 CHAPTER 29 In the Lime Walk Robert Oddly was loitering upon the broad grass-plat in front of the court as the carriage containing my lady and Alicia drove under the archway, and drew up at the low turret door. Mr. Oddly presented himself in time to hand the ladies out of the vehicle. My lady looked very pretty in a delicate blue bonnet and the sables which her nephew had bought for her at St. Petersburg. She seemed very well pleased to see Robert, and smiled most bewitchingly as she gave him her exquisitely gloved little hand. So you have come back to us, truant," she said, laughing, and now that you have returned, we shall keep you prisoner. We won't let him run away again, will we, Alicia?" Miss Oddly gave her head a scornful toss that shook the heavy curls under her cavalier hat. "'I have nothing to do with the movements of so erratic an individual,' she said. Since Robert Oddly has taken it into his head to conduct himself like some ghost-haunted hero in a German story, I have given up attempting to understand him." Mr. Oddly looked at his cousin with an expression of serial comic perplexity. "'She's a nice girl,' he thought, but she's a nuisance. I don't know how it is, but she seems more a nuisance than she used to be.' He pulled his moustaches reflectively as he considered this question. His mind wandered away for a few moments from the great trouble of his life to dwell upon this minor perplexity. "'She's a dear girl,' he thought, a generous-hearted, bouncing, noble English lassie, and yet he lost himself in a quagmire of doubt and difficulty. There was some hitch in his mind which he could not understand. Some change in himself, beyond the change made in him by his anxiety about George Tall Boyce, which mystified and bewildered him. "'And pray, where have you been wandering during the last day or two, Mr. Oddly?' asked my lady, as she lingered with her stepdaughter upon the threshold of the turret door, waiting until Robert should be pleased to stand aside and allow them to pass. The young man started as she asked this question and looked up at her suddenly. Something in the aspect of her bright young beauty, something in the childish innocence of her expression, seemed to smite him to the heart, and his face grew ghastly pale as he looked at her. "'I have been in Yorkshire,' he said. At the little watering-place where my poor friend George Tall Boyce lived at the time of his marriage. The white change in my lady's face was the only sign of her having heard these words. She smiled, a faint, sickly smile, and tried to pass her husband's nephew. "'I must rest for dinner,' she said. "'I am going to a dinner-party, Mr. Oddly. Please let me go in.' "'I must ask you to spare me half an hour, Lady Oddly,' Robert answered in a low voice. "'I came down to Essex on purpose to speak to you.' "'What about?' asked my lady. She had recovered herself from any shock which she might have sustained a few moments before, and it was in her usual manner that she asked this question. Her face expressed the mingled bewilderment and curiosity of a puzzled child, rather than the serious surprise of a woman. "'What can you want to talk to me about, Mr. Oddly?' she repeated. "'I will tell you when we are alone,' Robert said, glancing at his cousin, who stood a little way behind my lady, watching this confidential little dialogue. "'He is in love with my stepmother's waxed-doll beauty,' thought Elysia, and it is for her sake he has become such a disconciled object. He is just the sort of person to fall in love with his aunt.' Miss Oddly walked away to the grass-plat, turning her back upon Robert and my lady. The absurd creature turned as white as a sheet when he saw her, she thought. So he can be in love, after all. That slow lump of torpedoity he calls his heart can beat, I suppose, once in a quarter of a century. But it seems that nothing but a blue-eyed waxed-doll can set it going. I should have given him up long ago if I had known that his idea of beauty was to be found in a toy-shop. Poor Elysia crossed the grass-plat and disappeared upon the opposite side of the quadrangle, and there was a gothic gate that communicated with the stables. I am sorry to say that Sir Michael Oddly's daughter went to seek consolation from her dog Caesar and her chestnut mare Atalanta, whose loose box the young lady was in the habit of visiting every day. "'Will you come into the lime-walk, Lady Oddly?' said Robert as his cousin left the garden. "'I wish to talk to you without fear of interruption or observation. I think we could choose no safer place than that. "'Will you come there with me?' "'If you please,' answered my lady, Mr. Oddly could see that she was trembling, and that she glanced from side to side as if looking for some outlet by which she might escape him. "'You are shivering, Lady Oddly,' he said. "'Yes, I am very cold. I would rather speak to you some other day, please. Let it be to-morrow, if you will. I have to dress for dinner, and I want to see Sir Michael. I have not seen him since ten o'clock this morning. Please let it be to-morrow.' There was a painful pettiness in her tone. Heaven knows how painful to Robert's heart. Heaven knows what horrible images arose in his mind as he looked down at that fair young face and thought of the task that lay before him. "'I must speak to you, Lady Oddly,' he said. "'If I am cruel, it is you who have made me cruel. You might have escaped this ordeal. You might have avoided me. I gave you fair warning. But you have chosen to defy me, and it is your own folly which is to blame if I no longer spare you. Come with me. I tell you again, I must speak to you.' There was a cold determination in his tone which silenced my lady's objections. She followed him submissively to the little iron gate which communicated with the long garden behind the house. The garden in which a little rustic wooden bridge led across the quiet fish pond into the lime-walk. The early winter twilight was closing in, and the intricate tracery of the leafless branches that overarch the lonely pathway looked black against the cold gray of the evening sky. The lime-walk seemed like some cloister in this uncertain light. "'Why do you bring me to this horrible place to frighten me out of my poor wits?' cried my lady, peevishly. "'You ought to know how nervous I am.' "'You are nervous, my lady.' "'Yes. Dreadfully nervous. I am worth a fortune to poor Mr. Dawson. He is always sending me camphor, and salvolatil, and red lavender, and all kinds of abominable mixtures. But he can't cure me.' "'Do you remember what Macbeth tells his physician, my lady?' said Robert Gravely. "'Mr. Dawson may be very much more clever than the Scottish leech. But I doubt if even he can minister to the mind that is diseased.' "'Who said that my mind was diseased?' exclaimed Lady Oddly. "'I say so, my lady,' answered Robert. "'You tell me that you are nervous, and that all the medicines your doctor can prescribe are only so much physics that might as well be thrown to the dogs. Let me be the physician to strike to the root of your malady, Lady Oddly. Heaven knows that I wish to be merciful, that I would spare you as far as it is in my power to spare you in doing justice to others. But justice must be done. But I tell you why you are nervous in this house, my lady.' "'If you can,' she answered with a little laugh. "'Because for you this house is haunted.' "'Haunted?' "'Yes. Haunted by the ghost of George Tall Boy's.' Robert Oddly heard my lady's quickened breathing. He fancied he could almost hear the loud beating of her heart as she walked by his side, shivering now and then, and with her sable cloak wrapped tightly around her. "'What do you mean?' she cried suddenly after a pause of some moments. "'Why do you torment me about this George Tall Boy's, who happens to have taken it into his head to keep out of your way for a few months? Are you going mad, Mr. Oddly? And do you select me as the victim of your monomania? What is George Tall Boy's to me that you should worry me about him?' He was a stranger to you, my lady. Was he not?' "'Of course,' answered Lady Oddly. "'What should he be but a stranger?' "'Shall I tell you the story of my friend's disappearance as I read that story, my lady?' asked Robert. "'No,' cried Lady Oddly. "'I wish to know nothing of your friend. If he is dead, I am sorry for him. If he lives, I have no wish either to see him or to hear of him. Let me go in to see my husband, if you please, Mr. Oddly, unless you wish to detain me in this gloomy place until I catch my death of cold. "'I wish to detain you until you have heard what I have to say, Lady Oddly,' answered Robert resolutely. "'I will detain you no longer than is necessary, and when you have heard me, you shall take your own course of action.' "'Very well, then. Pray lose no time in saying what you have to say,' replied my lady carelessly. "'I promise you to attend very patiently.' "'When my friend, George Tall Boy, has returned to England,' Robert began gravely. The thought which was uppermost in his mind was the thought of his wife. "'Whom he had deserted?' said my lady quickly. "'At least,' she added more deliberately. "'I remember you telling us something to that effect when you'd first told us your friend's story. Robert Oddly did not notice this observation.' The thought that was uppermost in his mind was the thought of his wife,' he repeated. His fairest hope in the future was the hope of making her happy, and lavishing upon her the pittance which he had won by the force of his own strong arm in the gold fields of Australia. I saw him within a few hours of his reaching England, and I was a witness to the joyful pride with which he looked forward to his reunion with his wife. I was also a witness to the blow which struck him to the very heart, which changed him from the man he had been, to a creature as unlike that former self as one human being can be unlike another. The blow which made that cruel change was the announcement of his wife's death in the Times newspaper. I now believe that announcement was a black and bitter lie.' "'Indeed,' said my lady, and what reason could anyone have for announcing the death of Mrs. Tallboys, if Mrs. Tallboys had been alive?' The lady herself might have had a reason.' Robert answered quietly. "'What reason?' "'How if she had taken advantage of George's absence to win a richer husband? How if she had married again, and wished to throw my poor friend off the scent by this false announcement?' Lady Oddly shrugged her shoulders. "'Your suppositions are rather ridiculous, Mr. Oddly,' she said. "'It is to be hoped that you have some reasonable grounds for them.' I