 CHAPTER 38 Ghost haunted. No feverish sleeper travelling in a strange dream ever looked out more wanderingly upon a world that seemed unreal than Robert Audley, as he stared absently at the flat swamps and dismal poplars between Ville-Bremois and Brussels. Could it be that he was returning to his uncle's house without the woman who had reigned in it for nearly two years as queen and mistress? He felt as if he had carried off my lady, and had made away with her secretly and darkly, and must now render up an account to Sir Michael of the fate of that woman whom the baronet had so dearly loved. What shall I tell him, he thought? Shall I tell the truth, the horrible, ghastly truth? No. That would be too cruel. His generous spirit would sink under the hideous revelation. Yet in his ignorance of the extent of this wretched woman's wickedness, he may think perhaps that I have been hard with her. Seeing thus, Mr. Robert Audley absolutely watched the cheerless landscape from the seat in the shabby coupé of the diligence, and thought how great a leaf had been torn out of his life, now that the dark story of George Talboys was finished. What had he to do next? A crowd of horrible thoughts rushed into his mind, as he remembered the story that he had heard from the white lips of Helen Talboys. His friend, his murdered friend, lay hidden among the mouldering ruins of the old well at Audley Court. He had lain there for six long months, unburied, unknown, hidden in the darkness of the old convent well. What was to be done? To institute a search for the remains of the murdered man was to inevitably bring about a coroner's inquest. Should such an inquest be held, it was next to impossible that the history of My Lady's crime could fail to be brought to light. To prove that George Talboys met with his death at Audley Court was to prove almost as surely that My Lady had been the instrument of that mysterious death, for the young man had been known to follow her into the limewalk upon the day of his disappearance. My God! Robert exclaimed, as the full horror of his position became evident to him. He's my friend to rest in this unhallowed burial-place, because I have condoned the offences of the woman who murdered him. He felt that there was no way out of this difficulty. Perhaps he thought that it little mattered to his dead friend whether he lay entombed beneath a marble monument, whose workmanship should be the wonder of the universe, or in that obscure hiding-place in the thicket at Audley Court. At another time he would be seized with a sudden horror at the wrong that had been done to the murdered man, and would feign have travelled even more rapidly than the express between Brussels and Paris could carry him in his eagerness to reach the end of his journey, that he might set right this cruel wrong. He was in London at dusk, on the second day after that on which he had left Audley Court, and he drove straight to the Clarendon, to inquire after his uncle. He had no intention of seeing Sir Michael, as he had not yet determined how much or how little he should tell him, but he was very anxious to ascertain how the old man had sustained the cruel shock he had so lately endured. I will see Alicia, he thought. She will tell me all about her father. It is only two days since he left Audley. I can scarcely expect to hear of any favourable change. But Mr. Audley was not destined to see his cousin that evening, for the servants at the Clarendon told him that Sir Michael and his daughter had left by the morning mail for Paris, on their way to Vienna. Robert was very well pleased to receive this intelligence. It afforded him a welcome respite, for it would be decidedly better to tell the Baron at nothing of his guilty wife until he returned to England, with health unimpaired and spirits re-established, it was to be hoped. Mr. Audley drove to the temple. The chambers which had seemed dreary to him ever since the disappearance of George Tallboys were doubly so to-night. For that which had been only a dark suspicion had now become a horrible certainty. There was no longer room for the palest ray, the most transitory glimmer of hope. His worst terrors had been too well founded. George Tallboys had been cruelly and treacherously murdered by the wife he had loved and mourned. There were three letters waiting for Mr. Audley at his chambers. One was from Sir Michael, and another from Alicia. The third was addressed in a hand the young Barrister knew only too well, though he had seen it but once before. His face blushed redly at the sight of the superscription, and he took the letter in his hand carefully and tenderly, as if it had been a living thing, and sentient to his touch. He turned it over and over in his hands, looking at the crest upon the envelope, at the postmark, at the color of the paper, and then put it into the bosom of his waistcoat, with a strange smile upon his face. What a wretched and unconscionable fool I am, he thought. Have I laughed at the follies of weak men all my life, and am I to be more foolish than the weakest of them at last, the beautiful brown-eyed creature? Why did I ever see her? Why did my relentless nemesis ever point the way to that dreary house in Dorseture? He opened the first two letters. He was foolish enough to keep the last for a delicious morsel, a fairy-like dessert after the commonplace substantialities of a dinner. Alicia's letter told him that Sir Michael had borne his agony with such a persevering tranquility that she had become at last far more alarmed by his patient calmness than by any stormy manifestation of despair. In this difficulty she had secretly called upon the physician who attended the oddly household, in any cases of serious illness, and had requested this gentleman to pay Sir Michael an apparently accidental visit. He had done so, and after stopping half an hour with the baronet, had told Alicia that there was no present danger of any serious consequence from this great grief, but that it was necessary that every effort should be made to arouse Sir Michael and to force him, however unwillingly, into action. Alicia had immediately acted upon this advice, had resumed her old empire as a spoiled child, and reminded her father of a promise he had made of taking her through Germany. With considerable difficulty she had induced him to consent to fulfilling this old promise, and having once gained her point, she had contrived that they should leave England as soon as it was possible to do so, and she told Robert, in conclusion, that she would not bring her father back to his old house, until she had taught him to forget the sorrows associated with it. The baronet's letter was very brief. It contained half a dozen blank checks on Sir Michael Audley's London bankers. "'You will require money, my dear Robert,' he wrote, for such arrangements as you may think fit to make for the future comfort of the person I committed to your care. I need scarcely tell you that those arrangements cannot be too liberal. But perhaps it is as well that I should tell you now, for the first and only time, that it is my earnest wish never again to hear that person's name. I have no wish to be told the nature of the arrangements you may make for her. I am sure that you will act conscientiously and mercifully. I seek to know no more. Whenever you want money, you will draw upon me for any sums that you may require, but you will have no occasion to tell me for whose use you want that money.' Robert Audley breathed a long sigh of relief as he folded this letter. It released him from a duty which it would have been most painful for him to perform, and it forever decided his course of action with regard to the murdered man. George Tallboy's must lie at peace in his unknown grave, and Sir Michael Audley must never learn that the woman he had loved bore the red brand of murder on her soul. Robert had only the third letter to open—the letter which he had placed in his bosom while he read the others. He tore open the envelope, handling it carefully and tenderly as he had done before. The letter was as brief as Sir Michael's—it contained only these few lines. Dear Mr. Audley, the rector of this place has been twice to see Marx, the man you saved in the fire at the Castle Inn. He lies in a very precarious state at his mother's cottage, near Audley Court, and is not expected to live many days. His wife is attending him, and both he and she have expressed a most earnest desire that you should see him before he dies. Pray come without delay. Yours very sincerely, Clara Tallboy's. Mount Standing Rectory, March the 6th. Robert Audley folded this letter very reverently, and placed it underneath that part of his waistcoat which might be supposed to cover the region of his heart. Having done this, he seated himself in his favorite arm chair, filled and lighted a pipe, and smoked it out, staring reflectingly at the fire as long as his tobacco lasted. What can that man, Marx, want with me, thought the barrister? He is afraid to die until he has made confession, perhaps. He wishes to tell me that which I know already, the story of my lady's crime. I knew that he was in on the secret. I was sure of it, even upon the night on which I first saw him. He knew the secret, and he traded on it. Robert Audley shrank strangely from returning to Essex. How should he meet Clara Tallboy's now that he knew the secret of her brother's fate? How many lies he should have to tell, or how much equivocation he must use in order to keep the truth from her? Yet would there be any mercy in telling that horrible story, the knowledge of which must cast a blight upon her youth, and blot out every hope she had even secretly cherished? He knew by his own experience how possible it was to hope against hope, and to hope unconsciously, and he could not bear that her heart should be crushed as his had been by the knowledge of the truth. Better that she should hope vainly to the last, he thought. Better that she should go through life seeking the clue to her lost brother's fate, than that I should give that clue into her hands, and say, our worst fears are realized. The brother you loved has been fouly murdered in the early promise of his youth. But Clara Tallboy's had written to him, imploring him to return to Essex without delay. Could he refuse to do her