Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (popular books of all time .TXT) 📖

suspect?”

 

He had told the story of George’s disappearance and of his own

suspicions, suppressing only the names of those concerned in the

mystery; but what if this girl should fathom this slender disguise, and

discover for herself that which he had chosen to withhold.

 

Her grave eyes were fixed upon his face, and he knew that she was trying

to read the innermost secrets of his mind.

 

“What am I in her hands?” he thought. “What am I in the hands of this

woman, who has my lost friend’s face and the manner of Pallas Athene.

She reads my pitiful, vacillating soul, and plucks the thoughts out of

my heart with the magic of her solemn brown eyes. How unequal the fight

must be between us, and how can I ever hope to conquer against the

strength of her beauty and her wisdom?”

 

Mr. Audley was clearing his throat preparatory to bidding his beautiful

companion good-morning, and making his escape from the thraldom of her

presence into the lonely meadow outside the churchyard, when Clare

Talboys arrested him by speaking upon that very subject which he was

most anxious to avoid.

 

“You promised to write to me, Mr. Audley,” she said, “if you made any

discovery which carried you nearer to the mystery of my brother’s

disappearance. You have not written to me, and I imagine, therefore,

that you have discovered nothing.”

 

Robert Audley was silent for some moments. How could he answer this

direct question?

 

“The chain of circumstantial evidence which unites the mystery of your

brother’s fate with the person whom I suspect,” he said, after a pause,

“is formed of very slight links. I think that I have added another link

to that chain since I saw you in Dorsetshire.”

 

“And you refuse to tell me what it is that you have discovered?”

 

“Only until I have discovered more.”

 

“I thought from your message that you were going to Wildernsea.”

 

“I have been there.”

 

“Indeed! It was there that you made some discovery, then?”

 

“It was,” answered Robert. “You must remember, Miss Talboys that the

sole ground upon which my suspicions rest is the identity of two

individuals who have no apparent connection—the identity of a person

who is supposed to be dead with one who is living. The conspiracy of

which I believe your brother to have been the victim hinges upon this.

If his wife, Helen Talboys, died when the papers recorded her death—if

the woman who lies buried in Ventnor churchyard was indeed the woman

whose name is inscribed on the headstone of the grave—I have no case, I

have no clew to the mystery of your brother’s fate. I am about to put

this to the test. I believe that I am now in a position to play a bold

game, and I believe that I shall soon arrive at the truth.”

 

He spoke in a low voice, and with a solemn emphasis that betrayed the

intensity of his feeling. Miss Talboys stretched out her ungloved hand,

and laid it in his own. The cold touch of that slender hand sent a

shivering thrill through his frame.

 

“You will not suffer my brother’s fate to remain a mystery, Mr. Audley,”

she said, quietly. “I know that you will do your duty to your friend.”

 

The rector’s wife and her two companions entered the churchyard as Clara

Talboys said this. Robert Audley pressed the hand that rested in his

own, and raised it to his lips.

 

“I am a lazy, good-for-nothing fellow, Miss Talboys,” he said; “but if I

could restore your brother George to life and happiness, I should care

very little for any sacrifice of my own feeling, fear that the most I

can do is to fathom the secret of his fate and in doing that I must

sacrifice those who are dearer to me than myself.”

 

He put on his hat, and hurried through the gateway leading into the

field as Mrs. Martyn came up to the porch.

 

“Who is that handsome young man I caught tete-a-tete with you, Clara?”

she asked, laughing.

 

“He is a Mr. Audley, a friend of my poor brother’s.”

 

“Indeed! He is some relation of Sir Michael Audley, I suppose?”

 

“Sir Michael Audley!”

 

“Yes, my dear; the most important personage in the parish of Audley. But

we’ll call at the Court in a day or two, and you shall see the baronet

and his pretty young wife.”

 

“His young wife!” replied Clara Talboys, looking earnestly at her

friend. “Has Sir Michael Audley lately married, then?”

 

“Yes. He was a widower for sixteen years, and married a penniless young

governess about a year and a half ago. The story is quite romantic, and

Lady Audley is considered the belle of the county. But come, my dear

Clara, the pony is tired of waiting for us, and we’ve a long drive

before dinner.”

