent the low, thatched roofs of outhouses and stables, till they hung over and lurched forward, as a slouched hat hangs over the low forehead of some village ruffian. It was the wind that shook and rattled the wooden shutters before the narrow casements, till they hung broken and dilapidated upon their rusty hinges. It was the wind that overthrew the pigeon-house, and broke the vein that had been imprudently set up to tell the movements of its mightiness. It was the wind that made light of any little bit of wooden trellis-work, or creeping plant, or tiny balcony, or any modest decoration whatsoever, and tore and scattered it in its scornful fury. It was the wind that left mossy secretions on the discolored surface of the plaster walls. It was the wind, in short, that shattered and ruined and rent, and trampled upon the tottering pile of buildings, and then flew shrieking off to riot and glory in its destroying strength. The dispirited proprietor grew tired of his long struggle with this mighty enemy, so the wind was left to work its own will, and the castle in fell slowly to decay. But for all that it suffered without, it was not the less prosperous within doors. Sturdy drovers stopped to drink at the little bar. Well-to-do farmers spent their evenings and talked politics in the low wane-scotted parlor, while their horses munched some suspicious mixture of moldy hay and tolerable beans in the tumbledown stables. Sometimes even the members of the oddly hunt stopped to drink and bait their horses at the castle in. While on one grand and never to be forgotten occasion, a dinner had been ordered by the master of the hounds for some thirty gentlemen, and the proprietor driven nearly mad by the importance of the demand. So Luke Marks, who was by no means troubled with an eye for the beautiful, thought himself very fortunate in becoming the landlord of the castle in, Mount Standing. A shezkart was waiting in the fog to convey the bride and bridegroom to their new home, and a few of the villagers, who had known Phoebe from a child, were lingering around the churchyard gate to bid her good-bye. Her pale eyes were still paler from the tears she had shed, and the red rims which surrounded them. The bridegroom was annoyed at this exhibition of emotion. "'What are you blubbering for, lass?' he said fiercely. "'If you didn't want to marry me, you should have told me so. I ain't gonna murder you, am I?' The ladies made shivered as he spoke to her, and dragged her little silk mantle closely around her. "'You're cold in all this here finery,' said Luke, staring at her costly dress, with no expression of goodwill. "'Why can't women dress according to their station? You won't have no silk gowns out of my pocket, I can tell you.' He lifted the shivering girl into the shez, wrapped a rough great-croat about her, and drove off through the yellow fog, followed by a feeble cheer from two or three urchins clustered around the gate. A new maid was brought from London to replace Phoebe Marks about the person of my lady, a very showy damsel, who wore a black satin gown and rose-colored ribbons in her cap, and complained bitterly of the dullness of oddly court. But Christmas brought visitors to the rambling old mansion. A country squire and his fat wife occupied the tapestry chamber. Merry girls scampered up and down the long passages, and young men stared out of the lattice-windows, watching for southerly winds and cloudy skies. There was not an empty stall in the roomy old stables. An extemporee forge had been set up in the yard for the shooing of hunters. Yelping dogs made the place noisy with their perpetual clamour. Strange servants herded together on the garret's story, and every little casement hidden away under some pointed gable, and every dormer window in the quaint old roof, glimmered upon the winter's night with its separate taper. Till, coming suddenly upon oddly court, the benighted stranger, misled by the light and noise and bustle of the place, might have easily fallen into young Marlowe's error, and have mistaken the hospitable mansion for a good old-fashioned inn. Such as have faded from this earth since the last mail-coach, and prancing tits took their last melancholy journey to the knackers' yard. Among other visitors, Mr. Robert Oddly came down to Essex for the hunting season, with half a dozen French novels, a case of cigars, and three pounds of Turkish tobacco in his portmanteau. The honest young country squires, who talked all breakfast time of flying Dutchman fillies in Voltiger colts, of glorious runs of seven hours hard riding over three counties, and a midnight homeward ride of thirty miles upon their covert hacks, and he ran away from the well-spread table with their mouths full of cold sirloin. To look at that off-pastern, or that sprained forearm, or the colt that had just come back from the veterinary surgeons, set down Robert Oddly, dawdling over a slice of bread and marmalade, as a person utterly unworthy of any remark whatsoever. The young barrister had brought a couple of dogs with him, and the country gentleman, who gave fifty pounds for a pointer, and traveled a couple of hundred miles to look at a leash of setters before he struck a bargain, laughed aloud at the two miserable currs, one of which had followed Robert Oddly through Chancery Lane, and half the length of Holburn, while his companion had been taken by the barrister, V. Ed Armie, from a costermonger who was ill using him. And as Robert furthermore insisted on having these two deplorable animals under his easy chair in the drawing-room, much the annoyance of my lady, who, as we know, hated all dogs, the visitors at Oddly Court looked upon the Baronet's nephew as an inoffensive species of maniac. During other visits to the court, Robert Oddly had made a feeble show of joining in the sports of the Mary Assembly. He had jogged across half a dozen plowed fields on a quiet gray pony of Sir Michaels, and drawing up breathless and panting at door of some farmhouse, had expressed his intention of following the hounds no further that morning. He had even gone so far as to put on, with great labor, a pair of skates, with a view to taking a turn on the frozen surface of the fish-pond, and had fallen ignominiously at the first attempt, lying placidly extended on the flat of his back, until such time as the bystanders should think fit to pick him up. He had occupied the back seat in a dog-car during a pleasant morning drive, vehemently protesting against being taken uphill, and requiring the vehicle to be stopped every ten minutes in order to readjust the cushions. But this year he showed no inclination for any of these outdoor amusements, and he spent his time entirely in lounging in the drawing-room, and making himself agreeable, after his own lazy fashion, to my lady and Elysia. Lady Oddly received her nephew's attentions in that graceful half-childish fashion which her admirers found so charming, but Elysia was indignant at the change in her cousin's conduct. "'You were always a poor, spiritless fellow, Bob,' said the young lady contemptuously, as she bounced into the drawing-room in her riding-habit after a hunting breakfast, from which Robert had absented himself, preferring a cup of tea in my lady's boudoir. But this year I don't know what has come to you. You are good for nothing but to hold a skein of silk, or read Tennyson to Lady Oddly." "'My dear, hasty, impetuous Elysia, don't be violent,' said the young man imploringly. A conclusion isn't a five-barred gate, and you needn't give your judgment its head, as you give your mare at a land to hers when you're flying across country at the heels of an unfortunate fox. Lady Oddly interests me, and my uncle's county friends do not. Is that a sufficient answer, Elysia?' Miss Oddly gave her head a little scornful toss. "'It's as good an answer as I shall ever get from you, Bob,' she said impatiently. But pray, amuse yourself in your own way, lull in an easy-chair all day, with those two absurd dogs asleep on your knees. Spoil my lady's window-curtains with your cigars, and annoy everybody in the house with your stupid inanimate countenance.' Mr. Robert Oddly opened his handsome gray eyes to their widest extent at this charade, and looked helplessly at Miss Elysia. The young lady was walking up and down the room, slashing the skirt of her habit with her riding-whip. Her eyes sparkled with an angry flash, and a crimson glow burned under her clear-brown skin. The young barrister knew very well, by these diagnostics, that his cousin was in a passion. "'Yes,' she repeated, "'your stupid inanimate countenance. Do you know, Robert Oddly, that with all your mock-amiability you are brimful of conceit and superciliousness? You look down upon our amusements. You lift up your eyebrows and shrug your shoulders, and throw yourself back in your chair, and wash your hands of us and our pleasures. You are a selfish, cold-hearted, siborite.' Elysia! Good gracious me! The morning paper dropped out of his hands, and he sat feebly staring at his assailant. "'Yes, selfish, Robert Oddly, you take home half-starved dogs, because you like half-starved dogs. You stoop down and pat the head of every good-for-nothing cur in the village street, because you like good-for-nothing curs. You notice little children, and give them half-pence, because it amuses you to do so. But you lift your eyebrows a quarter of a yard when poor Sir Harry Towers tells a stupid story, and stare the poor fellow out of countenance with your lazy insolence, as to your amy-ability. You would let a man hit you and say thank you for the blow, rather than take the trouble to hit him again. But you wouldn't go half a mile out of your way to serve your dearest friend. Sir Harry is worth twenty of you, though he did write to ask me if my M-A-I-R at Elanta had recovered from the sprain. He can't spell or lift his eyebrows to the roots of his hair, but he would go through fire and water for the girl he loves, while you— At this very point, when Robert was most prepared to encounter his cousin's violence, and when Miss Elysia seemed about to make her strongest attack, the young lady broke down altogether and burst into tears. Robert sprang from his easy chair, upsetting his dogs on the carpet. "'Elysia, my darling, what is it? It's—it's—it's the feather of my hat that got into my eyes,' sobbed his cousin, and before he could investigate the truth of this