bidding, however painful its accomplishment might be? And again the man was dying perhaps, and had implored to see him. Would it not be cruel to refuse to go, to delay an hour unnecessarily? He looked at his watch. It wanted only five minutes to nine. There was no train to Odley after the Ipswich Mail, which left London at half-past eight, but there was a train that left Shortitch at eleven, and stopped at Brentwood between twelve and one. Robert decided upon going by this train, and walking the distance between Brentwood and Odley, which was upwards of six miles. He had a long time to wait before it would be necessary to leave the temple on his way to Shortitch, and he sat brooding darkly over the fire, and wondering at the strange events which had filled his life within the last year and a half, coming like angry shadows between his lazy inclinations and himself, and investing him with purposes that were not his own. Good-heaven! he thought, as he smoked his second pipe. How can I believe that it was I who used to lounge all day in this easy-chair reading Paul de Coq, and smoking mild Turkish, who used to drop in at half-price to stand among the pressmen at the back of the boxes, and see a new burlesque and finish the evening with the chuff and crow, and chops and pale ale at Evans? Was it I to whom life was such an easy merry-go-round? Was it I who was one of the boys who sit at ease upon the wooden horses, while other boys run barefoot in the mud, and work their hardest in the hope of a ride when their work is done? Heaven knows I have learned the business of life since then. And now I must needs fall in love, and swell the tragic chorus, which is always being sung by the poor addition of my pitiful sighs and groans. Clara Tallboys! Clara Tallboys! Is there any merciful smile latent beneath the earnest light of your brown eyes? What would you say to me if I told you that I love you as earnestly and truly as I have mourned for your brother's fate, that the new strength and purpose of my life, which has grown out of my friendship for the murdered man, grows even stronger as it turns to you, and changes me until I wonder at myself? What would she say to me? Ah! Heaven knows! If she happened to like the colour of my hair or the tone of my voice, she might listen to me, perhaps. But would she hear me any more because I love her truly and purely, because I would be constant, and honest, and faithful to her? Not she. These things might move her, perhaps, to be a little pitiful to me, but they would move her no more. If a girl with freckles and white eyelashes adored me, I should only think her a nuisance. But if Clara Tallboys had a fancy to trample upon my uncouth person, I should think she did me a favour. I hope poor little Alicia may pick up with some fair-haired Saxon in the course of her travels. I hope—his thoughts wandered away wearily and lost themselves. How could he hope for anything, or think of anything, while the memory of his dead friend's unburied body haunted him like a horrible spectre? He remembered a story—a morbid, hideous, yet delicious story—which had once pleasantly congealed his blood on a social winter's evening. The story of a man—monomaniac, perhaps—who had been haunted at every turn by the image of an unburied kinsman, who could not rest in his unhallowed hiding-place. What if that dreadful story had its double in reality? What if he were henceforth to be haunted by the phantom of murdered George Tallboys? He pushed his hair away from his face with both hands, and looked rather nervously around the snug little apartment. There were lurking shadows in the corners of the room that he scarcely liked. The door opening into his little dressing-room was ajar. He got up to shut it, and turned the key in the lock with a sharp click. I haven't read Alexander Dumas and Wilkie Collins for nothing, he muttered. I'm up to their tricks, sneaking in at doors behind a fellow's back, and flattening their white faces against window-panes, and making themselves all eyes in the twilight. It's a strange thing that your generous-hearted fellow, who never did a shabby thing in his life, is capable of any meanness the moment he becomes a ghost. I'll have the gas laid on to-morrow, and I'll engage Mrs. Maloney's eldest son to sleep under the letter-box and the lobby. The youth plays popular melodies upon a piece of tissue-paper and a small tooth-comb, and it will be quite pleasant, company. Mr. Audley walked weirdly up and down the room, trying to get rid of the time. It was no use leaving the temple until ten o'clock, and even then he would be sure to reach the station half an hour too early. He was tired of smoking. The soothing narcotic influence might be pleasant enough in itself, but the man must be of a singularly unsocial disposition who does not, after a half-dozen lonely pipes. Feel the need of some friendly companion, at whom he can stare dreamily at thwart the pale gray mists, and who will stare kindly back at him in return. Do not think that Robert Audley was without friends, because he so often found himself alone in his chambers. The solemn purpose which had taken so powerful a hold upon his careless life had separated him from old associations, and it was for this reason that he was alone. He had dropped away from his old friends. How could he sit among them, at social wine parties, perhaps, or at social little dinners, that were washed down with non-pareil and chamberteen, ponard and champagne? How could he sit among them, listening to their careless talk of politics and opera, literature and racing, theatres and science, scandal and theology, and yet carry in his mind the horrible burden of those dark terrors and suspicions that were with him by day and by night? He could not do it. He had shrunk from those men as if he had indeed been a detective-police officer, stained with vile associations and unfit company for honest gentlemen. He had drawn himself away from all familiar haunts, and shut himself in his lonely rooms with the perpetual trouble of his mind for his sole companion, until he had grown as nervous as habitual solitude will eventually make the strongest and the wisest man, however he may vaunt himself of his strength and wisdom. The clock of the temple church and the clocks of St. Dunstons, St. Clemens Danes, and a crowd of other churches, whose steeples uprear themselves above the house-tops by the river, struck ten at last, and Mr. Oddly, who had put on his hat and overcoat nearly a half hour before, let himself out of the little lobby, and locked his door behind him. He mentally reiterated his determination to engage Parthric, as Mrs. Maloney's eldest son was called by his devoted mother. The youth should enter upon his functions the very night after, and if the ghost of the hapless George Tall Boy should invade these gloomy apartments, the phantom must make its way across Patrick's body before it could reach the inner chamber in which the proprietor of the premises slept. Do not laugh at poor George, because he grew hypochondriacal after hearing the horrible story of his friend's death. There is nothing so delicate, so fragile, as that invisible balance upon which the mind is always trembling, mad to-day, and sane to-morrow. Who can forget that almost terrible picture of Dr. Samuel Johnson, the awful disputant of the club-room, solemn, ponderous, severe, and merciless, the admiration and the terror of Humble Bozzy, the stern monitor of gentle Oliver, the friend of Garrick and Reynolds to-night, and before to-morrow sunset, a weak, miserable old man, discovered by good Mr. and Mrs. Thrale, kneeling upon the floor of his lonely chamber, in an agony of childish terror and confusion, and praying to a merciful God for the preservation of his wits? I think the memory of that dreadful afternoon, and of the tender care he then received, should have taught the doctor to keep his hand steady at Straythem, when he took his bedroom candlestick, from which it was his habit to shower rivulets of molten wax upon the costly carpet of his beautiful protectress, and might have even had a more enduring effect, and taught him to be more merciful, when the brewer's widow went mad in her turn, and married that dreadful creature, the Italian singer. Who has not been, or is not, to be mad in some lonely hour of life? Who is quite safe from the trembling of the balance? Fleet Street was quiet and lonely at this late hour, and Robert Audley, being in a ghost-seeing mood, would have been scarcely astonished had he seen Johnson set come roistering westward in the lamplight, or blind John Milton groping his way down the steps before St. Bride's Church. Mr. Audley held a handsome at the corner of Farringdon Street, and was rattled rapidly away across tenantless Smithfield Market, and into a labyrinth of dingy streets that brought him out upon the broad grandeur of Finsbury Pavement. The handsome rattled up the steep and stony approach to Shortitch Station, and deposited Robert at the doors of that unlovely temple. There were very few people going into travel by this midnight train, and Robert walked up and down the long wooden platform, reading the huge advertisements whose gaunt lettering looked wan and ghastly in the dim lamplight. He had the carriage in which he sat, all to himself. All to himself, did I say? Had he not lately summoned to his side that ghostly company which of all companionship is the most tenacious? The shadow of George Talboys pursued him, even in the comfortable first-class carriage, and was behind him when he looked out of the window. And was yet far ahead of him in the rushing engine, in that thicket toward which this train was speeding, by the side of the unhallowed hiding-place in which the mortal remains of the dead man lay, neglected and uncared for. I must give my lost friend decent burial, Robert thought, as the chill wind swept across the flat landscape, and struck him with such frozen breath, as might have emanated from the lips of the dead. I must do it, for I shall die of some panic, like this which has seized upon me to-night. I must do it, at any peril, at any cost, even at the price of that revelation which will bring the madwoman back from her safe hiding-place, and place her in a criminal dock. He was glad when the train stopped at Brentwood at a