have examined a file of each of the newspapers published in Chelmsford and Colchester,' continued Robert, without replying to my lady's last observation, and I find in one of the Colchester papers, dated July 2, 1950, a brief paragraph among numerous miscellaneous scraps of information copied from other newspapers, to the effect that a Mr. George Tallboys, an English gentleman, had arrived at Sydney from the Goldfields, carrying with him nuggets and gold dust to the amount of twenty thousand pounds, and that he had realised his property and sailed for Liverpool in the fast-sailing clipper Argus. This is a very small fact, of course, Lady Oddly, but it is enough to prove that any person residing in Essex in the July of the year 57 was likely to become aware of George Tallboys's return from Australia. Do you follow me?" "'Not very clearly,' said my lady. "'What have the Essex papers to do with the death of Mrs. Tallboys?' "'We will come to that by and by, Lady Oddly. I say that I believe the announcement in the Times to have been a false announcement, and a part of the conspiracy which was carried out by Helen Tallboys and Lieutenant Maldon against my poor friend.' "'A conspiracy?' "'Yes, a conspiracy concocted by an artful woman, who had speculated upon the chances of her husband's death, and had secured a splendid position at the risk of committing a crime. A bold woman, my lady, who thought to play her comedy out to the end without fear of detection—a wicked woman, who did not care what misery she might inflict upon the honest heart of the man she betrayed—but a foolish woman, who looked at life as a game of chance, in which the best player was likely to hold the winning cards—forgetting that there is a providence above the pitiful speculators, and that wicked secrets are never permitted to remain long hidden. If this woman of whom I speak had never been guilty of any blacker sin than the publication of that lying announcement in the Times newspaper, I should still hold her as the most detestable and despicable of her sex—the most pitiless and calculating of human creatures. That cruel lie was a base and cowardly blow in the dark. It was the treacherous dagger-thrust of an infamous assassin. "'But how do you know that the announcement was a false one?' asked my lady. "'You told us that you had been to Ventner with Mr. Tallboys to see his wife's grave. Who was it who died at Ventner if it was not Mrs. Tallboys?' "'Ah, Lady Audley,' said Robert. "'That is a question which only two or three people can answer, and one or other of those persons shall answer it to me before long. I tell you, my lady, that I am determined to unravel the mystery of George Tallboys's death. Do you think I am to be put off by feminine prevarication, by womanly trickery? No. Link by link I have put together the chain of evidence, which wants but a link here and there to be complete in its terrible strength. Do you think I will suffer myself to be baffled? Do you think I shall fail to discover those missing links? No, Lady Audley. I shall not fail, for I know where to look for them. There is a fair-haired woman at Southampton, a woman called Plouson, who has had some share in the secrets of the father of my friend's wife. I have an idea that she can help me to discover the history of the woman who lies buried in Ventner's churchyard, and I will spare no trouble in making that discovery, unless—unless what?' asked my lady eagerly. Unless the woman I wish to save from degradation and punishment accepts the mercy I offer her, and takes warning while there is still time. My lady shrugged her graceful shoulders, and flashed bright defiance out of her blue eyes. She would be a very foolish woman if she suffered herself to be influenced by any such absurdity, she said. You are a hypochondriacal, Mr. Audley, and you must take camphor, or red lavender, or salvolatil. What can be more ridiculous than this idea which you have taken into your head? You lose your friend George Talboys in rather a mysterious manner, that is to say that gentleman chooses to leave England without giving you due notice. What of that? You confess that he became an altered man after his wife's death. He grew eccentric and misanthropical. He affected an utter indifference as to what became of him. What more likely then? That he grew tired of the monotony of civilized life, and ran away to those savage gold fields to find a distraction for his grief. It is rather a romantic story, but by no means an uncommon one. But you are not satisfied with the simple interpretation of your friend's disappearance, and you build up some absurd theory of a conspiracy which has no existence except in your own overheated brain. Helen Talboys is dead. The Times newspaper declares that she is dead. Her own father tells you she is dead. The headstone of the grave in Ventner Churchyard bears record of her death. By what right, cried my lady, her voice rising to that shrill and piercing tone peculiar to her when affected by any intense agitation? By what right, Mr. Oddly, do you come to me, and torment me about George Talboys? By what right do you dare to say that his wife is still alive? By the right of circumstantial evidence, Lady Oddly, answered Robert, By the right of that circumstantial evidence which will sometimes fix the guilt of a man's murder upon that person who, on the first hearing of the case, seems of all other men the most unlikely to be guilty. What circumstantial evidence? The evidence of time and place, the evidence of handwriting. When Helen Talboys left her father's at Wildernsey, she left a letter behind her. A letter in which she declared that she was weary of her old life, and that she wished to seek a new home and a new fortune. That letter is in my possession. Indeed. Shall I tell you whose handwriting resembles that of Helen Talboys so closely that the most dexterous expert could perceive no distinction between the two? A resemblance between the handwriting of two women is no very uncommon circumstance nowadays, replied my lady carelessly. I could show you the calligraphies of half a dozen female correspondence, and defy you to discover any great difference in them. But what if the handwriting is a very uncommon one, presenting marked peculiarities by which it may be recognized among a hundred? Why, in that case, the coincidence is rather curious, answered my lady. But it is nothing more than a coincidence. You cannot deny the fact, if Helen Talboys' death on the ground, that her handwriting resembles that of some surviving person. But if a series of such coincidences lead up to the same point, said Robert, Helen Talboys left her father's house, according to the declaration in her own handwriting, because she was weary of her old life, and wished to begin a new one. Do you know what I infer from this? My lady shrugged her shoulders. I have not the least idea, she said, and as you have detained me in this gloomy place nearly half an hour, I must beg that you will release me, and let me go and dress for dinner. No, Lady Oddly! answered Robert with a cold sternness that was so strange to him as to transform him into another creature. A pettiless embodiment of justice, a cruel instrument of retribution. No, Lady Oddly! he repeated, I have told you that womanly prevarication will not help you. I tell you now that defiance will not serve you. I have dealt fairly with you, and have given you fair warning. I gave you indirect notice of your danger two months ago. What do you mean? asked my lady suddenly. You did not choose to take that warning, Lady Oddly! pursued Robert. And the time is common which I must speak very plainly to you. Do you think the gifts which you have played against Fortune are to hold you exempt from retribution? No, my lady. Your youth and beauty, your grace and refinement, only make the horrible secret of your life more horrible. I tell you that the evidence against you wants only one link to be strong enough for your condemnation, and that link shall be added. Helen Talboys never returned to her father's house. When she deserted that poor old father, she went away from his humble shelter with the declared intention of washing her hands of that old life. What do people generally do when they wish to begin a new existence? To start for a second time in the race of life, free from the encumbrances that had fettered their first journey. They changed their names, Lady Oddly. Helen Talboys deserted her infant son. She went away from wildernessy with the predetermination of sinking her identity. She disappeared as Helen Talboys upon the 16th of August, 1854, and upon the seventeenth of that month, she reappeared as Lucy Graham, the friendless girl who undertook a profitless duty in consideration of a home in which she was asked no questions. You are mad, Mr. Oddly, cried my lady. You are mad, and my husband shall protect me from your insolence. What if this Helen Talboys ran away from her home upon one day, and I entered my employer's house upon the next? What does that prove? By itself very little, replied Robert Oddly, but with the help of other evidence. What evidence? The evidence of two labels pasted one over the other, upon a box left by you in possession of Mrs. Vincent, the upper label bearing the name of Miss Graham, the lower that of Mrs. George Talboys. My lady was silent. Mr. Oddly could not see her face in the dusk, but he could see that her two small hands were clasped convulsively over her heart, and he knew that the shot had gone home to its mark. God help her, poor wretched creature, he thought. She knows now that she has lost. I wonder if the judges of the land feel as I do now when they put on the black cap and pass sentence of death upon some poor shivering wretch who has never done them any wrong. Do they feel a heroic fervor of virtuous indignation? Or do they suffer this dull anguish which gnaws my vitals as I talk to this helpless woman? He walked by my lady's side silently for some minutes. They had been pacing up and down the Dim Avenue, and they were now drawing near the leafless shrubbery at one end of the lime-walk, the shrubbery in which the ruined well sheltered its unheated decay among the tangled masses of briary underwood. A winding pathway, neglected and half choked with weeds, led toward this well. Stuart left the lime-walk and struck into this pathway. There was more light in the shrubbery than in the avenue, and Mr. Audley wished to see my lady's face. He did not speak until they reached the patch of rank grass beside the well. The massive brickwork had fallen away here and there, and loose fragments of masonry lay buried amidst weeds and briars. The