assertion, Elysia had darted out of the room. Robert Oddly was preparing to follow her when he heard her voice in the courtyard below, amidst the tramping of horses and the clamour of visitors, dogs, and grooms. Sir Harry Towers, the most aristocratic young sportsman in the neighbourhood, had just taken her little foot in his hand as she sprung into her saddle. "'Good Heaven!' exclaimed Robert, as he watched the merry party of equestrians until they disappeared under the archway. What does all this mean? How charmingly she sits her horse! What a pretty figure, too, and a fine, candid, brown, rosy face! But to fly at a fellow like that without the least provocation—that's the consequence of letting a girl follow the hounds. She learns to look at everything in life as she does at six feet of timber or a sunk fence. She goes through the world as she goes across country, straight ahead, and over everything. Such a nice girl as she might have been, too, as she'd been brought up in fig-tree court. If ever I marry and have daughters—which remote contingency may heaven forfend—they shall be educated in paper-buildings, take their sole exercise in the temple gardens, and they shall never go beyond the gates till they are marriageable, when I will walk them straight across Fleet Street to St. Dunstan's Church, and deliver them into the hands of their husbands. With such reflections as these did Mr. Robert oddly beguile the time until my lady re-entered the drawing-room, fresh and radiant in her elegant morning costume, her yellow curls glistening with the perfumed waters in which she had bathed, and her velvet-covered sketchbook in her arms. She planted a little easel upon a table by the window, seated herself before it, and began to mix the colors upon her palette, Robert watching her out of his half-closed eyes. "'You are sure my cigar does not annoy you, lady oddly?' "'Oh, no, indeed. I am quite used to the smell of tobacco. Mr. Dawson, the surgeon, smoked all the evening when I lived in his house.' "'Dawson is a good fellow, isn't he?' Robert asked carelessly. My lady burst into her pretty gushing laugh. "'The dearest of good creatures,' she said. "'He paid me five and twenty pounds a year. Only fancy, five and twenty pounds. That made six pounds five a quarter. How well I remember receiving the money. Six dingy old sovereigns and a little heap of untidy, dirty silver that came straight from the tail in the surgery. And then how glad I was to get it. "'Well, now! I can't help laughing while I think of it. These colors I am using cost a guinea each at Windsor and Newtons, the Carmine and Ultramarine, thirty shillings. I gave Mrs. Dawson one of my silk dresses the other day, and the poor thing kissed me, and the surgeon carried the bundle home under his cloak.' My lady laughed long and joyously at the thought. Her colors were mixed. She was copying a water-colored sketch of an impossibly turneresque atmosphere. The sketch was nearly finished, and she had only to put in some critical little touches with the most delicate of her sable pencils. She prepared herself daintily for the work, looking sideways at the painting. All this time Mr. Robert Oddly's eyes were fixed intently on her pretty face. "'It is a change,' he said, after so long a pause that my lady might have forgotten what she had been talking of. It is a change.' Some women would do a great deal to accomplish such a change as that. Lady Oddly's clear blue eyes dilated as she fixed them suddenly on the young barrister. The wintry sunlight, gleaming full upon her face from a side window, lit up the azure of those beautiful eyes, till their colors seemed to flicker and tremble betwixt blue and green as the opal tents of the sea changed upon a summer's day. The small brush fell from her hand, and blotted out the peasant's face under a widening circle of crimson lake. Robert Oddly was tenderly coaxing the crumbled leaf of his cigar with cautious fingers. "'My friend at the corner of Chansey Lane has not given me such good manillas as usual,' he murmured. "'If ever you smoke, my dear aunt, and I am told that many women take a quiet weed under the rose, be very careful how you choose your cigars.' My lady drew a long breath, picked up her brush, and laughed aloud at Robert's advice. "'What an eccentric creature you are, Mr. Oddly! Do you know that you sometimes puzzle me?' "'Not more than you puzzle me, dear aunt.' My lady put away her colors and sketchbook, and seating herself at the deep recess of another window, at a considerable distance from Robert Oddly, settled to a large piece of Berlin woolwork, a piece of embroidery which the Penelope's of ten or twelve years ago were very fond of exercising their ingenuity upon, the olden time at Bolton Abbey. Seated in the embrasure of this window, my lady was separated from Robert Oddly by the whole length of the room, and the young man could only catch an occasional glimpse of her fair face, surrounded by its bright oriole of hazy golden hair. Robert Oddly had been a week at the court, but as yet neither he nor my lady had mentioned the name of George Tall Boyce. This morning, however, after exhausting the usual topics of conversation, Lady Oddly made an inquiry about her nephew's friend. "'That, Mr. George—George,' she said, hesitating. "'Tall Boyce,' suggested Robert. "'Yes, to be sure, Mr. George Tall Boyce. Rather a singular name by the by, and certainly by all accounts, a very singular person. Have you seen him lately?' I have not seen him since the seventh of September last, the day upon which he left me asleep in the meadows on the other side of the village. "'Dear me,' exclaimed my lady, what a very strange young man this Mr. George Tall Boyce must be. Pray, tell me all about it.' Robert told, in a few words, of his visit to South Hampton and his journey to Liverpool, with their difference results, my lady listening very attentively. In order to tell this story to better advantage, the young man left his chair, and crossing the room took up his place opposite to Lady Oddly in the embrasure of the window. "'And what do you infer from all this?' asked my lady after a pause. "'It is so great a mystery to me,' he answered, that I scarcely dare to draw any conclusion whatever. But in the obscurity I think I can grope my way to two suppositions, which to me seem almost certainties.' "'And they are?' "'First, that George Tall Boyce never went beyond South Hampton. Second, that he never went to South Hampton at all.' "'But you traced him there. His father-in-law had seen him. I have reason to doubt his father-in-law's integrity.' "'Good gracious me!' cried my lady piteously. "'What do you mean by all this?' "'Lady Oddly,' answered the young man gravely, "'I have never practised as a barrister. I have enrolled myself in the ranks of a profession, the members of which hold solemn responsibilities and have sacred duties to perform, and I have shrunk from those responsibilities and duties, as I have from all the fatigues of this troublesome life. But we are sometimes forced into the very position we have most avoided, and I have found myself lately compelled to think of these things. Lady Oddly, did you ever study the theory of circumstantial evidence?' "'How can you ask a poor little woman about such horrid things?' exclaimed my lady.' "'Circumstantial evidence,' continued the young man, as if he had scarcely heard Lady Oddly's interruption. That wonderful fabric which is built out of straws collected at every point of the compass, and which is yet strong enough to hang a man. Upon what infinitesimal trifles may sometimes hang the whole secret of some wicked mystery, inexplicable here to forward to the wisest upon the earth? A scrap of paper, a shred of some torn garment, the button off a coat, a word dropped in cautiously from the overcautious lips of guilt, the fragment of a letter, the shutting or opening of a door, a shadow on a window blind, the accuracy of a moment tested by one of Benson's watches. A thousand circumstances so slight as to be forgotten by the criminal, but links of iron in the wonderful chain forged by the science of the detective officer, and lo, the gallows is built up, the solemn bell tolls through the dismal gray of the early morning, the drop creaks under the guilty feet, and the penalty of crime is paid. Faint shadows of green and crimson fell upon my lady's face from the painted discutions in the mullioned window by which she sat, but every trace of the natural color of that face had faded out, leaving it a ghastly, ashen gray. Sitting quietly in her chair, her head fallen back upon the amber damask cushions, and her little hands lying powerless in her lap, Lady Audley had fainted away. The radius grows narrower day by day, said Robert Audley. George Tall Boy's never reached Southampton. The Christmas Week was over, and one by one the country visitors dropped away from Audley Court. The fat squire and his wife abandoned the gray tapestry chamber, and left the black-browed warriors looming from the wall to scowl upon and threaten new guests, or to glare vengefully upon vacancy. The merry girls on the second story packed, or caused to be packed, their trunks and imperials, and tumbled gauze ball-dresses were taken home that had been brought fresh to Audley. Blundering old family chariots, with horses whose untrimmed fetlocks told of rougher work than even country roads, were brought round to the broad space before the grim oak door, and laden with chaotic heaps of womanly luggage. Pretty rosy faces peeped out of carriage windows to smile the last farewell upon the group at the hall door, as the vehicle rattled and rumbled under the ivied archway. Sir Michael was in request everywhere. Shaking hands with the young sportsmen, kissing the rosy-cheeked girls, sometimes even embracing portly matrons who came to thank him for their pleasant visit, everywhere genial, hospitable, generous, happy, and beloved, the bairnut hurried from room to room, from the hall to the stables—from the stables to the courtyard, from the courtyard to the arched gateway to speed the parting guest. My lady's yellow curls flashed hither and thither like wandering gleams of sunshine on these busy days of farewell. Her great blue eyes had a pretty mournful look, in charming unison with the soft pressure of her little hand, and that friendly, though perhaps rather stereotyped speech, in which she told her visitors how she was so