few minutes after twelve. It was half-past one o'clock when the night-wanderer entered the village of Audley, and it was only there that he remembered that Clara Talboys had omitted to give him any direction, by which he might find the cottage in which Luke Marx lay. It was Dawson who recommended that the poor creature should be taken to his mother's cottage, Robert thought, by and by. And I daresay Dawson has attended him ever since the fire. He'll be able to tell me the way to the cottage. Acting upon this idea, Mr. Audley stopped at the house in which Helen Talboys had lived before her second marriage. The door of the little surgery was ajar, and there was a light burning within. Robert pushed the door open and peeped in. The surgeon was standing at the mahogany counter, mixing a draft and a glass measure, with his hat close beside him. It is it was he had evidently only just come in. The harmonious snoring of his assistant sounded from a little room within the surgery. "'I am sorry to disturb you, Mr. Dawson,' Robert said apologetically, as the surgeon looked up and recognized him. "'But I have come down to see Marx, who I hear is in a very bad way, and I want you to tell me the way to his mother's cottage.' "'I'll show you the way, Mr. Audley,' answered the surgeon, "'I am going there this minute.' The man is very bad, then. So bad that he can be no worse. The change that can happen is that change which will take him beyond the reach of any earthly suffering.' "'Strange,' exclaimed Robert. He did not appear to be much burned.' "'He was not much burnt. Had he been, I should never have recommended him being removed from Mount Standing. It is the shock that has done the business. He has been an arranging fever for the last two days. But tonight he is much calmer. And I am afraid, before to-morrow night, we shall have seen the last of him.' "'He has asked to see me, I am told,' said Mr. Audley.' "'Yes,' answered the surgeon carelessly. A sick man's fancy, no doubt. You dragged him out of the house, and did your best to save his life. I dare say rough and boorish as the poor fellow is. He thinks a good deal of that.' They had left the surgery, the door of which Mr. Dawson had locked behind him. There was money in the till, perhaps, for surely the village apothecary could not affear that the most daring housebreaker would imperil his liberty in the pursuit of blue pill and colosinth of salts and senna. The surgeon led the way along the silent street, and presently turned into a lane at the end of which Robert Audley saw the wan glimmer of a light, a light which told of the watch that is kept by the sick and dying, a pale, melancholy light, which always has a dismal aspect when looked upon in this silent hour betwixt night and morning. It shone from the window of the cottage in which Luke Marx lay, watched by his wife and mother. Mr. Dawson lifted the latch, and walked into the common room with a little tenement, followed by Robert Audley. It was empty, but a feeble tallow candle with a broken back, and a long cauliflower-headed wick sputtered upon the table. The sick man lay in the room above. Shall I tell him you are here?" asked Mr. Dawson. Yes, yes, if you please, but be cautious how you tell him, if you think the news likely to agitate him. I am in no hurry. I can wait. You can call me when you think I can safely come upstairs. The surgeon nodded, and softly ascended the narrow wind-stairs leading to the upper chamber. Robert Audley seated himself in a Windsor chair by the cold hearthstone, and stared disconsolently about him. But he was relieved at last by the low voice of the surgeon, who looked down from the top of the little staircase to tell him that Luke Marx was awake, and would be glad to see him. Robert immediately obeyed this summons. He crept softly up the stairs, and took off his hat before he bent his head to enter at the low doorway of the humble rustic chamber. He took off his hat in the presence of this common peasant man, because he knew that there was another, and a more awful presence hovering about the room, and eager to be admitted. Phoebe Marx was sitting at the foot of the bed, with her eyes fixed upon her husband's face, not with any very tender expression in the pale light, but with a sharp, terrified anxiety, which showed that it was the coming of death itself that she dreaded, rather than the loss of her husband. The old woman was busy at the fireplace, airing linen and preparing some mess of broth, which it was not likely the patient would ever eat. The sick man lay with his head propped up by pillows, his coarse face, his deadly pale, and his great hands wandering uneasily about the coverlet. Phoebe had been reading to him, for an open testament lay among the medicine and lotion bottles upon the table near the bed. Every object in the room was neat and orderly, and bore witness of that delicate precision which had always been a distinguishing characteristic of Phoebe. The young woman rose as Robert Audley crossed the threshold, and hurried toward him. "'Let me speak to you for a moment, sir, before you talk to Luke,' she said in an eager whisper. "'Pray let me speak to you first.' "'What's the gala saying there?' asked the invalid in a subdued roar, which died away hoarsely on his lips. He was feebly savage even in his weakness. The dull glaze of death was gathering over his eyes, but they still watched Phoebe with a sharp glance of dissatisfaction. "'What's she up to there?' he said. "'I won't have no plot and no hatching again, me. I want to speak to Mr. Audley my own self, and whatever I'd done I'm going to answer for. If I'd done any mischief, I'm going to try and undo it. What's she is saying?' "'She ain't a sayin' nothin', lovey,' answered the old woman, going to the bedside of her son, who even when made more interesting than usual by illness, did not seem a very fit subject for this tender appellation. "'She's only a tellin' the gentleman how bad you've been, my pretty. When I'm a go on a tell, I'm only a go on a tell to him, remember?' growled Mr. Marks. "'And catch me a tellin' of it to him, if it warrant for what he'd done for me the other night.' "'To be sure not, lovey,' answered the old woman soothingly. Phoebe Marks had drawn Mr. Audley out of the room and onto the narrow landing at the top of the little staircase. This landing was a platform of about three feet square, and it was as much as the two could manage to stand upon it without pushing each other against the whitewashed wall, or backward down the stairs. "'Oh, sir, I wanted to speak to you so badly,' Phoebe answered eagerly. "'You know what I told you when I found you safe and well upon the night of the fire?' "'Yes, yes. I told you what I suspected—what I think, still. Yes, I remember. But I never breathed a word of it to anybody but you, sir. And I think that Luke has forgotten all about that night. I think that what went before the fire has gone clean out of his head all together. He was tipsy, you know, on my lay—when she came to the castle. And I think he was so dazed and scared like by the fire that it all went out of his memory. He doesn't suspect what I suspected any rate, or he'd have spoken of it to anybody and everybody, but he's dreadful spiteful against my lady, for he says if she'd have let him have a place at Brentwood or Chelmsford, this wouldn't have happened. So what I wanted to beg of you, sir, is not to let a word drop before Luke. "'Yes, yes, I understand. I will be careful.' My lady has left the court I hear, sir. "'Yes. Never to come back, sir. Never to come back. But she has not gone where she'll be cruelly treated, where she'll be ill-used. No, she will be very kindly treated.' "'I'm glad of that, sir. I beg your pardon for troubling you with the question, sir. But my lady was a kind mistress to me.' Luke's voice, husky and feeble, was heard within the little chamber at this period of the conversation, demanding angrily when that girl would have done jawing, upon which Phoebe put her finger to her lips, and led Mr. Oddly back into the sick room. "'I don't want you,' said Mr. Marks decisively, as his wife re-entered the chamber. "'I don't want you. You've no call to hear what I've got to say. I only want Mr. Oddly, and I want to speak to him all alone, with none of your sneak and listening at doors, do you hear? So you may go downstairs and keep there till you're wanted, and you may take mother. No mother may stay. I shall want her presently.' The sick man's feeble hand pointed to the door, through which his wife departed very submissively. "'I've no wish to hear anything, Luke,' she said. "'But I hope you won't see anything against those that have been good and generous to you.' "'I shall say what I like,' answered Mr. Marks fiercely, "'and I'm not going to be ordered by you. You ain't the parson, as I've ever heard of. Nor the lawyer, neither.' The landlord of the castle inn had undergone no moral transformation by his deathbed sufferings, fierce and rapid as they had been. Perhaps some faint glimmer of a light that had been far off from his life now struggled feebly through the black obscurities of ignorance that darkened his soul. Perhaps a half angry, half sullen penitence urged him to make some rugged effort to atone for a life that had been selfish and drunken and wicked. Be it how it might, he wiped his white lips, and turning his haggard eyes earnestly upon Robert Audley, pointed to a chair by the bedside. "'You made game of me in a general way, Mr. Audley,' he said presently, "'and you've drawed me out, and you've tumbled and tossed me about like in a gentlemanly way, till I was nothing or anything in your hands, and you've looked me through and through, and turned me inside out till you thought you knowed as much as I knowed. I had no particular call to be grateful to you, not before the fire at the castle till the night. But I am grateful to you for that. I'm not grateful to folks in a general way, perhaps, because the things his gentle folks have give have almost all has been the very things I didn't want. They give me soup, and tracks, and flannel, and coals. But Lord, they've made such a precious noise about it, that I'd have been to send them all back to him. But when a gentleman goes and puts his own life in danger to save a drunken brute like me, the