heavy posts which had supported the wooden rollers still remained, but the iron spindle had been dragged from its socket and lay a few paces from the well, rusty, discolored and forgotten. Robert Audley leaned against one of the moss-grown posts and looked down at my lady's face, very pale in the chill winter twilight. The moon had newly risen, a feebly luminous crescent in the grey heavens, and a faint ghostly light mingled with the misty shadows of the declining day. My lady's face seemed like that face which Robert Audley had seen in his dreams, looking out of the white foam flakes on the green sea waves and luring his uncle to destruction. "'Those two labels are in my possession, Lady Audley,' he resumed. I took them from the box left by you at Crescent Villa's. I took them in the presence of Mrs. Vincent and Miss Tonks. Have you any proofs to offer against this evidence? You say to me, I am Lucy Graham, and I have nothing whatever to do with Helen Tallboys. In that case you will produce witnesses who will declare your antecedents. Where had you been living prior to your appearance at Crescent Villa's? You must have friends, relations, connections, who can come forward to prove as much as this for you. If you were the most desolate creature upon this earth, you would be able to point to someone who could identify you with the past." "'Yes,' cried my lady, "'if I were placed in a criminal dock, I could, no doubt, bring forward witnesses to refute your absurd accusation. But I am not in a criminal dock, Mr. Audley, and I do not choose to do anything but laugh at your ridiculous folly. I tell you that you are mad. If you please to say that Helen Tallboys is not dead, and that I am Helen Tallboys, you may do so. If you choose to go wandering about in the places in which I have lived, and to the places in which this Mrs. Tallboys has lived, you must follow the bent of your own inclination. But I would warn you, that such fancies have sometimes conducted people, as apparently sane as yourself, to the life-long imprisonment of a private lunatic asylum. Robert Audley started and recoiled a few paces among the weeds and brushwood, as my lady said this. She would be capable of any new crime to shield her from the consequences of the old one, he thought. She would be capable of using her influence with my uncle to place me in a madhouse. I do not say that Robert Audley was a coward, but I will admit that a shiver of horror, something akin to fear, chilled him to the heart as he remembered the horrible things that have been done by women, since that day upon which Eve was created to be Adam's companion and help-meet in the Garden of Eden. What if this woman's hellish power of dissimulation should be stronger than the truth, and crush him? She had not spared George Tallboys when he stood in her way, and menaced her with a certain peril. Would she spare him who threatened her with a far greater danger? Are women merciful, or loving, or kind in proportion to their beauty and grace? Was there not a certain Monsieur Mazère de la Tude, who had the bad fortune to offend the all-accomplished Madame de Pompadour, who expiated his youthful indiscretion by a lifelong imprisonment, who twice escaped from prison, to be twice cast back into captivity, who trusting in the tardy generosity of his beautiful foe, betrayed himself to an implacable fiend? Robert Audley looked at the pale face of the woman standing by his side, that fair and beautiful face, illumined by starry blue eyes, that had a strange and surely a dangerous light in them, and remembered a hundred stories of womanly perfidy, shuddered as he thought how unequal the struggle might be between himself and his uncle's wife. I have shown her my cards, he thought, but she has kept hers hidden from me. The mask that she wears is not to be plucked away. My uncle would rather think me mad than believe her guilty. The pale face of Clarita boys, that grave and earnest face, so different in its character to my lady's fragile beauty, arose before him. What a coward I am to think of myself for my own danger, he thought. The more I see of this woman, the more reason I have to dread her influence upon others, the more reason to wish her far away from this house. He looked about him in the dusky obscurity. The lonely garden was as quiet as some solitary graveyard, walled in and hidden away from the world of the living. It was somewhere in this garden that she met George Tallboys upon the day of his disappearance, he thought. I wonder where it was they met. I wonder where it was that he looked into her cruel face, and taxed her with her falsehood. My lady, with her little hand resting lightly upon the opposite post to that against which Robert leaned, toyed with her pretty foot among the long weeds, but kept a furtive watch upon her enemy's face. It is to be a duel to the death, then, my lady," said Robert Oddly solemnly. You refuse to accept my warning. You refuse to run away and repent of your wickedness in some foreign place, far from the generous gentleman you have deceived and fooled by your false witcheries. You choose to remain here and defy me." I do," answered Lady Oddly, lifting her head and looking full at the young barrister. It is no fault of mine if my husband's nephew goes mad, and chooses me for the victim of his monomania. "'So be it, then, my lady,' answered Robert. My friend George Tallboys was last seen entering these gardens by the little iron gate by which we came in to-night. He was last heard inquiring for you. He was seen to enter these gardens, but he was never seen to leave them. I believe that he met his death within the boundary of these grounds, and that his body lies hidden below some quiet water, or in some forgotten corner of this place. I will have such a search made I shall level that house to the earth, and root up every tree in these gardens, rather than I will fail in finding the grave of my murdered friend." Lady Oddly uttered a long, low, wailing cry, and threw up her arms above her head with a wild gesture of despair, but she made no answer to the ghastly charge of her accuser. Her arms dropped slowly, and she stood staring at Robert Oddly, her white face gleaming through the dusk, her blue eyes glittering and dilated. "'You shall never live to do this,' she said. "'I will kill you first. Why have you tormented me so? Why could you not let me alone? What harm had I ever done you that you should make yourself my persecutor, and dog my steps, and watch my looks and play the spy upon me? Do you want to drive me mad? Do you know what it is to wrestle with a madwoman?' "'No,' cried my lady with a laugh, "'you do not, or you would never!'' She stopped abruptly and drew herself suddenly to her fullest height. It was the same action which Robert had seen in the old, half-drunk and lieutenant, and it had that same dignity, the sublimity of extreme misery. "'Go away, Mr. Oddly,' she said, "'you are mad. I tell you. You are mad.' "'I am going, my lady,' answered Robert quietly. "'I would have condoned your crimes out of pity to your wretchedness. You have refused to accept my mercy. I wished to have pity upon the living. I shall henceforth only remember my duty to the dead.' He walked away from the lonely well under the shadow of the limes. My lady followed him slowly down that long gloomy avenue, and across the rustic bridge to the iron gate. As he passed through the gate, Alicia came out of a little half-glass door that opened from an oak-paneled breakfast room at one angle of the house, and met her cousin upon the threshold of the gateway. "'I have been looking for you everywhere, Robert,' she said. "'Papa has come down to the library, and he will be glad to see you.' The young man started at the sound of his cousin's fresh young voice. "'Good Heaven!' he thought. "'Can these two women be of the same clay? Can this frank, generous-hearted girl, who cannot conceal any impulse of her innocent nature, be of the same flesh and blood as that wretched creature whose shadow falls upon the path beside me?' He looked from his cousin to Lady Oddly, who stood near the gateway, waiting for him to stand aside and let her pass him. "'I don't know what has come to your cousin, my dear Alicia,' said my lady. "'He is so absent-minded and eccentric as to be quite beyond my comprehension.' "'Indeed,' exclaimed Miss Oddly, and yet I should imagine from the length of your teta-teta that you had made some effort to understand him.' "'Oh, yes,' said Robert quietly, "'my lady and I understand each other very well. But as it is growing late I will wish you good evening, ladies. I shall sleep to-night at Mount Standing, as I have some business to attend to up there, and I will come down to see my uncle to-morrow.' "'What, Robert?' cried Alicia, "'You surely won't go away without seeing Papa?' "'Yes, my dear,' answered the young man. "'I am a little disturbed by some disagreeable business in which I am very much concerned, and I would rather not see my uncle. Good-night, Alicia. I will come or write to-morrow.' He pressed his cousin's hand, bowed to Lady Oddly, and walked away under the black shadows of the archway, and out into the quiet avenue beyond the court. My lady and Alicia stood watching him until he was out of sight. "'What in goodness name is the matter with my cousin, Robert?' exclaimed Miss Oddly impatiently as the barrister disappeared. "'What does he mean by these absurd goings on? Some disagreeable business that disturbs him indeed. I suppose the unhappy creature has had a brief forced upon him by some evil-starred attorney, and is sinking into a state of immacility from a dim consciousness of his own incompetence. "'Have you ever studied your cousin's character, Alicia?' asked my lady very seriously after a pause. "'Studied his character?' "'No, Lady Oddly. Why should I study his character?' said Alicia. "'There is very little study required to convince anybody that he is a lazy, selfish, Siborite, who cares for nothing in the world except his own ease and comfort.' "'But you have never thought him eccentric?' "'Eccentric?' repeated Alicia, pursing up her red lips and shrugging up her shoulders. "'Well, yes. I believe that is the excuse generally made for such people. I suppose Bob is eccentric.' "'I have never heard you speak of his father and mother,' said my lady thoughtfully. "'Do you remember them?' "'I never saw his mother. She was a mistil rimple, a very dashing girl, who ran away with my uncle, and lost a very handsome fortune and consequence. She died at Nice when poor Bob was five years old. "'And did you ever hear anything particular about her?' "'How do you mean