me!” she said, “this is very strange. I did not think men were capable of these deep and lasting affections. I thought that one pretty face was as good as another pretty face to them; and that when number one with blue eyes and fair hair died, they had only to look out for number two, with dark eyes and black hair, by way of variety.”
“George Talboys is not one of those men. I firmly believe that his wife’s death broke his heart.”
“How sad!” murmured Lady Audley. “It seems almost cruel of Mrs. Talboys to die, and grieve her poor husband so much.”
“Alicia was right, she is childish,” thought Robert as he looked at his aunt’s pretty face.
My lady was very charming at the dinner-table; she professed the most bewitching incapacity for carving the pheasant set before her, and called Robert to her assistance.
“I could carve a leg of mutton at Mr. Dawson’s,” she said, laughing; “but a leg of mutton is so easy, and then I used to stand up.”
Sir Michael watched the impression my lady made upon his nephew with a proud delight in her beauty and fascination.
“I am so glad to see my poor little woman in her usual good spirits once more,” he said. “She was very down-hearted yesterday at a disappointment she met with in London.”
“A disappointment!”
“Yes, Mr. Audley, a very cruel one,” answered my lady. “I received the other morning a telegraphic message from my dear old friend and school-mistress, telling me that she was dying, and that if I wanted to see her again, I must hasten to her immediately. The telegraphic dispatch contained no address, and of course, from that very circumstance, I imagined that she must be living in the house in which I left her three years ago. Sir Michael and I hurried up to town immediately, and drove straight to the old address. The house was occupied by strange people, who could give me no tidings of my friend. It is in a retired place, where there are very few tradespeople about. Sir Michael made inquiries at the few shops there are, but, after taking an immense deal of trouble, could discover nothing whatever likely to lead to the information we wanted. I have no friends in London, and had therefore no one to assist me except my dear, generous husband, who did all in his power, but in vain, to find my friend’s new residence.”
“It was very foolish not to send the address in the telegraphic message,” said Robert.
“When people are dying it is not so easy to think of all these things,” murmured my lady, looking reproachfully at Mr. Audley with her soft blue eyes.
In spite of Lady Audley’s fascination, and in spite of Robert’s very unqualified admiration of her, the barrister could not overcome a vague feeling of uneasiness on this quiet September evening.
As he sat in the deep embrasure of a mullioned window, talking to my lady, his mind wandered away to shady Figtree Court, and he thought of poor George Talboys smoking his solitary cigar in the room with the birds and canaries.
“I wish I’d never felt any friendliness for the fellow,” he thought. “I feel like a man who has an only son whose life has gone wrong with him. I wish to Heaven I could give him back his wife, and send him down to Ventnor to finish his days in peace.”
Still my lady’s pretty musical prattle ran on as merrily and continuously as the babble in some brook; and still Robert’s thoughts wandered, in spite of himself, to George Talboys.
He thought of him hurrying down to Southampton by the mail train to see his boy. He thought of him as he had often seen him spelling over the shipping advertisements in the Times, looking for a vessel to take him back to Australia. Once he thought of him with a shudder, lying cold and stiff at the bottom of some shallow stream with his dead face turned toward the darkening sky.
Lady Audley noticed his abstraction, and asked him what he was thinking of.
“George Talboys,” he answered abruptly.
She gave a little nervous shudder.
“Upon my word,” she said, “you make me quite uncomfortable by the way in which you talk of Mr. Talboys. One would think that something extraordinary had happened to him.”
“God forbid! But I cannot help feeling uneasy about him.”
Later in the evening Sir Michael asked for some music, and my lady went to the piano. Robert Audley strolled after her to the instrument to turn over the leaves of her music; but she played from memory, and he was spared the trouble his gallantry would have imposed upon him.
He carried a pair of lighted candles to the piano, and arranged them conveniently for the pretty musician. She struck a few chords, and then wandered into a pensive sonata of Beethoven’s. It was one of the many paradoxes in her character, that love of somber and melancholy melodies, so opposite to her gay nature.
Robert Audley lingered by her side, and as he had no occupation in turning over the leaves of her music, he amused himself by watching her jeweled, white hands gliding softly over the keys, with the lace sleeves dropping away from, her graceful, arched wrists. He looked at her pretty fingers one by one; this one glittering with a ruby heart; that encircled by an emerald serpent; and about them all a starry glitter of diamonds. From the fingers his eyes wandered to the rounded wrists: the broad, flat, gold bracelet upon her right wrist dropped over her hand, as she executed a rapid passage. She stopped abruptly to rearrange it; but before she could do so Robert Audley noticed a bruise upon her delicate skin.
“You have hurt your arm, Lady Audley!” he exclaimed. She hastily replaced the bracelet.
“It is nothing,” she said. “I am unfortunate in having a skin which the slightest touch bruises.”
She went on playing, but Sir Michael came across the room to look into the matter of the bruise upon his wife’s pretty wrist.
“What is it, Lucy?” he asked; “and how did it happen?”
“How foolish you all are to trouble yourselves about anything so absurd!” said Lady Audley, laughing. “I am rather absent in mind, and amused myself a few days ago by tying a piece of ribbon around my arm so tightly, that it left a bruise when I removed it.”
“Hum!” thought Robert. “My lady tells little childish white lies; the bruise is of a more recent date than a few days ago; the skin has only just begun to change color.”
Sir Michael took the slender wrist in his strong hand.
“Hold the candle, Robert,” he said, “and let us look at this poor little arm.”
It was not one bruise, but four slender, purple marks, such as might have been made by the four fingers of a powerful hand, that had grasped the delicate wrist a shade too roughly. A narrow ribbon, bound tightly, might have left some such marks, it is true, and my lady protested once more that, to the best of her recollection, that must have been how they were made.
Across one of the faint purple marks there was a darker tinge, as if a ring worn on one of those strong and cruel fingers had been ground into the tender flesh.
“I am sure my lady must tell white lies,” thought Robert, “for I can’t believe the story of the ribbon.”
He wished his relations good-night and good-by at about half past ten o’clock; he