drunkenest brute who's ever was feels grateful like to that gentleman, and wishes to say before he dies, which he sees in the doctor's face as he ain't got long to live. Thank you, sir. I'm obliged to you.' Luke Mark stretched out his left hand. The right hand had been injured by the fire, and was wrapped in linen, and groped feebly for that of Mr. Robert Oddly. The young man took the course but shrunk in hand in both his own, and pressed it cordially. I need no thanks, Luke Marks, he said. I was very glad to be of service to you. Mr. Marks did not speak immediately. He was lying quietly upon his side, staring reflectingly at Robert Oddly. You was on common fond that genders disappeared at the cord, weren't you, sir? He said at last. Robert started at the mention of his dead friend. He was on common fond of that Mr. Tall Boy, as I've heard say, sir, repeated Luke. Yes, yes, answered Robert rather impatiently. He was my very dear friend. For the servants at the court say how you took on when you couldn't find him, have heard the landlord of the sun and say how cut up you was when you first missed him. If the two gents had been brothers, the landlord said, our gent, mean and you, sir, couldn't have been more cut up when he missed the other. Yes, yes, I know, I know, said Robert. Pray do not speak any more of this subject. I cannot tell you now how much it distresses me. Was he to be forever haunted by the ghost of his unburied friend? He came here to comfort the sick man, and even here he was pursued by this relentless shadow. Even here he was reminded of the secret crime which had darkened his life. Listen to me, Marks, he said earnestly. Believe me that I appreciate your grateful words, and that I am very glad to have been of service to you. But before you say anything more, let me make one most solemn request. If you have sent for me that you may tell me anything of the fate of my lost friend, I entreat you to spare yourself, and to spare me that horrible story. You can tell me nothing which I do not already know. The worst you can tell me of the woman who was once in your power has already been revealed to me by her own lips. Pray then be silent upon this subject. I say again, you can tell me nothing which I do not know. Luke Marks looked musingly at the earnest face of his visitor, and some shadowy expression, which was almost like a smile, flitted feebly across the sick man's haggard features. I can't tell you nothing you don't know, he asked. Nothing. Then it ain't no good for me to try, said the invalid thoughtfully. Did she tell you? He asked, after a pause. I must beg Marks that you will drop the subject, Robert answered almost sternly. I have already told you that I do not wish to hear it spoken of. Whatever discoveries you made, you made your market out of them. Whatever guilty secrets you got possession of, you were paid for keeping silence. You had better keep silence to the end. Had I, cried Luke Marks in an eager whisper, had I really now better hold my tongue to the last? I think so, most decidedly. You traded on your secret, and you were paid to keep it. It would be more honest to hold to your bargain and keep it still. But suppose I want to tell something, cried Luke with feverish energy. Suppose I feel I can't die with a secret on my mind, and have asked to see you on purpose that I might tell you. Suppose that, and you'll suppose nothing but the truth. I'd have been burned alive before I've told her. He spoke these words between his set teeth, and scowled savagely as he uttered them. I'd have been burned alive first. I made her pay for her pretty insolent ways. I made her pay for her heirs and graces. I'd never have told her. Never. Never. I had my power over her, and I kept it. I had my secret, and was paid for it. And there wasn't a petty slide as she ever put upon me or mine that I didn't pay her out for twenty times over. Marks, marks, for heaven's sake, be calm," said Robert earnestly. What are you talking of? What is it that you could have told? I'm a-gonna tell you," answered Luke, wiping his lips. Give us a drink, mother." The old woman poured out some cooling drink into a mug and carried it to her son. He drank it in an eager hurry, as if he felt that the brief remainder of his life must be a race with the pitiless pedestrian, time. Stop where you are," he said to his mother, pointing to a chair at the foot of the bed. The old woman obeyed and seated herself meekly opposite to Mr. Oddly. I'll ask you another question, mother," said Luke, and I think it'll be strange if you can't answer it. Do you remember when I was at work upon Atkinson's farm, before I was married, you know, and when I was living down here along with you? Yes, yes," Mrs. Marks answered, nodding triumphantly. I remember that, my dear. It were last fall, just about as the apples was being gathered in the orchard across our lane, and about the time as you had your new sprig whisket. I remember, Luke. I remember." Mr. Oddly wondered where all this was to lead to, and how long he would have to sit by the sick man's bed, hearing a conversation that had no meaning to him. If you remember that much, maybe you'll remember more, mother," said Luke. Can you call to mind my bringing someone home here one night, while Atkinson's was stuck in the last of their corn? Once more Mr. Oddly started violently, and this time he looked up earnestly at the face of the speaker, and listened with a strange, breathless interest that he scarcely understood himself to what Luke Marks was saying. I recollect you bring it home, Phoebe," the old woman answered with great animation. I recollect you bring in Phoebe home to take a cup of tea, or a little snack, a supper, and more to times. Bother Phoebe, cried Mr. Marks. Who's talking of Phoebe? What's Phoebe that anybody should go to put their selves out about her? Do you remember my bringing home a gentleman after 10 o'clock one September night, a gentleman as was wet through to the skin and was covered with mud and slush, and green slime and black muck, from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, and had his arm broke and his shoulder swelled up awful, and was such an object that nobody would have known him. A gentleman as had to have his clothes cut off him in some places, and as sat by the kitchen fire, staring at the coals as if he had gone mad or stupid like, and didn't know where he was or who he was, and as had to be cared for like a baby, and dressed, and dried, and washed, and fed with spoonfuls of brandy, that had to be forced between his locked teeth before any life could be gotten to him. Do you remember that, mother? The old woman nodded, and muttered something to the effect that she remembered all these circumstances most vividly, now that Luke happened to mention them. Robert Oddly uttered a wild cry, and fell down upon his knees by the side of the sick man's bed. My God! he ejaculated, I thank thee for thy wondrous mercies. George Tallboy's is alive. Wait a bit, said Mr. Marx. Don't you be too fast. Mother, give us down that tin box on the shelf over again that chest of drawers, will you? The old woman obeyed, and after fumbling among broken teacups and milk jugs, lidless wooden cotton boxes, and a miscellaneous litter of rags and crockery, produced a tin snuff box with a sliding lid, a shabby, dirty-looking box enough. Robert Oddly still knelt by the bedside with his face hidden by his clasped hands. Luke Marx opened the tin box. There ain't no money in it, more's the pity, he said. Or if there had been, it wouldn't have been let's stop very long. But there's some it in that perhaps you'll think quite as valuable as money, and that's what I'm going to give you, as proof that a drunken brute can feel thankful to them as his kind to him. He took out two folded papers, which he gave into Robert Oddly's hands. They were two leaves torn out of a pocket-book, and they were written upon in pencil, and in a handwriting that was quite strange to Mr. Oddly, a cramped, stiff, and yet scrawling hand, such as some plowman might have written. I don't know this writing, Robert said, as he eagerly unfolded the first of the two papers. What is this to do with my friend? Why do you show me these? Suppose you read them first, said Mr. Marx, and ask me questions about them afterwards. The first paper which Robert Oddly had unfolded contained the following lines, written in that cramped, yet scrawling hand which was so strange to him. My dear friend, I write to you in such utter confusion of mind as perhaps no man ever before suffered. I cannot tell you what has happened to me. I can only tell you that something has happened which will drive me from England, a broken-hearted man, to seek some corner of the earth in which I may live and die unknown and forgotten. I can only ask you to forget me. If your friendship could have done me any good, I would have appealed to it. If your counsel could have been any help to me, I would have confided in you. But neither friendship nor counsel can help me, and all I can say to you is this. God bless you for the past, and teach you to forget me in the future. G.T. The second paper was addressed to another person, and its contents were briefer than those of the first. Helen, may God pity and forgive you for that which you have done today, as truly as I do. Rest in peace. You shall never hear of me again. To you and to the world I shall henceforth be that which you wished me to be to-day. You need fear, no molestation, from me. I leave England never to return. G.T. Robert Audley sat staring at these lines and hopeless bewilderment. They were not in his friend's familiar hand, and yet they purported to be written by him and were signed with his initials. He looked scrutinizingly at the face of Luke Marx, thinking that perhaps some trick was being played upon him. This was not written by George Tallboys, he said. It was, answered Luke Marx. It was written by Mr. Tallboys every line of it. He wrote it with his own hand, but it was his left hand, for he couldn't use his right because of his broken arm. Robert Audley looked up suddenly, and the shadow of suspicion passed away from his face. I understand, he said. I understand. Tell me all. Tell me how it was that my poor friend was saved. I was at work up at Atkinson's Farm last September, said