particular?' asked Alicia. "'Did you ever hear that she was eccentric? What people call odd?' "'Oh, no!' said Alicia, laughing. My aunt was a very reasonable woman, I believe, though she did marry for love. But you must remember that she died before I was born, and I have not, therefore, felt very much curiosity about her. "'But you recollect your uncle, I suppose.' "'My uncle Robert,' said Alicia. "'Oh, yes, I remember him very well, indeed.' "'Was he eccentric? I mean to say peculiar in his habits, like her cousin.' "'Yes, I believe Robert inherits all his absurdities from his father. My uncle expressed the same indifference for his fellow creatures as my cousin. But as he was a good husband, an affectionate father, and a kind master, nobody ever challenged his opinions. But he was eccentric.' "'Yes, I suppose he was generally thought a little eccentric.' "'Ah!' said my lady gravely. I thought as much. Do you know, Alicia, madness is more often transmitted from father to daughter, and from mother to daughter than from mother to son. Your cousin, Robert Oddly, is a very handsome young man, and I believe a very good-hearted young man. But he must be watched, Alicia, for he is mad.' "'Mad?' cried Miss Oddly indignantly. "'You are dreaming, my lady, or—or you are trying to frighten me,' added the young lady with considerable alarm. "'I only wish to put you on your guard, Alicia,' answered my lady. "'Mr. Oddly may be, as you say, merely eccentric. But he has talked to me this evening in a manner that has filled me with absolute terror, and I believe that he is going mad. I shall speak very seriously to Sir Michael this very night.' "'Speak to Papa!' exclaimed Alicia. You surely won't distress Papa by suggesting such a possibility. I shall only put him on his guard, my dear Alicia. "'But he'll never believe you,' said Miss Oddly. He will laugh at such an idea. No, Alicia. He will believe anything that I tell him.' answered my lady, with a quiet smile. End of Chapter 29. Chapter 30 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 Klatt. Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Bradden. CHAPTER XXIII. PREPARING THE GROUND. Lady Audley went from the garden to the library, a pleasant oak-paneled, homely apartment, in which Sir Michael liked to sit reading or riding, or arranging the business of his estate with his steward, a stalwart countryman, half agriculturalist, half lawyer, who rented a small farm a few miles from the court. The baronet was seated in a capacious easy-chair near the hearth. The bright blaze of the fire rose and fell, flashing now upon the polished carvings of the black oak bookcase, now upon the golden scarlet bindings of the books, sometimes glimmering upon the Athenian helmet of a marble palace, sometimes lighting up the forehead of Sir Robert Peel. The lamp upon the reading-table had not yet been lighted, and Sir Michael sat in the fire-light, waiting for the coming of his young wife. It is impossible for me ever to tell the purity of his generous love. It is impossible to describe that affection which was as tender as the love of a young mother for her first-born, as brave and chivalrous as the heroic passion of a byard for his liege mistress. The door opened while he was thinking of this fondly-loved wife, and looking up, the baronet saw the slender form standing in the doorway. Why my darling! he exclaimed, as my lady closed the door behind her and came toward his chair. I have been thinking of you and waiting for you an hour. Where have you been, and what have you been doing? My lady, standing in the shadow rather than the light, paused a few moments before replying to this question. I have been to Chelmsford, she said, shopping and—she hesitated, twisting her bonnet strings and her thin white fingers, with an air of pretty embarrassment. And what, my dear? asked the baronet. What have you been doing since you came from Chelmsford? I heard a carriage stop at the door an hour ago. It was yours, was it not? Yes, I came home an hour ago—answered my lady with the same air of embarrassment. And what have you been doing since you came home? Sir Michael Audley asked this question with a slightly reproachful accent. His young wife's presence made the sunshine of his life, and though he could not bear to chain her to his side, it grieved him to think that she could willingly remain unnecessarily absent from him, frittering away her time in some childish talk or frivolous occupation. What have you been doing since you came home, my dear? he repeated. What has kept you so long away from me? I have been talking to Mr. Robert Audley. She still twisted her bonnet-string round and round her fingers. She still spoke with the same air of embarrassment. Robert—exclamed the baronet—is Robert here? He was here a little while ago. And is here still, I suppose? No. He has gone away. Gone away? cried Sir Michael. What do you mean, my darling? I mean that your nephew came to the court this afternoon. Alicia and I found him idling about the gardens. He stayed here till about a quarter of an hour ago talking to me, and then he hurried off without a word of explanation, except, indeed, some ridiculous excuse about business at Mount Standing. Business at Mount Standing? Why, what business can he possibly have in that out-of-the-way place? He has gone to sleep at Mount Standing, then, I suppose. Yes. I think he said something to that effect. Upon my word—exclamed the baronet—I think that boy is half asleep. Half mad. My lady's face was so much in shadow that Sir Michael Oddly was unaware of the bright change that came over at Sickley-Pallore as he made this very common-place observation. A triumphant smile illuminated Lucy Oddly's countenance, a smile that plainly said, It is coming. It is coming. I can twist him which way I like. I can put black before him, and if I say it is white, he will believe me. But Sir Michael Oddly, in declaring that his nephew's wits were disordered, merely uttered that common-place ejaculation which is well known to have very little meaning. The baronet had, it is true, no very great estimate of Robert's faculty for the business of this everyday life. He was in the habit of looking upon his nephew as a good-natured non-entity, a man whose heart had been amply stocked by liberal nature with all the best things the generous goddess had to bestow, but whose brain had been somewhat overlooked in the distribution of intellectual gifts. Sir Michael Oddly made that mistake which is very commonly made by easy-going, well-to-do observers, who have no occasion to look below the surface. He mistook laziness for incapacity. He thought, because his nephew was idle, he must necessarily be stupid. He concluded that if Robert did not distinguish himself, it was because he could not. He forgot the mute inglorious Milton's, who died voiceless and inarticulate for want of that dogged perseverance, that blind courage which the poet must possess before he can find a publisher. He forgot the Cromwells, who see the noble vessels of the state floundering upon a sea of confusion, and going down in a tempest of noisy bewilderment, and who are yet powerless to get at the helm, forbidden even to send out a lifeboat to the sinking ship. Surely it is a mistake to judge of what a man can do by that which he has done. The world's Valhalla is a close borough, and perhaps the greatest men may be those who perish silently far away from the sacred portal. Perhaps the purest and brightest spirits are those who shrink from the turmoil of the race-course, the tumult and confusion of the struggle. The game of life is something like the game of Eckhart, and it may be that the very best cards are sometimes left in the pack. My lady threw off her bonnet, and seated herself upon a velvet-covered footstool at Sir Michael's feet. There was nothing studied or affected in this girlish action. It was so natural to Lucy Audley to be childish, that no one would have wished to see her otherwise. It would have seemed as foolish to expect dignified reserve or womanly gravity from this amber-haired siren, as to wish for rich bases amid the clear treble of a skylark song. She sat with her pale face turned away from the fire-light, and with her hands locked together upon the arm of her husband's easy-chair. They were very restless, these slender white hands. My lady twisted the jewelled fingers in and out of each other as she talked to her husband. "'I wanted to come to you, you know, dear,' said she. "'I wanted to come to you directly, I got home, but Mr. Audley insisted upon my stopping to talk to him.' "'But what about my love?' asked the baronet. "'What could Robert have to say to you?' My lady did not answer this question. Her fair head dropped upon her husband's knee. Her rippling yellow curls fell over her face. Sir Michael lifted that beautiful head with his strong hands, and raised my lady's face. The fire-light shining on that pale face lit up the large, soft blue eyes, and showed them drowned in tears. "'Lucy! Lucy!' cried the baronet. "'What is the meaning of this? My love! My love! What has happened to distress you in this manner?' Many Audley tried to speak, but the words died inarticulately upon her trembling lips. A choking sensation in her throat seemed to strangle those false and plausible words, her only armor against her enemies. She could not speak. The agony she had endured silently in the dismal limewalk had grown too strong for her, and she broke into a tempest of hysterical sobbing. It was no simulated grief that shook her slender frame, and tore at her like some ravenous beast that would have rent her piecemeal with its horrible strength. It was a storm of real anguish and terror, of remorse and misery. It was the one wild outcry in which the woman's feebler nature got the better of the siren's art. It was not thus that she had meant to fight her terrible duel with Robert Audley. Those were not the weapons which she had intended to use. But perhaps no artifice which she could have devised would have served her so well as this one outburst of natural grief. It shook her husband to the very soul. It bewildered and terrified him. It reduced the strong intellect of the man to helpless confusion and perplexity. It struck at the one weak point in a good man's nature. It appealed straight to Sir Michael Audley's affection for his wife. Ah! Heaven help a strong man's tender weakness for the woman he loves! Heaven pity him when the guilty creature has deceived him, and comes with her tears and lamentations, to throw herself at his feet in self-abandonment and remorse, torturing him with the sight of her agony, rending his heart with her