“What have I done to you, Robert Audley,” she cried, passionately —“what have I done to you that you should hate me so?”
He answered her very gravely:
“I had a friend, Lady Audley, whom I loved very dearly, and since I have lost him I fear that my feelings toward other people are strangely embittered.”
“You mean the Mr. Talboys who went to Australia?”
“Yes, I mean the Mr. Talboys who I was told set out for Liverpool with the idea of going to Australia.”
“And you do not believe in his having sailed for Australia?”
“I do not.”
“But why not?”
“Forgive me, Lady Audley, if I decline to answer that question.”
“As you please,” she said, carelessly.
“A week after my friend disappeared,” continued Robert, “I posted an advertisement to the Sydney and Melbourne papers, calling upon him if he was in either city when the advertisement appeared, to write and tell me of his whereabouts, and also calling on any one who had met him, either in the colonies or on the voyage out, to give me any information respecting him. George Talboys left Essex, or disappeared from Essex, on the 6th of September last. I ought to receive some answer to this advertisement by the end of this month. To-day is the 27th; the time draws very near.”
“And if you receive no answer?” asked Lady Audley.
“If I receive no answer I shall think that my fears have been not unfounded, and I shall do my best to act.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Ah, Lady Audley, you remind me how very powerless I am in this matter. My friend might have been made away with in this very inn, and I might stay here for a twelvemonth, and go away at the last as ignorant of his fate as if I had never crossed the threshold. What do we know of the mysteries that may hang about the houses we enter? If I were to go to-morrow into that commonplace, plebeian, eight-roomed house in which Maria Manning and her husband murdered their guest, I should have no awful prescience of that bygone horror. Foul deeds have been done under the most hospitable roofs; terrible crimes have been committed amid the fairest scenes, and have left no trace upon the spot where they were done. I do not believe in mandrake, or in bloodstains that no time can efface. I believe rather that we may walk unconsciously in an atmosphere of crime, and breathe none the less freely. I believe that we may look into the smiling face of a murderer, and admire its tranquil beauty.”
My lady laughed at Robert’s earnestness.
“You seem to have quite a taste for discussing these horrible subjects,” she said, rather scornfully; “you ought to have been a detective police officer.”
“I sometimes think I should have been a good one.”
“Why?”
“Because I am patient.”
“But to return to Mr. George Talboys, whom we lost sight of in your eloquent discussion. What if you receive no answer to your advertisements?”
“I shall then consider myself justified in concluding my friend is dead.”
“Yes, and then —?”
“I shall examine the effects he left at my chambers.”
“Indeed! and what are they? Coats, waistcoats, varnished boots, and meerschaum pipes, I suppose,” said Lady Audley, laughing.
“No; letters — letters from his friends, his old schoolfellows, his father, his brother officers.”
“Yes?”
“Letters, too, from his wife.”
My lady was silent for some few moments, looking thoughtfully at the fire.
“Have you ever seen any of the letters written by the late Mrs. Talboys?” she asked presently.
“Never. Poor soul! her letters are not likely to throw much light upon my friend’s fate. I dare say she wrote the usual womanly scrawl. There are very few who write so charming and uncommon a hand as yours, Lady Audley.”
“Ah, you know my hand, of course.”
“Yes, I know it very well indeed.”
My lady warmed her hands once more, and then taking up the big muff which she had laid aside upon a chair, prepared to take her departure.
“You have refused to accept my apology, Mr. Audley,” she said; “but I trust you are not the less assured of my feelings toward you.”
“Perfectly assured, Lady Audley.”
“Then good-by, and let me recommend you not to stay long in this miserable draughty place, if you do not wish to take rheumatism back to Figtree Court.”
“I shall return to town to-morrow morning to see after my letters.”
“Then once more good-by.”
She held out her hand; he took it loosely in his own. It seemed such a feeble little hand that he might have crushed it in his strong grasp, had he chosen to be so pitiless.
He attended her to her carriage, and watched it as it drove off, not toward Audley, but in the direction of Brentwood, which was about six miles from Mount Stanning.
About an hour and a half after this, as Robert stood at the door of the inn, smoking a cigar and watching the snow falling in the whitened fields opposite, he saw the brougham drive back, empty this time, to the door of the inn.
“Have you taken Lady Audley back to the Court?” he said to the coachman, who had stopped to call for a mug of hot spiced ale.
“No, sir; I’ve just come from the Brentwood station. My lady started for London by the 12.40 train.”
“For town?”
“Yes, sir.”
“My lady gone to London!” said Robert, as he returned to the little sitting-room. “Then I’ll follow her by the next train; and if I’m not very much mistaken, I know where to find her.”
He packed his portmanteau, paid his bill, fastened his dogs together with a couple of leathern collars and a chain, and stepped into the rumbling fly kept by the Castle Inn for the convenience of Mount Stanning. He caught an express that left Brentwood at three o’clock, and settled himself comfortably in a corner of an empty first-class carriage, coiled up in a couple of railway rugs, and smoking a cigar in mild defiance of the authorities.
Chapter 19
The Writing in the Book.
It