Luke Marx, helping to stack the last of the corn. And as the nicest way from the farm to Mother's Cottage was through the meadows at the back of the court, I used to come that way, and Phoebe used to stand in the garden wall beyond the limewalk sometimes, to have a chat with me, knowing my time I come in home. I don't know what Phoebe was doing upon the evening of the 7th of September. I recollect the date, because Farmer Atkinson paid me my wages all of a lump on that day, and I'd had to sign a bit of receipt for the money he'd give me. I don't know what she was doing, but she weren't at the gate again the limewalk. So I went round to the other side of the gardens and jumped across the dry ditch, for I wanted particular to see her that night, as I was going away to work upon a farm beyond Chelmsford the next day. Only church clocks struck nine as I was crossing the meadows between Atkinson's and the court, and it must have been about a quarter past nine when I got into the kitchen garden. I crossed the garden and went into the limewalk. The nicest way to the servants' hall took me through the shrubbery and passed the dry well. It was a dark night, but I knew my way well enough about the old place, and the light in the window of the servants' hall looked red and comfortable through the darkness. I was close against the mouth of the dry well when I suddenly heard a sound that made my blood creep. It was a groan, a groan of a man in pain as was lying somewhere hid among the bushes. I weren't afraid of ghosts, and I weren't afraid of anything and a general way. But there was something in here, and this groan has chilled me to the very heart. And for a minute I was struck all over a heap, and didn't know what to do. But I heard the groan again, and then I began to search among the bushes. I found a man lying hidden under a lot of laurels, and I thought at first he was up to no good, and I was going to call on him to take him to the house, and he caught me by the wrist without getting up from the ground, but looking at me very earnest, as I could see by the way his face was turned toward me in the darkness, and asked me who I was, and what I was, and what I had to do with the folks at the court. There was something in the way he spoke that told me he was a gentleman, though I didn't know him from Adam, and couldn't see his face, and I answered his question civil. I want to get away from this place, he said, without being seen by any living creature. Remember that. I've been lying here ever since four o'clock today, and I'm half dead. But I want to get away without being seen. Mind that. I told him that was easy enough, but I began to think my first thoughts of him might have been right enough, after all, and that he couldn't have been up to no good to want to sneak away so precious quiet. Can you take me to any place where I can get a change of dry clothes, he says, without half a dozen people knowing it? He got up into his sitting attitude by this time, and I could see that his right arm hung close by his side, and he was in pain. I pointed to his arm and asked him what was the matter with it, but he only answered very quiet like, broken, my lad, broken. Not that that's much, he says, in another town speaking to himself like more than to me. There's broken hearts as well as broken limbs, and they're not so easy-mended. I told him I could take him to Mother's Codge, and that he could dry his clothes there, and welcome. Can your mother keep a secret, he asked. Well, she could keep one well enough if she could remember it, I told him. But he might tell her all the secrets of the freemasons and foresters and buffalers and odd fillers as ever was tonight, and she'd have forgotten I'll bat him tomorrow morning. He seemed satisfied with this, and he got himself up by holding on to me, for it seemed as if his limbs was cramped, the use of them was almost gone, and felt as he came again me that his clothes was wet and mucky. He haven't been in felon to the fish-pond, have you, sir? I asked. He made no answer to my question. He didn't seem even to have heard it. I could see now he was standing upon his feet that he was a tall, fine-made man, a head and shoulders higher than me. Take me to your mother's cottage, he said, and get me some dry clothes if you can. I'll pay you well for your trouble. I knew that the key was mostly left in the wooden gate in the garden wall, so I led him that way. He could scarcely walk at first, and it was only by leaning heavily upon my shoulder that he managed to get along. I got him through the gate, leaving it unlocked behind me, and trust into the chance of that not being noticed by the under-gardener, with the care of the key, and was a careless chap enough. I took him across the meadows and brought him up here, still keeping away from the village, and in the fields where there wasn't a creature to see us at that time at night. And so I got him to the room downstairs, where mother was sitting over the fire, getting my bit of supper ready for me. I put the strange chap in a chair again the fire, and then for the first time I had a good look at him. I never see anybody in such a state before. He was all over green, damp, and muck, and his hands were scratched and cut to pieces. I got his clothes off him how I could, for he was like a child in my hands, and sat staring at the fire as helpless as any baby, only given a long, heavy sigh now and then, as if his heart was a gun of burst. At last he dropped into a kind of dose, a stupid sort of sleep, and began to nod over the fire, so I ran and got a blanket and wrapped him in it, and got him to lie down on the pressed bedstead in the room under this. I sent mother to bed, and I sat by the fire and watched him, and kept the fire up till it was just upon daybreak, when he woke up all of a sudden with a start, and said he must go, directly this minute. I begged him not to think of such a thing, and told him he weren't fit to move for ever so long. But he said he must go, and he got up, and though he staggered like, and at first could hardly stand steady two minutes together, he wouldn't be beat, and he got me to dress him in his clothes as I dried and cleaned as well as I could while he layed asleep. I did manage it at last, but the clothes was awful spoiled, and he looked a dreadful object, with his pale face and a great cut on his forehead that I'd washed and tied up with a handkerchief. He could only get his coat on by buttoning it around his neck, for he couldn't put a sleeve upon his broken arm. But he held out again everything, though he groaned every now and then, and what with the scratches and bruises on his hands and the cut upon his forehead and his stiff limbs and broken arm he'd plenty of called and grown, and by the time it was broad daylight he was dressed and ready to go. What's the nearest town to this upon the London Road, he asked me. I told him as the nicest town was Brentwood. Very well, then, he says, if you'll go with me to Brentwood and take me to some surgeon as he'll set my arm, I'll give you a five-pound note for that and all your other trouble. I told him that I was ready and willing to do anything as he wanted done, and asked him if I shouldn't go and see if I could borrow a cart from one of the neighbors to drive him over in, for I told him it was a good six miles walk. He shook his head. No, no, no, he said. He didn't want anybody to know anything about him. He'd rather walk it. He did walk it. And he walked like a gooden, too. Though I know as every step he took of them six miles he took in pain. But he held out as he'd held out before. I never see such a chap to hold out in all my blessed life. He had to stop sometimes and lean again a gateway to get his breath. But he held out still, till it last we got into Brentwood. And then he says, take me to the nicest surgeons. And I waited while he had his arm set in splints, which took a precious long time. The surgeon wanted him to stay in Brentwood till he was better. But he says it weren't to be heard on. He must get up to London without a minute's loss of time. So the surgeon made him as comfortable as he could, considering, and tied up his arm in a sling. Robert Adley started. A circumstance connected with his visit to Liverpool dashed suddenly back upon his memory. He remembered the clerk who had called him back to say there was a passenger who took his birth on board the Victoria Regia within an hour or so of the vessel sailing, a young man with his arm in a sling, who had called himself by some common name which Robert had forgotten. When his arm was dressed, continued Luke, he says to the surgeon, can you give me a pencil to write something before I go away? The surgeon smiles and shakes his head, you'll never be able to write with that there hand today, he says, pointing to the arm as it just been dressed. Perhaps not, the young chap answers, quiet enough. But I can write with the other. Can I write it for you, says the surgeon. No thank you, says the other. And what I've got to write is private. If you can give me a couple of envelopes, I'll be obliged to you. Without the surgeon goes to fetch the envelopes, and the young chap takes a pocketbook out of his coat pocket with his left hand. The cover was wet and dirty, but the inside was clean enough, and he tears out a couple of leaves and begins to write upon them as you see. And he writes dreadful awkward with his left hand, and he writes slow, but he contrives to finish what you see, and then he puts the two bits of right into the envelopes as the surgeon brings him, and he seals him up, and he puts a pencil cross upon one of them, and nothing on the other. And then he pays the surgeon for his trouble, and the surgeon says, ain't there nothing more he can do for him? And can he persuade him to stay in Brentwood till his arm's better? But he says no, no, it ain't possible. And then he says to me, come along on me to the railway station, I'll give you what I've promised. So I went to the station with him. We was in time to catch the train as stops at Brentwood at half after eight, and we had five minutes to spare. So he takes me into a corner of the platform, and he says, I want you to deliver these here letters for me, which I had told him I was willing. Very well, then, he says, look here, you