sobs, lacerating his breast with her groans, multiplying her sufferings into a great anguish for him to bear, multiplying them by twentyfold, multiplying them in a ratio of a brave man's capacity for endurance. Heaven forgive him if maddened by that cruel agony, the balance wavers for a moment, and he is ready to forgive anything, ready to take this wretched one to the shelter of his breast, and to pardon that which the stern voice of manly honour urges must not be pardoned. Pity him! Pity him! The wife's worst remorse when she stands without the threshold of the home, she may never enter more, is not equal to the agony of the husband, who closes the portal on that familiar and intriguing face. The anguish of the mother, who may never look again upon her children, is less than the torment of the father who has to say to those little ones, My darlings, you are henceforth motherless. Sir Michael Audley rose from his chair, trembling with indignation, and ready to do immediate battle with the person who had caused his wife's grief. Lucy, he said, Lucy, I insist upon your telling me what and who has distressed you. I insist upon it. Whoever has annoyed you shall answer to me for your grief. Come, my love, tell me directly what it is. He seated himself and bent over the drooping figure at his feet, calming his own agitation and his desire to soothe his wife's distress. Tell me what it is, my dear, he whispered tenderly. The sharp paroxysm had passed away, and my lady looked up. A glittering light shone through the tears in her eyes, and the lines about her pretty rosy mouth, those hard and cruel lines which Robert Audley had observed in the Pre-Raphaelite portrait, were plainly visible in the fire-light. I am very silly, she said, but really he has made me quite hysterical. Who? Who has made you hysterical? Your nephew, Mr. Robert Audley. Robert, cried the baronet, Lucy, what do you mean? I told you that Mr. Audley insisted upon my going into the limewalk, dear, said my lady. He wanted to talk to me, he said, and I went. And he said such horrible things that—what horrible things, Lucy? Lady Audley shuddered and clung with convulsive fingers to the strong hand that had rested caressingly upon her shoulder. What did he say, Lucy? Oh, my dear love, how can I tell you? cried my lady. I know that I shall distress you, or you will laugh at me, and then laugh at you. No, Lucy. Lady Audley was silent for a moment. She sat and looking straight before her into the fire, with her fingers still locked about her husband's hand. My dear, she said slowly, hesitating now and then between her words, as if she almost shrunk from uttering them. Have you ever—I am so afraid of vexing you—have you ever thought, Mr. Audley, a little—a little—a little what, my darling? A little out of his mind, faltered Lady Audley. Out of his mind! cried Sir Michael. My dear girl, what are you thinking of? You said just now, dear, that you thought he was half mad. Did I, my love? said the bear in it, laughing. I don't remember saying it, and it was a mere façade au parlais that meant nothing whatever. Robert may be a little eccentric—a little stupid, perhaps. He may not be overburdened with wits, but I don't think he has brains enough for madness. I believe it's generally your great intellects that get out of order. But madness is sometimes hereditary, said my lady. Mr. Audley may have inherited—he has inherited no madness from his father's family, interrupted Sir Michael. The Audleys have never peopled private lunatic asylums, or feed mad doctors. Nor from his mother's family. Not to my knowledge. People generally keep these things a secret, said my lady gravely. There may have been madness in your sister-in-law's family. "'I don't think so, my dear,' replied Sir Michael. "'But Lucy, tell me what, and Heaven's name has put this idea into your head. I have been trying to account for your nephew's conduct. I can account for it in no other manner. If you had heard the things he said to me to-night, Sir Michael, you too might have thought him mad.' "'But what did he say, Lucy?' "'I can scarcely tell you. You can see how much he has stupefied and bewildered me. I believe he has lived too long alone in those solitary temple chambers. Perhaps he reads too much, or smokes too much. You know that some physicians declare madness to be a mere illness of the brain, an illness to which any one is subject, and which may be produced by given causes, and cured by given means.' Lady Audleys' eyes were still fixed upon the burning coals in the wide grate. She spoke as if she had been discussing a subject that she had often heard discussed before. She spoke as if her mind had almost wandered away from the thought of her husband's nephew to the wider question of madness and the abstract. "'Why should he not be mad?' resumed my lady. People are insane for years and years before their insanity is found out. They know that they are mad. But they know how to keep their secret. And perhaps they may sometimes keep it till they die. Sometimes a paroxysm seizes them, and in an evil hour they betray themselves. They commit a crime, perhaps. The horrible temptation of opportunity assails them. The knife is in their hand, and the unconscious victim by their side. They may conquer the restless demon and go away and die innocent of any violent deed. But they may yield to the horrible temptation, the frightful, passionate, hungry craving for violence and horror. They sometimes yield and are lost.' Lady Audleys' voice rose as she argued this dreadful question. The hysterical excitement from which she had only just recovered had left its effects upon her, but she controlled herself, and her tone grew calmer as she resumed. "'Robert Audleys is mad,' she said decisively. "'What is one of the strangest diagnostics of madness? What is the first appalling sign of mental aberration? The mind becomes stationary. The brain stagnates. The even current of reflection is interrupted. The thinking power of the brain resolves itself into a monotone. As the waters of a tideless pool putrefy by reason of their stagnation, the mind becomes turbid and corrupt through lack of action, and the perpetual reflection upon one subject resolves itself into monomania. Robert Audleys is a monomaniac. The disappearance of his friend, George Talboys, grieved and bewildered him. He dwelt upon this one idea until he lost the power of thinking of anything else. The one idea looked at perpetually became distorted to his mental vision. Repeat the commonest word in the English language twenty times, and before the twentieth repetition you will have begun to wonder whether the word which you repeat is really the word you mean to utter. Robert Audleys has thought of his friend's disappearance, until the one idea has done its fatal and unhealthy work. He looks at a common event with a vision that is diseased, and he distorts it into a gloomy horror engendered of his own monomania. If you do not want to make me as mad as he is, you must never let me see him again. Here tonight the George Talboys was murdered in this place, and he will root up every tree in the garden, and pull down every brick in the house and search for— My lady paused. The words died away upon her lips. She had exhausted herself by the strange energy with which she had spoken. She had been transformed from a frivolous, childish beauty into a woman, strong to argue her own cause, and plead her own defense. Pulled down this house, cried the baronet, George Talboys murdered at Audleys Court. Did Robert say this, Lucy? He said something of that kind, something that frightened me very much. Then he must be mad, said Sir Michael Gravely. I'm bewildered by what you tell me. Did he really say this, Lucy? Or did you misunderstand him? I—I don't think I did, faltered my lady. You saw how frightened I was when I first came in. I should not have been so much agitated if he hadn't said something horrible. Lady Audley had availed herself of the very strongest arguments by which she could help her cause. To be sure, my darling, to be sure, answered the baronet, what could have put such a horrible fancy into the unhappy boy's head? This Mr. Talboys, a perfect stranger to all of us, murdered at Audleys Court. I'll go to Mount Standing to-night and see Robert. I have known him ever since he was a baby, and I cannot be deceived at him. If there is really anything wrong, he will not be able to conceal it from me." My lady shrugged her shoulders. "'That is rather an open question,' she said. "'It is generally a stranger who is the first to observe any psychological peculiarity.' The big words sounded strange from my lady's rosy lips, but her newly adopted wisdom had a certain quaint prettiness about it, which charmed and bewildered her husband. "'But you must not go to Mount Standing, my dear darling,' she said tenderly. "'Remember that you are under strict orders to stay indoors until the weather is milder, and the sun shines upon this cruel, ice-bound country.' Sir Michael Audley sank back in his capacious chair with a sigh of resignation. "'That's true, Lucy,' he said. "'We must obey Mr. Dawson. I suppose Robert will come to see me to-morrow.' "'Yes, dear. I think he said he would.' "'Then we must wait till to-morrow, my darling. I can't believe that there is anything really wrong with the poor boy. I can't believe it, Lucy.' "'Then how do you account for this extraordinary delusion about this Mr. Tall Boy?' asked my lady. Sir Michael shook his head. "'I don't know, Lucy. I don't know,' he answered. "'It is always so difficult to believe that any one of the calamities that continually befall our fellow men will ever happen to us. I can't believe that my nephew's mind is impaired. I can't believe it. I—I'll get him to stop here, Lucy, and I'll watch him closely. I tell you, my love, if there is anything wrong, I am sure to find it out. I can't be mistaken in a young man who has always been the same to me as my own son. But, my darling, why were you so frightened by Robert's wild talk? It could not affect you.' My lady sighed piteously. "'You must think me very strong-minded, Sir Michael,' she said, with rather an injured air. "'If you imagine I can hear of these sorts of things indifferently, I know I shall never be able to see Mr. Oddly again.' "'And you shall not, my dear. You shall not.' "'You said just now you would have him here,' murmured Lady Oddly. "'But I will not, my darling girl, if his presence annoys you. Good Heaven! Lucy, can you imagine for a moment that I have any higher wish than to promote your happiness? I will consult some London physician about Robert, and let him discover if there is