sorry to lose them, and how she didn't know what she should do till they came once more to enliven the court by their charming society. But however sorry my lady might be to lose her visitors, there was at least one guest whose society she was not deprived of. Robert Oddly showed no intention of leaving his uncle's house. He had no professional duties, he said. Fig tree court was delightfully shady in hot weather, but there was a sharp corner around which the wind came in the winter months, armed with avenging rheumatisms and influences. Everybody was so good to him at the court, that really he had no inclination to hurry away. Sir Michael had but one answer to this. Stay, my dear boy! Stay, my dear Bob, as long as ever you like! I have no son, and you stand to me in the place of one. Make yourself agreeable to Lucy, and make the court your home as long as you live." To which Robert would merely reply by grasping his uncle's hand vehemently, and muttering something about a jolly old prince. It was to be observed that there was sometimes a certain vague sadness in the young man's tone when he called Sir Michael a jolly old prince. Some shadow of affectionate regret that brought him mist into Robert's eyes, as he sat in a corner of the room looking thoughtfully at the white-bearded baronet. Before the last of the young sportsmen departed, Sir Harry Towers demanded and obtained an interview with Miss Elysee Oddly in the Oak Library, an interview in which considerable emotion was displayed by the stalwart young Fox Hunter—so much emotion, indeed, and of such a genuine and honest character, that Elysee had fairly broke down as she told him she should forever esteem and respect him, for his true and noble heart, but that he must never, never unless he wished to cause her the most cruel distress, ask more from her than this esteem and respect. Sir Harry left the library by the French window opening into the pond-garden. He strolled into that very limewalk which George Towers had compared to an avenue in a churchyard, and under the leafless trees fought the battle of his brave young heart. What a fool I am to feel it like this! he cried, stamping his foot upon the frosty ground. I always knew it would be so. I always knew that she was a hundred times too good for me. God bless her! How nobly and tenderly she spoke! How beautiful she looked with the crimson blushes under her brown skin, and the tears in her big gray eyes! Almost as handsome as the day she took the sunk fence, and let me put the brush in her hat as we rode home. God bless her! I can get over anything as long as she doesn't care for that sneaking lawyer. But I couldn't stand that. That sneaking lawyer, by which Appalachian Sir Harry alluded to Mr. Robert Oddly, was standing in the hall, looking at a map of the Midland Counties, when Alicia came out of the library with red eyes after her interview with the fox-hunting baronet. Robert, who was short-sighted, had his eyes within half an inch of the surface of the map as the young lady approached him. "'Yes,' he said. Norwich is in Norfolk, and that fool young Vincent said it was in Herefordshire. Ha! Alicia, is that you?' He turned round so as to intercept Miss Oddly on her way to the staircase. "'Yes,' replied his cousin curtly, trying to pass him. "'Alicia, you have been crying.' The young lady did not condescend to reply. "'You have been crying, Alicia. Sir Harry Towers of Towers Park and the County of Hartfordshire has been making you an offer of his hand, eh?' "'Have you been listening at the door, Mr. Oddly?' "'I have not, Miss Oddly. On principle, I object to listen, and in practice I believe it to be a very troublesome proceeding. But I am a barrister, Miss Alicia, and able to draw a conclusion by induction. "'Do you know what inductive evidence is, Miss Oddly?' "'No,' replied Alicia, looking at her cousin as a handsome young panther might look at its daring tormentor. "'I thought not. I daresay Sir Harry would ask if it was a kind of new horse-ball. I knew by induction that the baronet was going to make you an offer. First, because he came downstairs with his hair parted on the wrong side, and his face as pale as a tablecloth. Secondly, because he could need any breakfast, and let his coffee go the wrong way. And thirdly, because he asked for an interview with you before he left the court. "'Well, how's it to be, Alicia? Do we marry the baronet, and his poor cousin Bob, to be the best man at the wedding?' "'Sir Harry Towers is a noble-hearted young man,' said Alicia, still trying to pass her cousin. "'But do we accept him? Yes or no? Are we to be Lady Towers, with a superb estate in Hartfordshire, summer quarters for our hunters, and a drag with outriders to drive us across to Papa's place in Essex? Is it to be so, Alicia, or not?' "'What is that to you, Mr. Robert Oddly?' cried Alicia passionately. "'What do you care what becomes of me, or whom I marry? If I married a chimney-sweep, you'd only lift up your eyebrows and say, Bless my soul, she always was eccentric. I have refused, Sir Harry Towers, but when I think of his generous and unselfish affection, and compare it with the heartless, lazy, selfish, super-cilious indifference of other men, I have a good mind to run after him and tell him that she'll retract and be my Lady Towers.' "'Yes.' "'Then don't, Alicia. Don't,' said Robert Oddly, grasping his cousin's slender wrist and leading her upstairs. "'Come into the drawing-room with me, Alicia—my poor little cousin—my charming, impetuous, alarming little cousin. Sit down here in this mullied window, and let us talk seriously, and leave off quarreling, if we can.' The cousins had the drawing-room all to themselves. Sir Michael was out, my lady in her own apartments, and poor Sir Harry Towers walking up and down upon the gravel walk, darkened with the flickering shadows of the leafless branches in the cold winter sunshine. "'My poor little Alicia,' said Robert, as tenderly as if he had been addressing some spoiled child. "'Do you suppose that because people don't wear vinegar tops, or part their hair on the wrong side, or conduct themselves altogether after the manner of well-meaning maniacs by way of proving the vehemence of their passion? "'Do you suppose, because of this, Alicia, Oddly, that they may not be just as sensible of the merits of a dear little warm-hearted and affectionate girl as ever their neighbours can be? Life is such a very troublesome matter, when all is said and done, that it's as well even to take its blessings quietly. "'I don't make a great howling, because I can get good cigars one door from the corner of Chancery Lane, and have a dear good girl for my cousin, but I am not the less grateful to Providence that it is so.' Alicia opened her gray eyes to their widest extent, looking her cousin full in the face with a bewildered stare. Robert had picked up the ugliest and leanest of his attendant curves, and was placidly stroking the animal's ears. "'Is this all you have to say to me, Robert?' said Miss Oddly, meekly. "'Well, yes, I think so,' replied her cousin, after considerable deliberation. "'I fancy that what I wanted to say was this. Don't marry the fox-hunting Baronet, if you like anybody else, better. For if you'll only be patient and take life easily, and try and reform yourself of banging doors, bouncing in and out rooms, talking of the stables, and rioting across country, I've no doubt the person you prefer will make you a very excellent husband.' "'Thank you, cousin,' said Miss Oddly, crimsoning with bright indignant blushes up to the roots of her waving brown hair. "'But as you may not know the person I prefer, I think you would better not take upon yourself to answer for him.' Robert pulled the dog's ears thoughtfully for some moments. "'No, to be sure,' he said after a pause. "'Of course, if I don't know him. I thought I did.' "'Did you?' exclaimed Elysia, and opening the door with a violence that made her cousin shiver, she bounced out of the drawing-room. "'I only said I thought I knew him,' Robert called after her, and then as he sunk into an easy chair he murmured thoughtfully. Such a nice girl, too, if she didn't bounce.' So poor Sir Harry Towers rode away from Oddly Court, looking very crestfallen and dismal. He had very little pleasure in returning to the stately mansion, hidden among sheltering oaks and venerable beaches. The square red brick house, gleaming at the end of a long arcade of leafless trees, was to be forever desolate, he thought, since Elysia would not come to be its mistress. A hundred improvements planned and thought of were dismissed from his mind as useless now. The hunter that Jim the trainer was breaking in for a lady, the two-pointer pups that were being reared for the next shooting season, the big black retriever that would have carried Elysia's parasol, the pavilion in the garden, disused since his mother's death, for which she had meant to have restored for Miss Oddly. All these things were now so much vanity and vexation of spirit. What's the good of being rich if one has no one to help spend one's money? said the young Baronet. One only grows a selfish beggar, and takes to drinking too much port. It's a hard thing that a girl can refuse a true heart, and such stables as we've got at the park. It unsettles a man, somehow. Indeed, this unlooked-for rejection had very much unsettled the few ideas which made up the small sum of the Baronet's mind. He had been desperately in love with Elysia ever since the last hunting season, when he had met her at the county ball. His passion, cherished through the slow monotony of a summer, had broken out afresh in the merry winter months, and the young man's mauvese aunt alone had delayed the offer of his hand. But he had never for a moment supposed that he would be refused. He was so used to the adulation of mothers who had daughters to marry, and of even the daughters themselves. He had been so accustomed to feel himself the leading personage in an assembly, although half the wits of the age had been there, and he could only say, Ha! to be sure! and, by Jove! He had been so spoiled by the flatteries of bright eyes that looked, or seemed to look, the brighter when he drew near, that without being possessed of one shadow of personal vanity, he had yet come to think that he had only to make an offer to the prettiest girl in Essex to behold himself immediately accepted. Yes, he would say complacently