know Audley Court? Yes, I says, I ought to, for my sweetheart lives ladies made there. Whose ladies made, he says? So I tells him, my lady's the new lady what was governess at Mr. Dawson's. Very well, then, he says, this here letter with the cross upon the envelopes for Lady Audley, be sure to be sure to give it into her own hands, and remember to take care as nobody sees you give it. I promise to do this, and he hands me the first letter. And then he says, do you know Mr. Audley as his nevy to Sir Michael? And I says, yes, I've heard tell on him, and I've heard as he was a regular swell, but affable and free-spoken, for I heard him tell on you, you know. Luke added, parenthetically. Now look here, the young chap says, you're to give this other letter to Mr. Robert Audley, who's a stain at the son inn in the village. And I tells him it's all right, as I've known the son ever since I was a baby. So then he gives me the second letter, what's got nothing wrote upon the envelope. And he gives me a five-pound note, according to promise, and then he says, good day, and thank you for all your trouble. And he gets into a second-class carriage. And the last I see of him is his face as wide as a sheet of writing paper, and a gray patch of stick and plaster criss-crossed upon his forehead. Poor George. Poor George. I went back to Audley, and I went straight to the son inn and asked for you, meaning to deliver both letters faithful, so help me God. Then, but the landlord told me as he'd started off that morning for London, and he didn't know when he'd come back, and he didn't know the name of the place where he lived in London, though he said he thought it was in one of them law courts, such as Westminster Hall, or Doctor's Commons, or something like that. So what was I to do? I couldn't send a letter by post, not knowing where to direct to, and I couldn't give it into your own hands. And I'd been told particular not to let anybody else know of it, so I had nothing to do but to wait and see if you come back, and to bide my time forgiven of it to you. I thought I'd go over to the court in the evening and see Phoebe, and find out from her when there'd be a chance of seeing her lady, for I knowed she could manage it if she liked. So I didn't go to work that day, though I ought to have done, and I lounged and idled about until it was nigh upon dusk, and then I goes down to the meadows behind the court, and there I find Phoebe, sure enough, waiting again the wooden door and the wall and the lookout for me. I hadn't been talked to her long before I see there was something wrong with her, and I told her as much. Well, she says, I ain't quite myself this evening, for I had an upset yesterday, and I ain't got over it yet. The upset, I says, you had a quarrel with your missus, I suppose. She didn't answer me directly, but she smiled the queerest smile as I ever see, and presently she says, no, Luke, and we're nothing of that kind, and what's more nobody could be friendlier toward me than my lady. I think she'd do anything for me amost, and I think whether it was a bit of farm and stock and furnisher or such like, or whether it was the goodwill of a public house, she wouldn't refuse me anything, as I ask her. I couldn't make out this, for it was only a few days before she told me her missus was selfish and extravagant, we might wait a long time before we could get what we wanted from her. So I says to her, well, this is rather sudden-like, Phoebe, and she says, yes, it is sudden. She smiles again, just the same sort of smile as before. Upon that I turns round upon her sharp, and says, I'll tell you what it is, my gal, you're keeping something from me, something you've been told, or something you've found out, and if you think you're going to try that game on with me, you'll find you're very much mistaken, and so I give you warning. But she laughed it off, and says, Lord Luke, what could have put such fancies into your head? Perhaps other people can keep secret as well as you, I said. Perhaps other people can make friends as well as you. There was a gentleman came here to see your missus yesterday, weren't there, a tall young gentleman with a brown beard. Could have answered of me like a Christian, my cousin Phoebe bursts out of crying, and rings her hands, and goes on awful, until I'm dashed if I can make out what she's up to. But little by little I got it out of her, for I wouldn't stand no nonsense. Fine, she told me how she'd been sitting at work at the window of her little room, which was at the top of the house, right up in one of the gables, and overlooked the limewalk and the shrubbery and the well, when she see my lady walking with a strange gentleman, and they walk together for a long time, until by and by they— Stop! cried Robert. I know the rest. Well Phoebe told me all about what she see, and she told me she'd met her lady almost directly afterward, and something had passed between them, not much, but enough to let her missus know that the servant what she looked down upon had found out that as would put her in that servant's power to the last day of her life. And she is in my power, Luke, says Phoebe, and she'll do anything in the world for us, we keep her secret. See, see, both my lady oddly and her maid thought as the gentleman as I'd seen safe off by the London train was lying dead at the bottom of the well. If I was to give the letter they'd find out the contrary of this, and if I was to give the letter, Phoebe and me would lose the chance of getting started in life by her missus. So I kept the letter, and I kept my secret, and my lady kept her. But I thought if she acted liberal by me, and gave me the money I wanted, free like, I'd tell her everything, and make her mind easy. But she didn't. Whatever she'd give me, she'd throw me as if I'd been a dog. Whenever she spoke to me, she spoke as she might have spoke into a dog, and a dog she couldn't abide the sight of. There was no word in her mouth that was too bad for me. There was no toss as she could give her head that was too proud and scornful for me. And my blood biled againer, and I kept my secret, and let her keep her. I opened the two letters, and I read them. But I couldn't make much sense out of them, and I hid them away. And not a creature but me has seen them until this night. Luke Marks had finished his story, and lay quietly enough, exhausted by having talked so long. He watched Robert Audley's face, fully expecting some reproof, some grave lecture, for he had a vague consciousness that he had done wrong. But Robert did not lecture him. He had no fancy for an office which he'd not think himself fitted to perform. Robert Audley sat until long after daybreak with the sick man, who fell into a heavy slumber a short time after he had finished his story. The old woman had dozed comfortably through her son's confession. Phoebe was asleep upon the press bedstead in the room below, so the young barrister was the only watcher. He could not sleep. He could only think of the story he had heard. He could only thank God for his friend's preservation, and pray that he might be able to go to Clara Tallboys and say, your brother still lives, and has been found. Phoebe came upstairs at eight o'clock, ready to take her place at the sick bed, and Robert Audley went away to get a bed at the sun-in. It was nearly dusk when he awoke out of a long, dreamless slumber, and dressed himself before dining in the little sitting-room, in which he and George had sat together a few months before. The landlord waited upon him at dinner, and told him that Luke Marx had died at five o'clock that afternoon. He went off rather sudden-like, the man said, but very quiet. Robert Audley wrote a long letter that evening, addressed to Madame Taylor, care of Monsieur Val, Ville-Bremois, a long letter in which she told the wretched woman who had borne so many names, and was to bear a false one for the rest of her life, the story that the dying man had told him. It may be some comfort to her to hear that her husband did not perish in his youth by her wicked hand, he thought, if her selfish soul can hold any sentiment of pity or sorrow for others. End of CHAPTER XXXIX Sarah Talboys returned to Dorsetshire, to tell her father that his only son had sailed for Australia upon the ninth of September, and that it was most probable he yet lived, and would return to claim the forgiveness of the father he had never very particularly injured, except in the matter of having made that terrible matrimonial mistake, which had exercised so fatal an influence upon his youth. Mr. Harcourt Talboys was fairly nonplussed. Junius Brutus had never been placed in such a position as this, and seeing no way of getting out of this dilemma by acting after his favourite model, Mr. Talboys was feigned to be natural for once in his life, and to confess that he had suffered much uneasiness and pain of mind about his only son since his conversation with Robert Audley, and that he would be heartily glad to take his poor boy to his arms whenever he should return to England. But when was he likely to return, and how was he to be communicated with? That was the question. Robert Audley remembered the advertisements which he had caused to be inserted in the Melbourne and Sydney papers. If George had re-entered either city alive, how was it that no notice had ever been taken of that advertisement? Was it likely that his friend would be indifferent to his uneasiness? But then again it was just possible that George Talboys had not happened to see this advertisement. And as he had travelled under a feigned name, neither his fellow passengers nor the captain of the vessel would have been able to identify him with the person advertised for. What was to be done? Perhaps they wait patiently till George grew weary of his exile and returned to his friends who loved him? Or were there any means to be taken by which his return might be hastened? Robert Audley was at fault. Perhaps in the unspeakable relief of mind which he had experienced upon the discovery of his friend's escape, he was unable to look beyond the one fact of that providential preservation. In this state of mind he went down to Dorsetshire to pay a visit to Mr. Talboys, who had given way to a perfect torrent of generous impulses, and had gone so far as to invite