really anything the matter with my poor brother's only son. You shall not be annoyed, Lucy.' "'You must think me very unkind, dear,' said my lady. "'And I know I ought not to be annoyed by the poor fellow. But he really seems to have taken some absurd notion into his head about me.' "'About you, Lucy?' cried Sir Michael. "'Yes, dear. He seems to connect me in some vague manner, which I cannot quite understand, with the disappearance of this Mr. Tall Boyce.' "'Impossible, Lucy! You must have misunderstood him.' "'I don't think so.' "'Then he must be mad,' said the Baronet. "'He must be mad. I will wait till he goes back to town, and then send some one to his chambers to talk to him.' "'Good Heaven! What a mysterious business this is!' "'I fear I have distressed you, darling,' murmured Lady Audley. "'Yes, my dear. I am very much distressed by what you have told me. But you were quite right to talk to me frankly about this dreadful business. I must think it over, dearest, and try and decide what is best to be done.' My lady rose from the low ottoman on which she had been seated. The fire had burned down, and there was only a faint glow of red light in the room. Lucy Audley bent over her husband's chair, and put her lips to his broad forehead. "'How good you have always been to me, dear,' she whispered softly. "'You would never let anyone influence you against me, would you, dear?' "'Influenced me against you,' repeated the Baronet. "'No, my love.' "'Because you know, dear,' pursued my lady. "'There are wicked people as well as mad people in the world, and there may be some persons to whose interest it would be to injure me.' "'They had better not try it, then, my dear,' answered Sir Michael. They would find themselves in rather a dangerous position if they did.' Lady Audley laughed aloud, with a gay, triumphant, silvery peel of laughter that vibrated through the quiet room. "'My own, dear, darling,' she said, "'I know you love me. And now I must run away, dear, for it's past seven o'clock. I was engaged to dine at Mrs. Monsford's, but I must send a groom with a message of apology, for Mr. Audley has made me quite unfit for company. I shall stay at home and nurse you, dear. You'll go to bed very early, won't you, and take great care of yourself?' "'Yes, dear.' My lady tripped out of the room to give her orders about the message that was to be carried to the house at which she was to have dined. She paused for a moment as she closed the library door. She paused, and laid her hand about her breast, to check the rapid throbbing of her heart. "'I have been afraid of you, Mr. Robert Audley,' she thought. But perhaps the time may come, in which you will have caused to be afraid of me." The division between Lady Audley and her step-daughter had not become any narrower in the two months which had elapsed since the pleasant Christmas holiday time had been kept at Audley Court. There was no open warfare between the two women. There was only an armed neutrality, broken every now and then by brief, feminine skirmishes and transient wordy tempests. I am sorry to say that Alicia would very much have preferred a hearty, pitched battle, to this silent and undemonstrative disunion. But it was not very easy to quarrel with my lady. She had soft answers for the turning away of wrath. She could smile bewitchingly at her step-daughter's open petulance, and laugh merrily at the young lady's ill temper. Perhaps had she been less amiable, had she been more like Alicia in disposition, the two ladies might have expended their enmity in one tremendous quarrel, and might ever afterward have been affectionate and friendly. But Lucy Audley would not make war. She carried forward the sum of her dislike, and put it out at a steady rate of interest, until the breach between her step-daughter and herself, widening a little every day, became a great gulf, utterly impassable by all of Branch bearing doves from either side of the Abyss. There can be no reconciliation where there is no open warfare. There must be a battle, a brave, boisterous battle, with penance waving and cannon roaring, before there can be peaceful treaties and enthusiastic shaking of hands. Perhaps the union between France and England owes its greatest force to the recollection of Cressy and Waterloo, Navarino and Trafalgar. We have hated each other and licked each other and had it out, as the common phrase goes, and we can afford now to fall into each other's arms and vow eternal friendship and everlasting brotherhood. Let us hope that when northern Yankee-dom has decimated and been decimated, blustering Jonathan may fling himself upon his southern brother's breast, forgiving and forgiven. Alicia Audley and her father's pretty wife had plenty of room for the comfortable indulgence of their dislike in the spacious old mansion. My lady had her own apartments, as we know, luxurious chambers in which all conceivable elegancies had been gathered for the comfort of their occupant. Alicia had her own rooms in another part of the large house. She had her favourite mare, her Newfoundland dog, and her drawing materials, and she made herself tolerably happy. She was not very happy, this frank, generous-hearted girl, for it was scarcely possible that she could altogether be at ease in the constrained atmosphere of the court. Her father was changed. That dear father over whom she had once reigned supreme with the boundless authority of a spoiled child, had accepted another ruler and submitted to a new dynasty. Little by little, my lady's petty power made itself felt in that narrow household, and Alicia saw her father gradually lured across the gulf that divided Lady Audley from her step-daughter, until he stood at last quite upon the other side of the abyss, and looked coldly upon his only child across that widening chasm. Alicia felt that he was lost to her. My lady's beaming smiles, my lady's winning words, my lady's radiant glances and bewitching graces had done their work of enchantment, and Sir Michael had grown to look upon his daughter as a somewhat willful and capricious young person, who had behaved with determined unkindness to the wife he loved. Poor Alicia saw all this, and bore her burden as well as she could. It seemed very hard to be a handsome, grey-eyed heiress with dogs and horses and servants at her command, and yet to be so much alone in the world, as to know of not one friendly ear into which she might pour her sorrows. If Bob was good for anything I could have told him how unhappy I am, thought Miss Audley, but I may just as well tell Caesar my troubles for any consolation I should get from Cousin Robert. Sir Michael Audley obeyed his pretty nurse, and went to bed a little after nine o'clock upon this bleak march evening. Perhaps the bar in its bedroom was about the pleasantest retreat that an invalid could have chosen in such cold and cheerless weather. The dark green velvet curtains were drawn before the windows, and about the ponderous bed. The wood fire burned redly upon the broad hearth. The reading-lamp was lighted upon a delicious little table close to Sir Michael's pillow, and a heap of magazines and newspapers had been arranged by my lady's own fair hands for the pleasure of the invalid. Lady Audley sat by the bedside for about ten minutes, talking to her husband, talking very seriously, about this strange and awful question, Robert Audley's lunacy, but at the end of that time she rose and bet her husband good-night. She lowered the green silk shade before the reading-lamp, adjusting it carefully for the repose of the bar in its eyes. "'I shall leave you, dear,' she said, "'if you can sleep so much the better, if you wish to read, the books and papers are close to you. I will leave the doors between the rooms open, and I shall hear your voice, if you call me.'" Lady Audley went through her dressing-room into the boudoir, where she had sat with her husband since dinner. Every evidence of womanly refinement was visible in the elegant chamber. My lady's piano was open, covered with scattered sheets of music and exquisitely bound collections of scanas and fantasias, which no master need to disdain to study. My lady's easel stood near the window, bearing witness to my lady's artistic talent, in the shape of a water-colored sketch of the court and gardens. My lady's fairy-like embroideries of lace and muslin, rainbow-hued silks, and delicately tinted wools litter the luxurious apartment, while the looking-glasses, cunningly placed at angles and opposite corners by an artistic upholsterer, multiplied my lady's image, and in that image reflected the most beautiful object in the enchanted chamber. Amid all this lamplight, gilding, color, wealth, and beauty, Lucy Audley sat down on a low seat by the fire to think. If Mr. Holman Hunt could have peeped into the pretty Boudoir, I think the picture would have been photographed upon his brain to be reproduced by and by, upon a bishop's half-length for the glorification of the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood. My lady, in that half-recomend attitude, with her elbow resting on one knee, and her perfect chin supported by her hand, the rich folds of drapery falling away in long, undulating lines from the exquisite outline of her figure, and the luminous rose-colored fire-light enveloping her in a soft haze, only broken by the golden glitter of her yellow hair, beautiful in herself, but made bewilderingly beautiful by the gorgeous surroundings which adorn the shrine of her loveliness. Drinking cups of gold and ivory, chiseled by Benvenuto Cellini, cabinets of buule and porcelain, bearing the cipher of Austrian Marie Antoinette, amid devices of rose-buds and true-lovers' knots, birds and butterflies, cupidons and shepherdesses, goddesses, courtiers, cottagers and milk-mates, statuettes of Parisian marble and biscuit china, gilded baskets of hot-house flowers, fantastical caskets of Indian filigree work, fragile tea-cups of turquoise china, adorned by medallion miniatures of Louis the Great and Louis the Well-beloved, Louise de la Valière, Athenée de Mont-Spain, and Marie-Jean Gombard de Vaud-Bernier, cabinet pictures and gilded mirrors, shimmering satin and diaphanous lace, all that gold can buy or art devise, had been gathered together for the beautification of this quiet chamber, in which my lady sat listening to the morning of the shrill March wind, and the flapping of the ivy-leaves against the casements, and looking into the red chasms in the burning coals. I should be preaching a very stale sermon, and harping upon a very familiar moral, if I were to seize this opportunity of declaiming against art and beauty, because my lady was