to some admiring satellite. I know I'm a good match, and I know what makes the gals so civil. They're very pretty, and they're very friendly to a fellow, but I don't care about them. They're all alike. They can only drop their eyes and say, Lord, Sir Harry, what do you call that curly black dog a retriever? Or, oh, Sir Harry, and did the poor mare really sprain her pastor and shoulder-blade? I haven't got much brains myself. I know, the baronet would add deprecatingly, and I don't want a strong-minded woman who writes books and wears green spectacles, but hang it! I like a gal who knows what she's talking about. So when Alicia said no, or rather made that pretty speech about esteem and respect which well-bred young ladies substitute for the obnoxious monosyllable, Sir Harry Towers felt that the whole fabric of the future he had built so complacently was shivered into a heap of dingy ruins. Sir Michael grasped him warmly by the hand just before the young man mounted his horse in the courtyard. I'm very sorry, Towers, he said. You're as good a fellow as ever breathed, and would have made my girl an excellent husband. But you know there's a cousin, and I think that don't say that, Sir Michael, interrupted the fox-hunter energetically. I can get over anything but that. A fellow whose hand upon the curb weighs half a ton. Why, he pulled the cavalier's mouth to pieces, sir, the day you let him ride the horse. A fellow who turns his collars down and eats bread and marmalade. No, no, Sir Michael. It's a queer world, but I can't think that of Miss Oddly. There must be someone in the background, sir. It can't be the cousin. Sir Michael shook his head as the rejected suitor rode away. I don't know about that, he muttered. Bob's a good lad, and the girl might do worse. But he hangs back as if he didn't care for her. There's some mystery. There's some mystery. The old baronet said this in that semi-thoughtful tone, with which we speak of other people's affairs. The shadows of the early winter twilight, gathering thickest under the low oak ceiling of the hall, and the quaint curb of the arched doorway, fill darkly around his handsome head. But the light of his declining life, his beautiful and beloved young wife, was near him, and he could see no shadows when she was by. She came skipping through the hall to meet him, and shaking her golden ringlets, buried her bright head on her husband's breast. So the last of our visitors is gone, dear, and we're all alone, she said. Isn't that nice? Yes, darling, he answered fondly, stroking her bright hair. Except, Mr. Robert Oddly, how long is that nephew of yours going to stay here? As long as he likes, my pet, he's always welcome," said the baronet, and then, as if remembering himself, he added tenderly, but not unless his visit is agreeable to you, darling, not if his lazy habits or his smoking or his dogs or anything about him is displeasing to you. Lady Oddly pursed up her rosy lips and looked thoughtfully at the ground. It isn't that, she said hesitatingly. Mr. Oddly is a very agreeable young man, and a very honourable young man. But you know, sir Michael, I'm rather a young aunt for such a nephew, and— And what, Lucy? asked the baronet fiercely. Poor Alicia is rather jealous of any attention Mr. Oddly pays me, and— and I think it would be better for her happiness if your nephew were to bring his visit to a close. He shall glow to-night, Lucy, exclaimed to Michael. I am a blind and neglectful fool not to have thought of this before. My lovely little darling! It was scarcely just to Bob to expose the poor lad to your fascinations. I know him to be as good and true-hearted a fellow as ever breathed, but— But he shall go to-night. But you won't be too abrupt, dear. You won't be rude. Rude? No, Lucy. I left him smoking in the lime-walk. I'll go and tell him that we must get out of the house in an hour. So in that leafless avenue, under whose gloomy shade George Tallboys had stood on that thunderous evening before the day of his disappearance, Sir Michael Oddly told his nephew that the court was no home for him, and that my lady was too young and pretty to accept the attentions of a handsome nephew of eight and twenty. Robert only shrugged his shoulders and elevated his thick black eyebrows as Sir Michael delicately hinted all this. I have been attentive to my lady, he said. She interests me. And then, with a change in his voice and an emotion not common to him, he turned to the baronet and grasping his hand exclaimed, God forbid, my dear uncle, that I should ever bring trouble upon such a noble heart as yours. God forbid that the slightest shadow of dishonour should ever fall upon your honoured head, least of all through agency of mine. The young man uttered these few words in a broken and disjointed fashion, in which Sir Michael had never heard him speak before, and then turning away his head, fairly broke down. He left the court that night, but he did not go far. Instead of taking the evening train for London, he went straight up to the little village of Mount Standing, and walking into the neatly kept inn, asked Phoebe Marks if he could be accommodated with apartments. END OF CHAPTER XVI. CHAPTER XVII. At the castle inn. The little sitting-room into which Phoebe Marks ushered the baronet's nephew was situated on the ground floor, and only separated by a lath and plaster partition from the little bar parlor occupied by the innkeeper and his wife. It seemed as though the wise architect who had superintended the building of the castle inn had taken a special care that nothing but the frailest and most flimsy material should be used, and that the wind, having a special fancy for this unprotected spot, should have full play for the indulgence of its caprices. To this end pitiful woodwork had been used instead of solid masonry, rickety ceilings had been propped up by fragile rafters, and beams that threatened on every stormy night to fall upon the heads of those beneath them, doors whose specialty was never to be shut, yet always to be banging, windows constructed with a peculiar view to letting in the draught when they were shut, and keeping out the air when they were open. The hand of genius had devised this lonely country inn, and there was not an inch of woodwork or a trowelful of plaster employed in all the rickety construction that did not offer its own peculiar weak point to every assault of its indy-fatigable foe. Robert looked around him with a feeble smile of resignation. It was a change decidedly from the luxurious comforts of oddly court, and it was rather a strange fancy of the young barrister to prefer loitering at this dreary village hostelry to returning to his snug chambers in fig tree court. But he had brought his lares and penates with him, in the shape of his German pipe, his tobacco canister, half a dozen French novels, and his two ill-conditioned canine favorites, which sat shivering before the smoky little fire, barking shortly and sharply now and then, by way of hinting for some slight refreshment. While Mr. Robert Oddly contemplated his new quarters, Phoebe Marks summoned a little village lad who was in the habit of running errands for her, and taking him into the kitchen, gave him a tiny note, carefully folded and sealed. You know Oddly Court? Yes, ma'am. If you'll run there with this letter to-night, and see that it's put safely in Lady Oddly's hands, I'll give you a shilling. Yes, ma'am. You understand. Ask to see my lady. You can say you have a message, not a note, mind, but a message from Phoebe Marks, and when you see her, give this into her own hand. Yes, ma'am. You won't forget. No, ma'am. Then be off with you. The boy waited for no second bidding, but in another moment was scheduling along the lonely high road, down the sharp descent that led to Oddly. Phoebe Marks went to the window, and looked out the black figure of the lad hurrying through the dusky winter evening. If there's any bad meaning in his coming here, she thought, my lady will know of it in time at any rate. Phoebe herself brought the neatly arranged tea-tray and the little-covered dish of ham and eggs which had been prepared for this unlooked-for visitor. Her pale hair was as smoothly braided, and her light grey dress fitted as precisely as of old. The same neutral tints pervaded her person and her dress. No showy rose-colored ribbons, or rustling silk gown, proclaimed the well-to-do innkeeper's wife. Phoebe Marks was a person who never lost her individuality. Silent and self-constrained, she seemed to hold herself within herself, and take no color from the outer world. Robert looked at her thoughtfully as she spread the cloth, and drew the table nearer to the fireplace. That, he thought, is a woman who could keep a secret. The dogs looked rather suspiciously at the quiet figure of Mrs. Marks gliding softly about the room, from the teapot to the caddy, and from the caddy to the kettle singing on the hob. "'Will you pour out my tea for me, Mrs. Marks?' said Robert, seating himself on a horse-hair-covered arm-chair, which fitted him as tightly in every direction as if he had been measured for it. "'You have come from the court, sir,' said Phoebe, as she handed Robert the sugar-basin. "'Yes, I only left my uncles an hour ago.' "'And my lady, sir, was she quite well?' "'Yes, quite well.' "'As gay and light-hearted as ever, sir.' "'As gay and light-hearted as ever.' Phoebe retired respectfully after having given Mr. Oddly his tea, but as she stood with her hand upon the lock of the door he spoke again. "'You knew Lady Oddly when she was Miss Lucy Graham, did you not?' he asked. "'Yes, sir. I lived at Mrs. Dawson's when my lady was governess there.' "'Indeed. Was she long in the surgeon's family?' "'A year and a half, sir.' "'And she came from London?' "'Yes, sir.' "'And she was an orphan, I believe?' "'Yes, sir.' "'Always as cheerful as she is now.' "'Always, sir.' Robert emptied his teacup and handed it to Mrs. Marks. Their eyes met, a lazy look in his, and an active, searching glance in hers. "'This woman would be good in a witness-box,' he thought. It would take a clever lawyer to bother her in a cross-examination.' He finished his second cup of tea, pushed away his plate, fed his dogs, and lighted his pipe, while Phoebe carried off the tea-tray. The wind came whistling up across the frosty, open country, and through the leafless woods, and rattled fiercely at the window