his son's friend to share the prim hospitality of the square red-brick mansion. Mr. Talboys had only two sentiments upon the subject of George's story. One was a natural relief and happiness in the thought that his son had been saved. The other was an earnest wish that my lady had been his wife, and that he might thus have had the pleasure of making a signal example of her. It is not for me to blame you, Mr. Audley," he said, for having smuggled this guilty woman out of the reach of justice, and thus, as I may say, paltred with the laws of your country. I can only remark that, had the lady fallen into my hands, she would have been very differently treated. It was in the middle of April when Robert Audley found himself once more under those black fir trees beneath which his wandering thoughts had so often strayed since his first meeting with Clara Talboys. There were prim roses and early violets in the hedges now, and the streams, which upon his first visit, had been hard and frostbound as the heart of Harcourt Talboys, had thawed, like that gentleman, and ran merrily under the blackthorn bushes in the capricious April sunshine. Robert had a prim bedroom, and an uncompromising dressing room allotted him in the square house, and he woke every morning upon a metallic spring mattress, which always gave him the idea of sleeping upon some musical instrument, to see the sun glaring in upon him through the square white blinds, and lighting up the two lacquered urns which adorn the foot of the blue iron bedstead, until they blazed like two tiny brazen lamps of the Roman period. He emulated Mr. Harcourt Talboys in the matter of shower baths and cold water, and emerged prim and blue as that gentleman himself, as the clock and the hall struck seven, to join the master of the house and his anti-breakfast constitutional under the fir trees and the stiff plantation. But there was generally a third person who assisted in the constitutional promenades, and that third person was Clara Talboys, who used to walk by her father's side more beautiful than the morning, for that was sometimes dull and cloudy, while she was always fresh and bright. In a broad-leaf straw hat and flapping blue ribbons, one quarter of an inch of which Mr. Oddly would have esteemed a prouder decoration than ever adorned a favored creature's buttonhole. At first they were very ceremonious toward each other, and were only familiar and friendly upon the one subject of George's adventures, but little by little a pleasant intimacy arose between them, and before the first three weeks of Robert's visit had elapsed, Miss Talboys made him happy, by taking him seriously in hand and lecturing him on the purposeless life he had so long led, and the little use he had made of the talents and opportunities that had been given to him. How pleasant it was to be lectured by the woman he loved! How pleasant it was to humiliate himself and depreciate himself before her! How delightful it was to get such pleasant opportunities of hinting that if his life had been sanctified by an object he might indeed have striven to be something better than an idle flunner upon the smooth pathways that have no particular goal. That, blessed by the ties which would have given a solemn purpose to every hour of his existence, he might indeed have fought the battle earnestly and unflinchingly. He generally wound up with gloomy insinuation to the effect that it was only likely he would drop quietly over the edge of the Temple Garden some afternoon when the river was bright and placid in the low sunlight and the little children had gone home to their tea. "'Do you think I can read French novels and smoke mild to Turkish until I am three score and ten, Miss Tallboys?' he asked. "'Do you think there will not come a day in which my Mirshams will be foul, and the French novels more than usually stupid, and lie fall together such a dismal monotony that I shall want to get rid of it some how or other?' I am sorry to say that while this hypocritical young barrister was holding forth in this despondent way, he had mentally sold up his bachelor possessions, including all Michelle Levy's publications, and half a dozen solid silver-mounted Mirshams, pensioned off Mrs. Maloney, and laid out two or three thousand pounds in the purchase of a few acres of verdant shrubbery and sloping lawn, in Buzan de Mid, which there should be a fairy cottage ornée, whose rustic casements should glimmer out of Bower's myrtle and climatis to see themselves reflected in the purple bosom of the lake. Of course Clara Tallboys was far from discovering the drift of these melancholy lamentations. She recommended Mr. Oddly to read hard, and think seriously of his profession, and to begin life in real earnest. It was a hard, dry sort of existence, perhaps, which she recommended, a life of serious work and application, in which he should strive to be useful to his fellow creatures, and win a reputation for himself. "'I'd do all that,' he thought, and do it earnestly, if I could be sure of a reward for my labour. If she would accept my reputation when it was won, and support me in the struggle by her beloved companionship. But what if she sends me away to fight the battle, and marry some hulking country squire while my back is turned?' Being naturally of a vacillating and dilatory disposition, there is no saying how long Mr. Oddly might have kept his secret, fearful to speak, and break the charm of that uncertainty, which, though not always hopeful, was very seldom quite despairing, had he not been hurried by the impulse of an unguarded moment into a full confession of the truth. He had stayed five weeks at Grange Heath, and felt that he could not, in common decency, stay any longer. So he had packed his portmanteau one pleasant May morning, and had announced his departure. Mr. Tallboy's was not the sort of man to utter any passionate lamentations at the prospect of losing his guest, but he expressed himself with a cool cordiality which served with him as the strongest demonstration of friendship. We have got on very well together, Mr. Oddly, he said, and you have been pleased to appear sufficiently happy in the quiet routine of our orderly household. Nay, more! You have conformed to our little domestic regulations in a manner which I cannot refrain from saying, I take as a special compliment to myself. Robert Bowd. How thankful he was to the good fortune which had never suffered him to oversleep the signal of the clanging bell, or led him away beyond the can of clocks in Mr. Tallboy's lunch and hour. I trust, as we have got on so remarkably well together, Mr. Tallboy's resumed, you will do me the honour of repeating your visit to Dorsetshire whenever you feel inclined. You will find plenty of sport among my farms, and you will meet with every politeness and attention from my tenants, if you like to bring your gun with you. Robert responded most heartily to these friendly overtures. He declared that there was no earthly occupation that was more agreeable to him than partridge-shooting, and that he should only be too delighted to avail himself of the privilege so kindly offered to him. He could not help glancing toward Clara as he said this. The perfect lids drooped a little over the brown eyes, and the faintest shadow of a blush illuminated the beautiful face. But this was the young barrister's last day in Elysium, and there must be a dreary interval of days and nights, and weeks and months before the first of September would give him an excuse for returning to Dorsetshire, a dreary interval which fresh- colored young squires, or fat widowers of eight and forty, might use to his disadvantage. It was no wonder, therefore, that he contemplated this dismal prospect with moody despair, and was bad company for Miss Tallboys that morning. But in the evening after dinner, when the sun was low in the west, and Harcourt Tallboys closeted in his library upon some judicial business with his lawyer and a tenant farmer, Mr. Oddly grew a little more agreeable. He stood by Clara's side in one of the long windows of the drawing-room, watching the shadows deepening in the sky, and the rosy light growing every moment rosier as the sun died out. He could not help enjoying that quiet teta-teta, though the shadow of the next morning's express, which was to carry him away to London, loomed darkly across the pathway of his joy. He could not help being happy in her presence—forgetful of the past, reckless of the future. They talked of the one subject which was always a bond of union between them. They talked of her lost brother, George. She spoke of him in a very melancholy tone this evening. How could she be otherwise than sad, remembering that if he lived—and she was not even sure of that—he was a lonely wanderer, far away from all who loved him, and carrying the memory of a blighted life wherever he went? "'I cannot think how Papa can be so resigned to my poor brother's absence,' she said, "'for he does love him, Mr. Oddly. Even you must have seen lately that he does love him. But I cannot think how he can so quietly submit to his absence. If I were a man I would go to Australia and find him and bring him back, if he was still to be found among the living,' she added in a lower voice. She turned her face away from Robert and looked out at the darkening sky. He laid his hand upon her arm. It trembled in spite of him, and his voice trembled too as he spoke to her. "'Shall I go to look for your brother?' he said. "'You!' she turned her head and looked at him earnestly through her tears. "'You, Mr. Oddly, do you think that I could ask you to make such a sacrifice for me, or for those I love?' "'And do you think, Clara, that I should think any sacrifice to greater one if it were made for you? Do you think there is any voyage I would refuse to take, if I knew that you would welcome me when I came home, and thank me for having served you faithfully? I will go from one end of the continent of Australia to the other to look for your brother, if you please, Clara, and will never return alive unless I bring him with me, and will take my chance of what reward you shall give me for my labour.' Her head was bent, and it was some moments before she answered him. "'You are very good and generous, Mr. Oddly,' she said at last, and I feel this offer too much to