more wretched in this elegant apartment, than many a half-starved seamstress in her dreary garret. She was wretched by a reason of a wound which lay too deep for the possibility of any solace from such plasters as wealth and luxury. But her wretchedness was of an abnormal nature, and I can see no occasion for seizing upon the fact of her misery, as an argument in favour of poverty and discomfort as opposed to opulence. The Benvenuto Cellini carvings and the Sevre porcelain could not give her happiness, because she had passed out of their region. She was no longer innocent, and the pleasure we take in art and loveliness, being an innocent pleasure, had passed beyond her reach. Six or seven years before she would have been happy in the possession of this little Aladdin's palace, but she had wandered out of the circle of careless, pleasure-seeking creatures. She had strayed far away into a desolate labyrinth of guilt and treachery, terror and crime, and all the treasures that had been collected for her could have given her no pleasure but one. The pleasure of flinging them into a heap beneath her feet, and trampling upon them, and destroying them in her cruel despair. There were some things that would have inspired her with an awful joy, a horrible rejoicing. If Robert Audley, her pitiless enemy, her unrelenting pursuer, had lain dead in the adjoining chamber, she would have exalted over his beer. What pleasures could have remained for Lucretia Borgia and Catherine de Medici when the dreadful boundary line between innocence and guilt was passed, and the lost creatures stood upon the lonely outer side. Only horrible, vengeful joys and treacherous delights were left for these miserable women. With what disdainful bitterness they must have watched the frivolous vanities, the petty deceptions, the paltry sins of ordinary offenders. Perhaps they took a horrible pride in the enormity of their wickedness, in this divinity of hell, which made them greatest among sinful creatures. My lady, brooding by the fire in her lonely chamber, with her large clear blue eyes fixed upon the yawning gulfs of lured crimson and the burning coals, may have thought of many things very far away from the terribly silent struggle in which she was engaged. She may have thought of long ago years of childish innocence, childish follies and selfishness, of frivolous, feminine sins that had weighed very lightly upon her conscience. Perhaps in that retrospective reverie she recalled that early time in which she had first looked in the glass and discovered that she was beautiful. That fatal early time in which she had first begun to look upon her loveliness as a right divine, a boundless possession which was to be a set-off against all girlish shortcomings, a counterbalance of every youthful sin. Did she remember the day in which that fairy dour of beauty had first taught her to be selfish and cruel, indifferent to the joys and sorrows of others, cold-hearted and capricious, greedy of admiration, exacting and tyrannical with that petty woman's tyranny which is the worst of despotism? Did she trace every sin of her life back to its true source? And did she discover that poisoned fountain in her own exaggerated estimate of the value of a pretty face? Surely, if her thoughts wandered so far along the backward current of her life, she must have repented in bitterness and despair of that first day in which the master passions of her life had become her rulers, and the three demons of vanity, selfishness and ambition had joined hands and said, This woman is our slave. Let us see what she will become under our guidance. How small those first youthful heirs seemed as my lady looked back upon them in that long reverie by the lonely hearth! What small vanities! What petty cruelties! A triumph over a school-fellow, a flirtation with the lover of a friend, an assertion of the right divine invested in blue eyes and shimmering golden-tinted hair! But how terribly that narrow pathway had widened out into the broad high road of sin, and how swift the footsteps had become upon the now familiar way! My lady twisted her fingers in her loose amber curls, and made as if she would have torn them from her head. But even in that moment of mute despair the unyielding dominion of beauty asserted itself, and she released the poor tangled glitter of ringlets, leaving them to make a halo round her head in the dim fire-light. I was not wicked when I was young. She thought, as she stared gloomingly at the fire. I was only thoughtless. I never did any harm—at least willfully. Have I ever been really wicked, I wonder? She mused. My worst wickednesses have been the result of wild impulses, and not of deeply-laid plots. I am not like the women I have read of, who have lain night after night in the horrible darkness and stillness, planning out treacherous deeds, and arranging every circumstance of an appointed crime. I wonder whether they suffered those women—whether they ever suffered as—her thoughts wandered away into a weary maze of confusion. Suddenly she drew herself up with a proud, defiant gesture, and her eyes glittered with a light that was not entirely reflected from the fire. "'You are mad, Mr. Robert Altley,' she said. "'You are mad, and you are fancies, or a madman's fancies. I know what madness is. I know its signs and tokens, and I say that you are mad.' She put her hand to her head as if thinking of something which confused and bewildered her, and which she found it difficult to contemplate with calmness. "'Dare I defy him?' she muttered. "'Dare I. Dare I. Will he stop now that he is once gone so far? Will he stop for fear of me? Will he stop for fear of me when the thought of what his uncle must suffer has not stopped him? Will any thing stop him? But death!' She pronounced the last words in an awful whisper, and with her head bent forward, her eyes dilated, and her lips still parted as they had been parted in her utterance of that final word, death. She sat blankly staring at the fire. "'I can't plot horrible things,' she muttered presently. "'My brain isn't strong enough, or I'm not wicked enough, or brave enough. If I met Robert Audney in those lonely gardens as I—' The current of her thoughts was interrupted by a cautious knocking at her door. She rose suddenly, startled by any sound in the stillness of her room. She rose and threw herself into a low chair near the fire. She flung her beautiful head back upon the soft cushions, and took a book from the table near her. Insignificant as this action was, it spoke very plainly—it spoke very plainly of ever-recurring fears, of fatal necessities for concealment, of a mind that in its silent agonies was ever alive to the importance of outward effect. It told more plainly than anything else could have told, how complete an actress my lady had been made by the awful necessity of her life. The modest wrap at the door was repeated. "'Come in!' cried Lady Audney, in her liveliest tone. The door was opened with that respectful noiselessness peculiar to a well-bred servant, and a young woman, plainly dressed, and carrying some of the cold-march winds in the fold of her garments, crossed the threshold of the apartment, and lingered near the door, waiting permission to approach the inner regents of my lady's retreat. It was Phoebe Marks, the pale-faced wife of the Mount Standing Innkeeper. "'I beg pardon, my lady, for intruding without leave,' she said, but I thought I might venture to come straight up without waiting for permission.' "'Yes, yes, Phoebe, to be sure. Take off your bonnet to you wretched cold-looking creature, and come sit down here.' Lady Audney pointed to the low ottoman upon which she had herself been seated a few minutes before. The ladies maid had often sat upon it, listening to her mistress's prattle in the old days, when she had been my lady's chief companion and confidant. "'Sit down here, Phoebe,' Lady Audney repeated, "'sit down here and talk to me. I'm very glad you came here to-night. I was horribly lonely in this dreary place.' My lady shivered and looked round at the bright collection of bric-a-brac, as if the sevre and bronze, the buell and ormulue, had been the mouldering adornments of some ruined castle. The dreary wretchedness of her thoughts had communicated itself to every object about her, and all outer things took their colour from that weary inner life, which held its slow course of secret anguish in her breast. She had spoken the entire truth in saying that she was glad of her lady's maid's visit. Her frivolous nature clung to this weak shelter and the hour of her fear and suffering. There were sympathies between her and this girl, who was like herself, inwardly as well as outwardly. Like herself, selfish, and cold and cruel, eager for her own advancement, and greedy of opulence and elegance, angry with the lot that had been cast her, and weary of dull dependence. My lady hated Alicia for her frank, passionate, generous, daring nature. She hated her stepdaughter, and clung to this pale-faced, pale-haired girl, whom she thought neither better nor worse than herself. Phoebe Marks obeyed her late mistress's commands, and took off her bonnet before seating herself on the ottoman at Lady Audley's feet. Her smooth bands of light hair were unruffled by the March winds. Her trimly-made drab dress and linen collar, were as neatly arranged as they could have been, had she only that moment completed her toilet. Sir Michael is better, I hope, my lady, she said. Yes, Phoebe, much better. He is asleep. You may close that door," added Lady Audley, with a motion of her head toward the door of communication between the rooms, which had been left open. Mrs. Marks obeyed subissively, and then returned to her seat. I am very, very unhappy, Phoebe, my lady said fretfully, wretchedly miserable. What the—secret?" asked Mrs. Marks, in a half-whisper. My lady did not notice that question. She resumed in the same complaining tone. She was glad to be able to complain even to this lady's maid. She had brooded over her fears, and had suffered in secret so long, that it was an inexpressible relief to her to bemoan her fate aloud. I am cruelly persecuted and harassed, Phoebe Marks, she said. I am pursued and tormented by a man whom I never injured, whom I have never wished to injure. I am never suffered to rest by this relentless tormentor, and— She paused, staring at the fire again, as she had done in her loneliness. Lost again in the dark intricacies of thought which wandered hither and thither, in a dreadful chaos of terrified bewilderments, she could not come to any fixed conclusion. Phoebe Marks watched my lady's face, looking upward at her late mistress with pale, anxious eyes, that only relaxed their watchfulness when Lady Audley's glance met that of her companion. I think I know whom you mean, my lady, said the innkeeper's wife, after a pause. I think I know who it is who is so cruel to you. Oh, of course!