frames. "'There's a triangular draft from those two windows in the door that scarcely adds to the comfort of this apartment,' murmured Robert. "'And there certainly are pleasanter sensations than that of standing up to one's knees in cold water.' He poked the fire, padded his dogs, put on his great coat, rolled a rickety old sofa close to the hearth, wrapped his legs in his railway rug, and stretching himself at full length upon the narrow horse-hair cushion, smoked his pipe, and watched the bluish-gray wreaths curling upward to the dingy ceiling. "'No,' he murmured again. "'That is a woman who can keep a secret. A counsel for the prosecution could get very little out of her.' I have said that the bar parlor was only separated from the sitting-room occupied by Robert by a laugh-and-plaster partition. The young barrister could hear the two or three village tradesmen, and a couple of farmers laughing and talking round the bar, while Luke Marks served them from his stock of liquors. Very often he could even hear their words, especially the landlords, for he spoke in a coarse, loud voice, and had a more boastful manner than any of his customers. "'The man is a fool,' said Robert, as he laid down his pipe. "'I'll go and talk to him by and by.' He waited till the few visitors to the castle had dropped away one by one, and when Luke Marks had bolted the door upon the last of his customers, he strolled quietly into the bar parlor where the landlord was seated with his wife. Phoebe was busy at a little table, upon which stood a prim work-box, with every reel of cotton and glistening steel bodkin in its appointed place. She was darting the coarse gray stockings that adorned her husband's awkward feet, but she did her work as daintily as if they had been my lady's delicate silken hose. I say that she took no color from external things, and that the vague air of refinement that pervaded her nature clung to her as closely in the society of her borish husband at the castle in, as in Lady Audley's boudoir at the court. She looked up suddenly as Robert entered the bar parlor, there was some shade of vexation in her pale gray eyes, which changed to an expression of anxiety, nay, rather of almost terror, as she glanced from Mr. Audley to Luke Marks. I've come in for a few minutes' chat before I go to bed, said Robert, settling himself very comfortably before the cheerful fire. Would you object to a cigar, Mrs. Marks? I mean, of course, to my smoking one, he added, explanatorily. Not at all, sir. It would be a good on her object into a bit of backer, growled Mr. Marks, when me and the customer's smokes all day. Robert lighted his cigar with a gilt-paper match of Phoebe's making that adorned the chimney-piece, and took half a dozen reflective puffs before he spoke. I want you to tell me all about Mount Standing, Mr. Marks, he said presently. Then that's pretty soon told, replied Luke, with a harsh grating laugh. Of all the dull holes as ever a man set foot in, this is about the dullest. Not that the business don't pay pretty tidy, I don't complain of that. But I should have liked it public at Chelmsford, or Brentwood, or Romford, or some place where there's a bit of life in the streets. And I might have had it, he added discontentedly, if folks hadn't been so precious, stingy. As her husband muttered this complaint in a grumbling undertone, Phoebe looked up from her work and spoke to him. We forgot the brew-house door, Luke, she said. Will you come with me and help me put up the bar? The brew-house door can bide for tonight, said Mr. Marks. I ain't a going to move now. I've seated myself for a comfortable smoke. He took a long clay pipe from a corner of the fender as he spoke, and began to fill it deliberately. I don't feel easy about that brew-house door, Luke, remonstrated his wife. There are always tramps about, and they can get in easily when the bar isn't up. Go and put the bar up yourself, then, can't you? asked Mr. Marks. It's too heavy for me to lift. Then let it bide if you're too fine a lady to see to it yourself. You're very anxious all of a sudden about this here brew-house door. I suppose you don't want me to open my mouth to this here gent, that's about it. Oh, you needn't frown at me to stop my speaking. You're always putting in your tongue and clipping off my words before I'd half set them, but I won't stand it. Do you hear? I won't stand it. Phoebe Marks shrugged her shoulders, folded her work and shut her work-box, and crossing her hands and her lap, sat with her gray eyes fixed upon her husband's bull-like face. Then you don't particularly care to live at Mount Standing? said Robert politely, as if anxious to change the conversation. No, I don't, answered Luke. And I don't care who knows it. And as I said before, if folks hadn't been so precious stingy, I might have had a public and a thriving market-town instead of this tumbledown old place, where a man has his hair blowed off his head on a windy day. What's fifty pound, or what's a hundred pound? Luke! Luke! No, you're not going to stop my mouth with all your Luke, Luke's! answered Mr. Marks to his wife's remonstrance. I say again, what's a hundred pound? No, answered Robert Oddly, with a wonderful distinctness, and addressing his words to Luke Marks, but fixing his eyes upon Phoebe's anxious face. What indeed is a hundred pounds to a man possessed of the power which you hold, or rather, which your wife holds, over the person in question? Phoebe's face, at all times almost colorless, seemed scarcely capable of growing paler. But as her eyelids drooped under Robert Oddly's searching glance, a visible change came over the pallet hues of her complexion. A quarter to twelve, said Robert, looking at his watch. Late hours for such a quiet village as Mount Standing! Good night, my worthy host! Good night, Mrs. Marks! You needn't send me my shaving water till nine o'clock to-morrow morning. End of Chapter 17 Chapter 18 of Lady Oddly's Secret This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Elizabeth Kletch Lady Oddly's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon Chapter 18 Robert receives a visitor whom he had scarcely expected. Eleven o'clock struck the next morning, and found Mr. Robert Oddly still lounging over the well-ordered little breakfast table, with one of his dogs at each side of his arm-chair, regarding him with watchful eyes and open mouths, awaiting the expected morsel of ham or toast. Robert had a county paper on his knees, and made a feeble effort now and then to read the first page, which was filled with advertisements of farming stock, quack medicines, and other interesting matter. The weather had changed, and the snow, which had for the last few days been looming blackly in the frosty sky, fell in great feathery flakes against the windows, and lay piled in the little bit of garden-ground without. The long, lonely road leading toward Oddly seemed untrodden by a footstep, as Robert Oddly looked out at the wintry landscape. Lively, he said, for a man used to the fascinations of Temple Bar. As he watched the snowflakes falling every moment thicker and faster upon the lonely road, he was surprised by seeing a broam driving slowly up the hill. I wonder what unhappy wretch has too restless a spirit to stop at home on such a morning as this, he muttered, as he returned to the arm-chair by the fire. He had only receded himself a few moments when Phoebe Marks entered the room to announce Lady Oddly. Lady Oddly! Pray beggar to come in! said Robert. And then, as Phoebe left the room to usher in this unexpected visitor, he muttered between his teeth, a false move, my lady, and one I never looked for from you. Lucy Oddly was radiant on this cold and snowy January morning. Other people's noses are rudely assailed by the sharp fingers of the grim ice-king, but not my ladies. Other people's lips turned pale and blue with the chilling influence of the bitter weather, but my lady's pretty little rosebud of a mouth retained its brightest coloring and teariest freshness. She was wrapped in the very sables which Robert Oddly had brought from Russia, and carried a muff that the young man thought seemed almost as big as herself. She looked a childish, helpless, babified little creature, and Robert looked down upon her with some touch of pity in his eyes, as she came up to the hearth by which he was standing, and warmed her tiny gloved hands at the blaze. What a morning, Mr. Oddly! she said. What a morning! Yes, indeed. Why did you come out on such weather? Because I wished to see you, particularly. Indeed. Yes, said my lady, with an air of considerable embarrassment, playing with the button of her glove, and almost wrenching it off in her restlessness. Yes, Mr. Oddly, I felt that you had not been well treated—that that you had, in short, reasoned to complain, and that an apology was due to you. I do not wish for any apology, Lady Oddly. But you are entitled to one, answered my lady quietly. Why, my dear Robert, should we be so ceremonious toward each other? You were very comfortable at Oddly. We were very glad to have you there. But, my dear, silly husband, must needs take it into his foolish head, that it is dangerous for his poor little wife's peace of mind to have a nephew of eight or nine and twenty smoking his cigars in her boudoir, and behold, our pleasant little family circle is broken up. Lucy Oddly spoke with that peculiar childish vivacity which seemed so natural to her, Robert looking down almost sadly at her bright, animated face. Lady Oddly, he said, Heaven forbid that either you or I should ever bring grief or dishonor upon my uncle's generous heart. Better, perhaps, that I should be out of the house—better, perhaps, that I had never entered it. My lady had been looking at the fire while her nephew spoke, but at his last word she lifted her head suddenly, and looked him full in the face with a wondering expression, an earnest, questioning gaze, whose full meaning the young barrister understood. Oh, pray do not be alarmed, Lady Oddly, he said gravely. You have no sentimental nonsense, no silly infatuation borrowed from Balzac or Dumas Fees to fear from me. The benchers of the inner-tempo will tell you that Robert Oddly is troubled with none of the epidemics whose outward signs are turned-down colors and bironic neckties. I say that I wish I had never entered my uncle's house during the last year, but I say it with a far more solemn meaning than