be able to thank you for it. But what you speak of could never be. By what right could I accept such a sacrifice? By the right which makes me your bound and slay for ever and ever, whether you will or no. By right of the love I bear you, Clara,' cried Mr. Oddly, dropping on his knees, rather awkwardly it must be confessed, and covering a soft little hand that he had found half-hidden among the folds of a silken dress, with passionate kisses. "'I love you, Clara,' he said, "'I love you. You may call for your father and have me turned out of the house this moment, if you like, but I shall go on loving you all the same, and I shall love you for ever and ever, whether you will or no.' The little hand was drawn away from his, but not with a sudden or angry gesture, and it rested for one moment lightly and tremulously upon his dark hair. "'Clara, Clara,' he murmured, in a low pleading voice. "'Shall I go to Australia to look for your brother?' There was no answer. I don't know how it is, but there is scarcely anything more delicious than silence in such cases. Every moment of hesitation is a tacit of owl. Every pause is a tender confession. "'Shall we both go, dearest? Shall we go as man and wife? Shall we go together, my dear love? And bring our brother back between us?' Mr. Harcourt Tallboys, coming into the Lamplit Room a quarter of an hour afterward, found Robert Oddly alone, and had to listen to a revelation which very much surprised him. Like all self-sufficient people, he was tolerably blind to everything that happened under his nose, and he had fully believed that his own society and the Spartan regularity of his household had been the attractions which had made Dorseture delightful to his guest. He was rather disappointed, therefore, but he bore his disappointment pretty well, and expressed a placid and rather stoical satisfaction at the turn which affairs had taken. So Robert Oddly went back to London, to surrender his chambers in Frig Tree Court, and to make all due inquiries about such ships as sailed from Liverpool for Sydney in the month of June. He had lingered until after luncheon at Grange Heath, and it was in the dusky twilight that he entered the shady temple courts, and found his way to his chambers. He found Mrs. Maloney scrubbing the stairs, as was her won't upon a Saturday evening, and he had to make his way upward amidst an atmosphere of soapy steam that made the balusters greasy under his touch. There's lots of letters here on her, the laundress said, as she rose from her knees and flattened herself against the wall to enable Robert to pass her. And there's some parcels, and there's a gentleman which is called ever so many times that is waiting to-night, for I told him he'd written to me to say your rooms were to be aired. He opened the door of his sitting-room and walked in. The canaries were singing their farewell to the setting sun, and the faint yellow light was flickering upon the geranium leaves. The visitor, whoever he was, sat with his back to the window and his head bent upon his breast, but he started up as Robert Alde entered the room, and the young man uttered a great cry of delight and surprise, and opened his arms to his lost friend, George Tallboys. We know how much Robert had to tell. He touched lightly and tenderly upon that subject which he knew was cruelly painful to his friend. He said very little of the wretched woman who was wearing out the remnant of her wicked life in the quiet suburb of the forgotten Belgian city. George Tallboys spoke very briefly of that sunny 7th of September, upon which he had left his friend sleeping by the trout stream, while he went to accuse his false wife of that conspiracy which had well-nigh broken his heart. God knows that from the moment in which I sunk into the black pit, knowing the treacherous hand that had sent me to what might have been my death, my chief thought was of the safety of the woman who had betrayed me. I fell upon my feet upon a mass of slush and mire, but my shoulder was bruised, and my arm broken against the side of the well. I was stunned and dazed for a few minutes, but I roused myself by an effort, for I felt that the atmosphere I breathed was deadly. I had my Australian experiences to help me in my peril. I could climb like a cat. The stones of which the well was built were rugged and irregular, and I was able to work my way upward by planting my feet in the interstices of the stones, and resting my back at times against the opposite side of the well, helping myself as well as I could with my hands, though one arm was crippled. It was hard work, Bob, and it seemed strange that a man who had long professed himself weary of this life should take so much trouble to preserve it. I think I must have been working upward of half an hour before I got to the top. I know the time seemed an eternity of pain and peril. It was impossible for me to leave the place until after dark without being observed, so I hid myself behind a clump of laurel bushes, and lay down on the grass faint and exhausted to wait for nightfall. The man who found me there told you the rest, Robert. Yes, my poor old friend. Yes, he told me all. George had never returned to Australia after all. He had gone on board the Victoria Regia, but had afterward changed his birth for one in another vessel belonging to the same owners, and had gone to New York, where he had stayed as long as he could endure the loneliness of an existence which separated him from every friend he had ever known. Man was very kind to me, Bob, he said. I had enough money to enable me to get on pretty well in my own quiet way, and I meant to have started for the California Goldfields to get more when that was gone. I might have made plenty of friends, had I pleased. But I carried the old bullet in my breast, and what sympathy could I have with men who knew nothing of my grief? I yearned for the strong grasp of your hand, Bob. The friendly touch of the hand which had guided me through the darkest passage of my life. CHAPTER 40 AT PIECE Two years have passed since the May twilight in which Robert found his old friend, and Mr. Audley's dream of a fairy cottage has been realized between Teddington Locks and Hampton Bridge, where, amid a little forest of foliage, there is a fantastical dwelling-place of rustic woodwork, whose lattice windows look out upon the river. Here among the lilies and the rushes on the sloping bank, a brave boy of eight years old plays with a toddling baby, who peers wonderingly from his nurse's arms at that other baby in the purple depth of the quiet water. Mr. Audley is a rising man upon the home circuit by this time, and has distinguished himself in the great breach of promise-case of Hobbes v. Knobbes, and has convulsed the court by his deliciously comic rendering of the faithless Knobbes's al-matory correspondence. The handsome dark-eyed boy is Master George Tallboyce, who declines moosa at Eaton, and fishes for tadpoles in the clear water under the spreading umbridge beyond the ivied walls of the academy. But he comes very often to the fairy cottage to see his father, who lives there with his sister and his sister's husband, and he is very happy with his uncle Robert, his aunt Clara, and the pretty baby who has just begun to toddle on the smooth lawn that slopes down to the water's brink, upon which there is a little Swiss boat-house and a landing-stage where Robert and George moor their slender wearies. Other people come to the cottage near Teddington, a bright, merry-hearted girl, and a grey-bearded gentleman, who has survived the trouble of his life, and battled it as a Christian should. It is more than a year since a black-edged letter, written upon foreign paper, came to Robert Audley to announce the death of a certain Madame Taylor, who had expired peacefully at Ville-Bremuse, dying after a long illness, which Monsieur Valle describes as a melodie de longueur. Another visitor comes to the cottage in this bright summer of 1861, a frank, generous-hearted young man, who tosses the baby and plays with Georgie, and is especially great in the management of the boats, which are never idle when Sir Harry Towers is at Teddington. There is a pretty rustic smoking-room over the Swiss boat-house, in which the gentlemen sit and smoke in the summer evenings, and whence they are summoned by Clara and Alicia to drink tea, and eat strawberries and cream upon the lawn. Audley Court is shut up, and a grim old housekeeper reigns paramount in the mansion which my lady's ringing laughter once made musical. A curtain hangs before the pre-Raphaelite portrait, and the blue mold which artists dread gathers upon the Woovermans and Poussin, the Kipes and Tintorettes. The house is often shown to inquisitive visitors, though the baronet is not informed of that fact, and people admire my lady's rooms, and ask many questions about the pretty, fair-haired woman who died abroad. Sir Michael has no fancy to return to the familiar dwelling place in which he once dreamed a brief dream of impossible happiness. He remains in London until Alicia shall be Lady Towers, when he is to remove to a house he has lately bought in Hartfordshire, on the borders of his son-in-law's estate. George Talboys is very happy with his sister and his old friend. He is a young man yet, to remember, and it is not quite impossible that he may, by and by, find someone who will console him for the past. That dark story of the past fades little by little every day, and there may come a time in which the shadow my lady's wickedness has cast upon the young man's life will utterly vanish away. The mere sham and the French novels have been presented to a young Templar with whom Robert Audley had been friendly in his bachelor days, and Mrs. Maloney has a little pension, paid her quarterly, for her care of the canaries and geraniums. I hope no one will take objection to my story, because the end of it leaves the good people all happy and at peace. If my experience of life has not been very long, it has at least been manifold, and I can safely subscribe to that which a mighty king and a great philosopher declared, when he said that neither the experiences of his youth nor of his age had ever shown him the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread. End of Lady Audley's Secret By Mary Elizabeth Braddon