—answered my lady bitterly. My secrets are everybody's secrets. You know all about it, no doubt. The person is a gentleman. Is he not, my lady? Yes. A gentleman who came to the castle in two months ago, when I warned you. Yes, yes!—answered my lady impatiently. I thought so. The same gentleman is at our place tonight, my lady. Lady Audley started up from her chair, started up as if she would have done something desperate in her despairing fury, but she sank back again with a weary, quarrelous sigh. What warfare could such a feeble creature wage against her fate? What could she do but wind like a hunted hare till she found her way back to the starting point of the cruel chase, to be there trampled down by her pursuers? At the castle in, she cried, I might have known as much. Lady has gone there to ring my secrets from your husband. Fool! She exclaimed, suddenly turning upon Phoebe Marks in a transport of anger. Do you want to destroy me that you have left those two men together? Mrs. Marks clasped her hands piteously. I didn't come away of my own free will, my lady, she said. No one could have been more unwilling to leave the house than I was this night. I was sent here. Who sent you here? Luke, my lady, you can't tell how hard he can be upon me if I go against him. Why did he send you? The innkeeper's wife dropped her eyelids under Lady Audley's angry glances, and hesitated confusedly before she answered this question. Indeed, my lady, she stammered. I didn't want to come. I told Luke that it was too bad for us to war you, first asking this favour, and then asking that, and never leaving you alone for a month together. But he bore me down with his loud blustering talk, and he made me come. Yes, yes," cried Lady Audley, impatiently, "'I know that. I want to know why you have come.' "'Why, you know, my lady,' answered Phoebe half reluctantly. Luke is very extravagant, and all I can say to him I can't get him to be careful or steady. He's not sober, and when he's drinking with a lot of rough countrymen, and drinking perhaps even more than they do, it isn't likely that his head can be very clear for accounts. If it hadn't been for me we should have been ruined before this, and hard as I've tried I haven't been able to keep the ruin off. You remember giving me the money for the brewers, Bill, my lady?" "'Yes, I remember very well,' answered Lucy Audley with a bitter laugh, "'for I wanted that money to pay my own bills.' "'I know you did, my lady, and it was very, very hard for me to have to come and ask you for it, after all that we'd received from you before. But that isn't the worst. When Luke sent me down here to beg the favour of that help, he never told me that the Christmas rent was still owing. But it was, my lady, and it's owing now, and—and there's a bailiff in the house to-night, and we're to be sold up to-morrow, unless— "'Unless I pay your rent, I suppose,' cried Lucy Audley, I might have guessed what was coming.' "'Indeed—indeed, my lady, I wouldn't have asked it,' sobbed Phoebe Marx, but he made me come.' "'Yes,' answered my lady bitterly, "'he made you come, and he will make you come whenever he pleases, and whenever he wants some money for the gratification of his low vices. And you and he are my pensioners, as long as I live, or as long as I have any money to give. For I suppose when my purse is empty and my credit ruined, you and your husband will turn upon me, and sell me to the highest bidder. Do you know, Phoebe Marx, that my jewel-case has been half-empty to meet your claims? Did you know that my pin-money, which I thought such a princely allowance on my marriage settlement was made, and when I was a poor governess at Mr. Dawson's heaven-help-me, my pin-money has been overdrawn half a year to satisfy your demands? What can I do to appease you? Shall I sell my Marie-Antoinette cabinet, or my pompadour china, Leroy's and Benson's army-lue-clox, or my gobaland tapestry chairs and ottomans? How shall I satisfy you next?' "'Oh, my lady, my lady,' cried Phoebe piteously, "'don't be so cruel to me. You know, you know that it isn't I who want to impose upon you.' I know nothing,' exclaimed Lady Audley, except that I am the most miserable of women. "'Let me think!' she cried, silencing Phoebe's consulatory murmurs, with imperious gesture. "'Hold your tongue, girl, and let me think of this business, if I can.' She put her hands to her forehead, clasping her slender fingers across her brow, as if she would have controlled the action of her brain by their convulsive pressure. "'Robert Audley is with you, a husband,' she said slowly, speaking to herself rather than to her companion. "'These two men are together, and there are bailiffs in the house, and your brutal husband is no doubt brutally drunk by this time, and brutally obstinate and ferocious in his drunkenness. If I refuse to pay this money, his ferocity will be multiplied by a hundredfold. There's little use in discussing that matter. The money must be paid.' "'But if you do pay it,' said Phoebe earnestly, "'I hope you will impress upon Luke that it is the last money you will ever give him while he stops in that house.' "'Why?' asked Lady Audley, letting her hands fall on her lap, and looking inquiringly at Mrs. Marks. "'Because I want Luke to leave the castle.' "'But why do you want him to leave?' "'Oh, for ever so many reasons, my lady,' answered Phoebe, "'he's not fit to be the landlord of a public house. I didn't know that when I married him, or I would have gone against the business, and tried to persuade him to take to the farming line. Not that I suppose he'd have given up his own fancy, either. For he's obstinate enough, as you know, my lady. He's not fit for his present business. He's scarcely ever sober after dark, and when he's drunk he gets almost wild, and doesn't seem to know what he does. We've had two or three narrow escapes with him already.' "'Narrow escapes,' repeated Lady Audley. What do you mean? Why have we run the risk of being burnt in our beds through his carelessness?' "'Burned in your beds through his carelessness. Why, how was that?' asked my lady, rather listlessly. She was too selfish, and too deeply absorbed in her own troubles, to take much interest in any danger, what had befallen her some time ladies made. You know what a queer old place the castle is, my lady. All tumble-down woodwork and rotten rafters and such like. The Chelmsford Insurance Company won't insure it. For they say if the place did happen to catch fire of a windy night, it would blaze away like so much tinder, and nothing in the world could save it. Well Luke knows this, and the landlord has warned him of it time and often, for he lives close against us, and he keeps a pretty sharp eye upon all my husband's goings on. But when Luke's tipsy he doesn't know what he's about, and only a week ago he left a candle burning in one of the outhouses, and the flame caught one of the rafters of the sloping roof. And if it hadn't been for me finding it out when I went round the house the last thing, we should have all been burnt to death perhaps. And that's the third time the same kind of thing has happened in the six months we've had the place. And you can't wonder that I'm frightened, can you, my lady?' My lady had not wondered. She had not thought about the business at all. She had scarcely listened to these commonplace details. Why should she care for this low-born waiting-woman's perils and troubles? Had she not her own terrors, her own soul-absorbing perplexities to usurp every thought of which her brain was capable? She did not make any remark upon that which poor Phoebe just told her. She scarcely comprehended what had been said, until some moments after the girl had finished speaking, when the words assumed their full meaning, as some words do after they had been heard without being heeded. "'Burnt in your beds,' said the young lady at last, it would have been a good thing for me if that precious creature, your husband, had been burnt in his bed before to-night.' A vivid picture had flashed upon her as she spoke. The picture of that frail wooden tenement, the castle in, reduced to a ruthless chaos of laugh and plaster, vomiting flames from its black mouth, and spitting blazing sparks upward toward the cold night sky. She gave a weary sigh as she dismissed this image from her restless brain. She would be no better off, even if this enemy should be forever silenced. She had another and far more dangerous foe, a foe who was not to be bribed or bought off, though she had been as rich as an empress. "'I'll give you the money to send this bailiff away,' said my lady, after a pause. "'I must give you the last sovereign in my purse. But what of that? You know as well as I do that I dare not refuse you.'" Lady Audley rose and took the lighted lamp from her writing table. "'The money is in my dressing-room,' she said. "'I will go and fetch it.' "'Oh, my lady,' exclaimed Phoebe suddenly, "'I forgot something. I was in such a way about this business that I quite forgot it. Quite forgot what?' "'A letter that was given me to bring you, my lady, just before I left home.' "'What letter?' "'A letter from Mr. Audley. He heard my husband mention that I was coming down here, and he asked me to carry this letter. Lady Audley set the lamp down upon the table nearest to her, and held out her hand to receive the letter. Phoebe Marks could scarcely fail to observe that the little jeweled hand shook like a leaf. "'Give it me. Give it me,' she cried. "'Let me see what more he has to say.'" Lady Audley almost snatched the letter from Phoebe's hand in her wild impatience. She tore open the envelope and flung it from her. She could scarcely unfold the sheet of note-paper and her eager excitement. The letter was very brief. It contained only these words. Should Mrs. George Talboys really have survived the date of her supposed death, as recorded in the public prints, and upon the tombstone in the Ventner Churchyard? And should she exist in the person of the lady suspected and accused by the writer of this? There can be no great difficulty in finding someone able and willing to identify her. Mrs. Barkham, the owner of North Cottage's Wildern Sea, would no doubt consent to throw some light upon this matter, either to dispel a delusion or to confirm a suspicion. Robert Audley. March 3, 1859. The Castle Inn. Mount Standing. End of Chapter 31.