any sentimental one. My lady shrugged her shoulders. If you insist on talking in enigmas, Mr. Oddly, she said, you must forgive a poor little woman if she declines to answer them. Robert made no reply to this speech. But tell me, said my lady, with an entire change of tone, what could have induced you to come up to this dismal place? Curiosity? Curiosity? Yes, I felt an interest in that bull-necked man with the dark red hair and wicked gray eyes, a dangerous man, my lady, a man in whose power I should not like to be. A sudden change came over Lady Oddly's face. The pretty rosate flush faded out from her cheeks and left them wax and white, and angry flashes lightened in her blue eyes. What have I done to you, Robert Oddly? she cried passionately. What have I done to you that you should hate me so? He answered her very gravely. I had a friend, Lady Oddly, whom I loved very dearly, and since I have lost him I fear that my feelings toward other people are strangely embittered. You mean the Mr. Tallboys who went to Australia? Yes, I mean the Mr. Tallboys who I was told set out for Liverpool with the idea of going to Australia. And you do not believe in his having sailed for Australia? I do not. But why not? Forgive me, Lady Oddly, if I declined to answer that question. As you please, she said carelessly. A week after my friend disappeared, continued Robert. I posted an advertisement to the Sydney and Melbourne papers, calling upon him, if he was in either city when the advertisement appeared, to write and tell me of his whereabouts, and also calling on anyone who had met him, either in the colonies or on the voyage out, to give me any information respecting him. George Tallboys left Essex, or disappeared from Essex, on the 6th of September last. I ought to receive some answer to this advertisement by the end of this month. Today is the 27th. The time draws very near. And if you receive no answer, asked Lady Oddly, If I receive no answer I shall think that my fears have been not unfounded, and I shall do my best to act. What do you mean by that? Ah, Lady Oddly, remind me how very powerless I am in this matter. My friend might have been made away with in this very inn, and I might stay here for a twelve-month, and go away at the last as ignorant of his fate, as if I had never crossed the threshold. What do we know of the mysteries that may hang about the houses we enter? If I were to go to-morrow into that commonplace, plebeian, eight-roomed house in which Maria Manning and her husband murdered their guest, I should have no awful presence of that bygone horror. Foul deeds have been done under the most hospitable roofs. Terrible crimes have been committed amidst the fairest scenes, and have left no trace upon the spot where they were done. I do not believe in mandrake, or in bloodstains that no time can efface. I believe rather that we may walk unconsciously in an atmosphere of crime, and breathe none the less freely. I believe that we may look into the smiling face of a murderer, and admire its tranquil beauty. My lady laughed at Robert's earnestness. You seemed to have quite a taste for discussing these horrible subjects, she said rather scornfully. You ought to have been a detective police officer. I sometimes think I should have been a good one. Why? Because I am patient. Let's return to Mr. George Tallboys, whom we lost sight of in your eloquent discussion. What if you receive no answer to your advertisements? I shall then consider myself justified in concluding my friend is dead. Yes. And then? I shall examine the effects he left at my chambers. Indeed! And what are they? Coats, waistcoats, varnished boots, and mirsham pipes, I suppose, said Lady Oddly, laughing. No. Letters. Letters from his friends, his old school fellows, his father, his brother officers. Yes. Letters, too, from his wife. My lady was silent for some moments, looking thoughtfully at the fire. Have you ever seen any of the letters written by the late Mrs. Tallboys? She asked presently. Never. Poor soul. Her letters are not likely to throw much light upon my friend's fate. I daresay she wrote the usual womanly scrawl. There are very few who write so charming and uncommon a hand as yours, Lady Oddly. Ah! You know my hand, of course. Yes. I know it very well, indeed. My lady warmed her hands once more, and then taking up the big muff which she had laid aside upon a chair, prepared to take her departure. You have refused to accept my apology, Mr. Oddly, she said. But I trust you are not the less assured of my feelings toward you. Perfectly assured, Lady Oddly. Then good-bye, and let me recommend you not to stay long in this miserable drafty place, if you do not wish to take rheumatism back to Fig Tree Court. I shall return to town to-morrow morning to see after my letters. Then once more. Good-bye. She held out her hand. He took it loosely in his own. It seemed such a feeble little hand that he might have crushed it in his strong grasp, had he chosen to be so pitiless. He attended her to her carriage, and watched it as it drove off, not toward Oddly, but in the direction of Brentwood, which was about six miles from Mount Standing. About an hour and a half after this, as Robert stood at the door of the inn, smoking a cigar and watching the snow falling in the whitened fields opposite, he saw the broam drive back, empty this time, to the door of the inn. Have you taken Lady Oddly back to the court? he said to the coachman, who had stopped to call for a mug of hot, spiced ale. No, sir, I've just come from the Brentwood station. My lady started for London by the twelve-forty train. For town? Yes, sir. My lady gone to London, said Robert as he returned to the little sitting-room. Then I'll follow her by the next train, and if I'm not very much mistaken, I know where to find her. He packed his portmanteau, paid his bill, fastened his dogs together with a couple of leathern collars and a chain, and stepped into the rumbling fly capped by the castle in for the convenience of Mount Standing. He caught an express that left Brentwood at three o'clock, and settled himself comfortably in a corner of an empty first-class carriage, coiled up in a couple of railway rugs, and smoking a cigar in mild defiance of the authorities. The Writing in the Book It was exactly five minutes past four as Mr. Robert Oddly stepped out upon the platform at Shoreditch, and waited placidly until such time as his dogs and his portmanteau should be delivered up to the attendant porter who had called his cab, and undertaken the general conduct of his affairs, with that disinterested courtesy which does such infinite credit to a class of servitors who are forbidden to accept the tribute of a grateful public. Robert Oddly waited with consummate patience for a considerable time, but as the express was generally a long train, and as there were a great many passengers from Norfolk carrying guns and pointers, and other paraphernalia of a critical description, it took a long while to make matters agreeable to all claimants, and even the barrister's seraphic indifference to mundane affairs nearly gave way. Perhaps when that gentleman who is making such a noise about a pointer with livery-colored spots has discovered the particular pointer and spots that he wants, which happy combination of events scarcely seems likely to arrive, they'll give me my luggage and let me go. The designing wretches knew at a glance that I was born to be imposed upon, and that if they were to trample the life out of me upon this very platform, I should never have the spirit to bring an action against the company. Suddenly an idea seemed to strike him, and he left the porter to struggle for the custody of his goods, and walked round to the other side of the station. He heard a bell-ring, and looking at the clock, had remembered that the down-train for Colchester started at this time. He had learned what it was to have an earnest purpose since the disappearance of George Tallboys, and he reached the opposite platform in time to see the passengers take their seats. There was one lady who had evidently only just arrived at the station, for she hurried on to the platform at the very moment that Robert approached the train, and almost ran against that gentleman in her haste and excitement. "'I beg your pardon,' she began ceremoniously, then raising her eyes from Mr. Oddly's waistcoat, which was about on a level with her pretty face, she exclaimed, "'Robert, you and London already.'" "'Yes, Lady Oddly, you were quite right. The castle in is a dismal place, and—' "'You got tired of it. I knew you would. Please open the carriage door for me. The train will start in two minutes.'" Robert Oddly was looking at his uncle's wife with rather a puzzled expression of countenance. "'What does it mean?' he thought. She is altogether a different being to the wretched, helpless creature who dropped her mask for a moment, and looked at me with her own pitiful face and the little room at Mount Standing four hours ago. What has happened to cause the change?' He opened the door for her while he thought this, and helped her to settle herself in her seat, spreading her furs over her knees and arranging the huge velvet mantle in which her slender little figure was almost hidden. "'Thank you very much. How good you are to me,' she said, as he did this. "'You will thank me very foolish to travel upon such a day.' "'Without my dear darling's knowledge, too. But I went up to town to settle a very terrific milliner's bill, which I did not wish my best of husbands to see. For indulgent as he is, he might think me extravagant, and I cannot bear to suffer even in his thoughts.' "'Heaven forbid that you ever should, Lady Oddly,' Robert said gravely. She looked at him for a moment with a smile which had something defiant in its brightness. "'Heaven forbid it indeed,' she murmured. "'I don't think I ever shall.' The second bell rung, and the train moved, as she spoke. The last Robert Oddly saw of her was that bright defiant smile. "'Whatever object broader to London has been successfully accomplished,' he thought. "'Has she baffled me by some piece of womanly jugglery? Am I never to get any nearer to the truth? But am I to be tormented all my life by vague doubts and wretched suspicions, which may grow upon me until I become a monomaniac? Why did she come to London?' He was still mentally asking himself this question, as he ascended the stairs in fig-tree court, with one of his dogs under each arm, and his railway rugs over his shoulder. He found his chambers in their accustomed order. The geraniums had been carefully tended, and the canaries had retired for the night, under cover of a square of green bays, testifying to the care of honest Mrs. Maloney. Robert cast a hurried glance round the sitting-room, then setting down the dogs upon the hearth-rug, he walked straight into the little inner chamber which served as his dressing-room. It was in this room that he kept disused Portmanteau's, battered Japan's cases, and other lumber, and it was in this room that George Tallboys had left his luggage. Robert lifted a Portmanteau from the top of a large trunk, and kneeling down before it with a lighted candle in his hand, carefully examined the lock. To all appearance it was exactly in the same condition in which George had left it, when he laid his morning garments aside and placed them in this shabby repository with all other memorials of his dead wife. Robert brushed his coat-sleeve across the worn, leather-covered lid, upon which the initials G.T. were inscribed with big, brass-headed nails. But Mrs. Maloney, the laundress, must have been the most precise of housewives, for neither the Portmanteau nor the trunk were dusty. Mr. Oddly dispatched a boy to fetch his Irish attendant, and paced up and down his sitting-room waiting anxiously for her arrival. She came in about ten minutes, and after expressing her delight in the return of the master, humbly awaited his orders. I only sent for you to ask if anybody has been here to-day—that is to say, if anybody has applied to you for the key of my rooms to-day. Any lady? Lady? No, indeed, Your Honor. There's been no lady for the K. Barnet's the blacksmith. The blacksmith? Yes, the blacksmith, Your Honor, ordered to come to-day. I ordered a blacksmith, exclaimed Robert. I left a bottle of French brandy in the cupboard, he thought, and Mrs. M has evidently been enjoying herself. Sure, and the blacksmith, Your Honor, told to see to the locks, replied Mrs. Maloney. It's him that lives down on one of the little streets by the bridge, she added, giving a very lucid description of the man's whereabouts. Robert lifted his eyebrows and mute to spare. If you'll sit down and compose yourself, Mrs. M, he said, he abbreviated her name thus on principle for the avoidance of unnecessary labour. Perhaps we shall be able by and by to understand each other. You say a blacksmith has been here? Sure, and I did, sir. Today? Quite correct, sir. Step by step, Mr. Oddly elicited the following information. A locksmith had called upon Mrs. Maloney that afternoon at three o'clock, and had asked for the key of Mr. Oddly's chambers, in order that he might look to the locks of the doors which he stated were all out of repair. He declared that he was acting upon Mr. Oddly's own orders, conveyed to him by a letter from the country, where the gentleman was spending his Christmas. Mrs. Maloney, believing in the truth of this statement, had admitted the man to the chambers, where he stayed about a half hour. But you were with him while he examined the locks, I suppose? Mr. Oddly asked. Sure I was, sir, in and out, as you may say, all the time, for I've been cleaning the stairs this afternoon, and I took the opportunity to begin my scouring while the man was at work. Oh, you were in and out all the time. If you could conveniently give me a plain answer, Mrs. M., I should be glad to know what was the longest time that you were out, while the locksmith was in my chambers. But Mrs. Maloney could not give a plain answer. It might have been ten minutes, though she didn't think it was as much. It might have been a quarter of an hour, but she was sure it wasn't more. It didn't seem to her more than five minutes. But them stares, Your Honor, and here she rambled off into a disquisition upon the scouring of stairs in general, and the stairs outside Robert's chambers in particular. Mr. Oddly sighed to the weary sigh of mournful resignation. Never mind, Mrs. M., he said. The locksmith had plenty of time to do anything he wanted to do, I dare say, without your being any the wiser. Mrs. Maloney stared at her employer with mingled surprise and alarm. Sure, there wasn't anything for him to stale, Your Honor, bar on the birds and the geraniums, and—no, no, I understand. There, that'll do, Mrs. M. Tell me where the man lives, and I'll go and see him. But she'll have a bit of dinner first, sir. I'll go and see the locksmith before I have my dinner. He took up his hat as he announced his determination, and walked towards the door. The man's address, Mrs. M. The Irish woman directed him to a small street at the back of St. Bride's Church, and thither Mr. Robert Oddly quietly strolled, through the myery slush which simple Londoners call Snow. He found the locksmith, and at the sacrifice of the crown of his hat, contrived to enter the low, narrow doorway of a little open shop. A jet of gas was flaring in the unglazed window, and there was a very merry party in the little room behind the shop. But no one responded to Robert's, hello? The reason of this was sufficiently obvious. The merry party was so much absorbed in its own merriment as to be deaf to all commonplace summonses from the outer world, and it was only when Robert, advancing further into the cavernous little shop, made so bold as to open the half-glass door which separated him from the merry-makers that he succeeded in obtaining their attention. A very jovial picture of the tenor's school was presented to Mr. Robert Oddly upon the opening of the store. The locksmith, with his wife and family, and two or three droppers in of the female sex, were clustered about a table which was adorned by two bottles, not vulgar bottles of that colourless extract of the juniper berry much affected by the masses, but of bona fide port and sherry, fiercely strong sherry, which left a fiery taste in the mouth, nut-brown sherry, rather unnaturally brown, if anything, and fine old port, no sickly vintage, faded and thin from excessive age, but a rich, full-bodied wine, sweet and substantial and high-coloured. The locksmith was speaking as Robert Oddly opened the door. And with that, he said, she walked off as graceful as you please. The whole party was thrown into confusion by the appearance of Mr. Oddly, but it was to be observed that the locksmith was more embarrassed than his companions. He set his glass down so hurriedly that he spilled his wine, and wiped his mouth nervously with the back of his dirty hand. You called at my chambers today, Robert said quietly. Don't let me disturb you, ladies, this to the droppers in. You called at my chambers today, Mr. White, and—the man interrupted him. I hope, sir, you will be so good as to look over the mistake, he stammered. I'm sure, sir, I'm very sorry it should have occurred. I was sent for to another gentleman's chambers, Mr. Alwyn, in Garden Court, and the name slipped my memory, and, having done odd jobs before for you, I thought it must be you as wanted me to-day, and I called at Miss Maloney's for the key accordion. But directly I see the locks in your chambers, I says to myself. The gentleman's locks ain't out of order. The gentleman don't want all his locks repaired. But you stayed half an hour. Yes, sir, for there was one lock out of order, the door nice, the staircase, and I took it off and cleaned it and put it on again. I won't charge you nothing for the job, and I hope as you'll be as good as to look over the mistake as has occurred, which I've been in business thirteen years come July, and— Nothing of this kind ever happened before, I suppose, said Robert gravely. No, it's altogether a singular kind of business, not likely to come about every day. You've been enjoying yourself this evening, I see, Mr. White. You've done a good stroke of work to-day, all wager, made a lucky hit, and you're what you call standing treat, eh? Robert Oddly looked straight into the man's dingy face as he spoke. The locksmith was not a bad-looking fellow, and there was nothing that he needed been ashamed of in his face except the dirt, and that, as Hamlet's mother says, is common. But in spite of this, Mr. White's eyelids dropped under the young barrister's calm scrutiny, and he stammered out some apologetic sort of speech about his missus, and his missus's neighbors, and Port Wine and Sherry Wine, with as much confusion as if he, an honest mechanic in a free country, were called upon to excuse himself to Robert Oddly for being caught in the act of enjoying himself in his own parlor. Robert cut him short with a careless nod. Pray don't apologize, he said. I like to see people enjoy themselves. Good night, Mr. White. Good night, ladies. He lifted his hat to the missus, and the missus's neighbors, who were much fascinated by his easy manner and his handsome face, and left the shop. And so he muttered to himself when he went back to his chambers. With that she walked off as graceful as you please. Who was it that walked off? And what was the story which the locksmith was telling when I interrupted him at that sentence? Oh, George Tall Boys! George Tall Boys! Am I ever to come any nearer to the secret of your fate? Am I coming nearer it now? Slowly but surely. Is the radius to grow narrower day by day until it draws a dark circle around the home of those I love? How is it all to end? He sighed wearily as he walked slowly back across the flagged quadrangles in the temple to his own solitary chambers. Mrs. Maloney had prepared for him that bachelor's dinner, which, however excellent and nutritious in itself, has no claim to the special charm of novelty. She had cooked for him a mutton shop, which was soddening itself between two plates upon the little table near the fire. Robert oddly sighed as he sat down to the familiar meal, remembering his uncle's cook with a fond regretful sorrow. Her cutlets, all on mantinol, made mutton seem more than mutton, a sublimated meat that could scarcely have grown upon any mundane sheep, he murmured sentimentally, and Mrs. Maloney's chops are apt to be tough. But such is life. What does it matter? He pushed away his plate impatiently after eating a few mouthfuls. I have never eaten a good dinner at this table since I lost George Tallboys, he said. The place seems as gloomy as if the poor fellow had died in the next room, had never been taken away to be buried. How long ago that September afternoon appears as I look back at it? That September afternoon upon which I parted with him alive and well, and lost him as suddenly and unaccountably as if a trapped door had opened in the solid earth and let him through to the antipodes. Mr. Audley rose from the dinner table and walked over to the cabinet in which he kept the document he had drawn up relating to George Tallboys. He unlocked the doors of his cabinet, took the paper from the pigeonhole marked important, and seated himself at his desk to write. He added several paragraphs to those in the document, numbering the fresh paragraphs as carefully as he had numbered the old ones. Heaven help us all, he muttered once. Is this paper with which no attorney has had any hand to be my first brief? He wrote for about half an hour, then replaced the document in the pigeonhole and locked the cabinet. When he had done this he took a candle in his hand, and went into the room in which were his own portmanteaus in the trunk belonging to George Tallboys. He took a bunch of keys from his pocket and tried them one by one. The lock of the shabby old trunk was a common one, and at the fifth trial the key turned easily. There would be no need for anyone to break open a lock such as this, muttered Robert, as he lifted the lid of the trunk. He slowly emptied it of its contents, taking out each article separately, and laying it carefully upon a chair by his side. He handled the things with a respectful tenderness, as if he had been lifting the dead body of his lost friend. One by one he laid the neatly folded morning garments on the chair. He found old Mircham pipes, and soiled crumpled gloves that had once been fresh from the Parisian maker, old playbills, whose biggest letters spelled the names of actors who were dead and gone, old perfume bottles, fragrant with essences, whose fashion had passed away, neat little parcels of letters, each carefully labelled with the name of the writer, fragments of old newspapers, and a little heap of shabby, dilapidated books, each of which tumbled into as many pieces as a pack of cards in Robert's unconscious hand. But among all the mass of worthless litter, each scrap of which had once had its separate purpose. Robert Oddly looked in vain for that which he sought, the packet of letters written to the missing man by his dead wife Helen Talboys. He had heard George elude more than once to the existence of these letters. He had seen him once sorting the faded papers with a reverent hand, and he had seen him replace them, carefully tied together with a faded ribbon which had once been Helen's, among the morning garments in the trunk. Whether he had afterward removed them, or whether they had been removed since his disappearance by some other hand, it was not easy to say. But they were gone. Robert Oddly sighed wearily as he replaced the things in the empty box, one by one, as he had taken them out. He stopped with a little heap of tattered books in his hand, and hesitated for a moment. I will keep these out, he muttered. There may be something to help me in one of them. George's library was no very brilliant collection of literature. There was an old Greek testament, and the eaten Latin grammar, a French pamphlet on the cavalry sword exercise, an odd volume of Tom Jones with one half of its stiff leather cover hanging to it by a thread. Byron's Don Jewin printed in a murderous type, which must have been invented for the special advantage of occulists and opticians, and a fat book in a faded guilt and crimson cover. Robert Oddly locked the trunk and took the books under his arm. Mrs. Maloney was clearing away the remains of his repast when he returned to the sitting-room. He put the books aside on a little table in a corner of the fireplace, and waited patiently while the laundress finished her work. He was in no humour even for his mirsham, consolar. The yellow-papered fictions on the shelves above his head seemed stale and profitless. He opened a volume of Balzac, but his uncle's wife's golden curls danced and trembled in a glittering haze, alike upon the metaphysical Diablory of the Pau de Chagrin and the hideous social horrors of Cousin Bette. The volume dropped from his hand, and he sat weirdly watching Mrs. Maloney, as she swept up the ashes on the hearth, replenished the fire, drew the dark damask curtains, supplied the simple wants of the canaries, and put on her bonnet in the disused clerk's office, prior to bidding her employer good-night. As the door closed upon the Irish woman, he arose impatiently from his chair, and paced up and down the room. Why do I go on with this? he said. When I know that it is leading me, step by step, day by day, hour by hour, nearer to that conclusion which of all others I should avoid. Am I tied to a wheel, and must I go with its every revolution letting it take me where it will? Or can I sit down here to-night, and say I have done my duty to my missing friend, I have searched for him patiently, but I have searched in vain? Should I be justified in doing this? Should I be justified in letting the chain which I have slowly put together, link by link, drop at this point? Or must I go on, adding fresh links to that fatal chain, until the last rivet drops into its place, and the circle is complete? I think, and I believe, that I shall never see my friend's face again, and that no exertion of mine can ever be of any benefit to him. In plainer, crueler words, I believe him to be dead. Am I bound to discover how and where he died? Or being, as I think, on the road to that discovery, shall I do a wrong to the memory of George Tall Boy's by turning back or stopping still? What am I to do? What am I to do? He rested his elbows on his knees, and buried his face in his hands. The one purpose which had slowly grown up in his careless nature, until it had become powerful enough to work a change in that very nature, made him what he had never been before—a Christian. Conscious of his own weakness, anxious to keep to the strict line of duty, fearful to swerve from the conscientious discharge of the strange task that had been forced upon him, and reliant on a stronger hand than his own to point the way which he was to go. Perhaps he uttered his first earnest prayer that night, seated by his lonely fireside, thinking of George Tall Boy's. When he raised his head from that long and silent reverie, his eyes had a bright, determined glance, and every feature in his face seemed to wear a new expression. Justice to the dead first, he said, mercy to the living afterward. He wheeled his easy chair to the table, trimmed the lamp, and settled himself to the examination of the books. He took them up one by one, and looked carefully through them, first looking at the page on which the name of the owner is ordinarily written, and then searching for any scrap of paper which might have been left within the leaves. On the first page of the Eaton Latin Grammar, the name of Master Tall Boy's was written in a prim scholastic hand. The French pamphlet had a careless G.T. scrawled on the cover and pencil, in George's big, slovenly calligraphy. The Tom Jones had evidently been bought at a bookstore, and, born inscription, dated March 14, 1788, setting forth that the book was a tribute of respect to Mr. Thomas Scrotten, from his obedient servant, James Anderley. The Don Jewin and the Testament were blank. Robert Audley breathed more freely. He had arrived at the last but one of the books, without any result, whatever, and there only remained the fat, gilt and crimson bound volume to be examined before his task was finished. It was an annual of the year 1845. The copper-plate engravings of lovely ladies who had flourished in that day were yellow and spotted with mildew. The costumes grotesque and outlandish, the simpering beauties faded and commonplace. Even the little clusters of verses, in which the poet's feeble candle shed its sickly light upon the obscurities of the artist's meaning, had an old-fashioned twang, like music on a lyre whose strings are slackened by the damps of time. Robert Audley did not stop to read any of the mild productions. He ran rapidly through the leaves, looking for any scrap of writing or fragment of a letter which might have been used to mark a place. He found nothing but a bright ring of golden hair, of that glittering hue which is so rarely seen except upon the head of a child—a sunny lock, which curled as naturally as the tendril of a vine, and was very opposite in texture, if not different in hue, to the soft smooth tresses which the landlady Ed Ventner had given to George Tallboy's after his wife's death. Robert Audley suspended his examination of the book, and folded this yellow lock in a sheet of letter-paper, which he sealed with his signet-ring, and laid aside with the memorandum about George Tallboy's and Elysia's letter, in the pigeonhole marked important. He was going to replace the fat annual among the other books, when he discovered that the two blank leaves at the beginning were stuck together. He was so determined to prosecute his search to the very uttermost, that he took the trouble to part these leaves with the sharp end of his paper-knife, and he was rewarded for his perseverance by finding an inscription upon one of them. This inscription was in three parts, and in three different hands. The first paragraph was dated as far back as the year in which the annual had been published, and set forth that the book was the property of a certain Miss Elizabeth Anne Bintz, who had obtained the precious volume as a reward for habits of order, and for obedience to the authorities of Camford House Seminary, Torquay. The second paragraph was dated five years later, and was in the handwriting of Miss Bintz herself, who presented the book as a mark of undying affection and unfading esteem—Miss Bintz was evidently of a romantic temperament—to her beloved friend, Helen Maldon. The third paragraph was dated September, 1853, and was in the hand of Helen Maldon, who gave the annual to George Tallboy's, and it was at the site of this third paragraph that Mr. Robert Oddly's face changed from its natural hue to a sickly leaden pallor. Though I thought it would be so, said the young man, shutting the book with a weary sigh, God knows I was prepared for the worst, and the worst has come. I can understand all now. My next visit must be to Southampton. I must place the boy in better hands.