 

Clara Talboys took her seat in the little basket-carriage which was

waiting at the principal gate of the churchyard, in the care of the boy

who had blown the organ-bellows. Mrs. Martyn shook the reins, and the

sturdy chestnut cob trotted off in the direction of Mount Stanning.

 

“Will you tell me more about this Lady Audley, Fanny?” Miss Talboys

said, after a long pause. “I want to know all about her. Have you heard

her maiden name?”

 

“Yes; she was a Miss Graham.”

 

“And she is very pretty?”

 

“Yes, very, very pretty. Rather a childish beauty though, with large,

clear blue eyes, and pale golden ringlets, that fall in a feathery

shower over her throat and shoulders.”

 

Clara Talboys was silent. She did not ask any further questions about my

lady.

 

She was thinking of a passage in that letter which George had written to

her during his honeymoon—a passage in which he said: “My childish

little wife is watching me as I write this—Ah! how I wish you could

see her, Clara! Her eyes are as blue and as clear as the skies on a

bright summer’s day, and her hair falls about her face like the pale

golden halo you see round the head of a Madonna in an Italian picture.”

 

CHAPTER XXIX.

 

IN THE LIME-WALK.

 

Robert Audley was loitering upon the broad grass-plat in front of the

Court as the carriage containing my lady and Alicia drove under the

archway, and drew up at the low turret-door. Mr. Audley presented

himself in time to hand the ladies out of the vehicle.

 

My lady looked very pretty in a delicate blue bonnet and the sables

which her nephew had bought for her at St. Petersburg. She seemed very

well pleased to see Robert, and smiled most bewitchingly as she gave him

her exquisitely gloved little hand.

 

“So you have come back to us, truant?” she said, laughing. “And now that

you have returned, we shall keep you prisoner. We won’t let him run away

again, will we, Alicia?”

 

Miss Audley gave her head a scornful toss that shook the heavy curls

under her cavalier hat.

 

“I have nothing to do with the movements of so erratic an individual,”

she said. “Since Robert Audley has taken it into his head to conduct

himself like some ghost-haunted hero in a German story, I have given up

attempting to understand him.”

 

Mr. Audley looked at his cousin with an expression of serio-comic

perplexity. “She’s a nice girl,” he thought, “but she’s a nuisance. I

don’t know how it is, but she seems more a nuisance than she used to

be.”

 

He pulled his mustaches reflectively as he considered this question. His

mind wandered away for a few moments from the great trouble of his life

to dwell upon this minor perplexity.

 

“She’s a dear girl,” he thought; “a generous-hearted, bouncing, noble

English lassie; and yet—” He lost himself in a quagmire of doubt and

difficulty. There was some hitch in his mind which he could not

understand; some change in himself, beyond the change made in him by his

anxiety about George Talboys, which mystified and bewildered him.

 

“And pray where have you been wandering during the last day or two, Mr.

Audley?” asked my lady, as she lingered with her step-daughter upon the

threshold of the turret-door, waiting until Robert should be pleased to

stand aside and allow them to pass. The young man started as she asked

this question and looked up at her suddenly. Something in the aspect of

her bright young beauty, something in the childish innocence of her

expression, seemed to smite him to the heart, and his face grew ghastly

pale as he looked at her.

 

“I have been—in Yorkshire,” he said; “at the little watering place

where my poor friend George Talboys lived at the time of his marriage.”

 

The white change in my lady’s face was the only sign of her having heard

these words. She smiled, a faint, sickly smile, and tried to pass her

husband’s nephew.

 

“I must dress for dinner,” she said. “I am going to a dinner-party, Mr.

Audley; please let me go in.”

 

“I must ask you to spare me half an hour, Lady Audley,” Robert answered,

in a low voice. “I came down to Essex on purpose to speak to you.”

 

“What about?” asked my lady.

 

She had recovered herself from any shock which she might have sustained

a few moments before, and it was in her usual manner that she asked this

question. Her face expressed the mingled bewilderment and curiosity of a

puzzled child, rather than the serious surprise of a woman.

 

“What can you want to talk to me about, Mr. Audley?” she repeated.

 

“I will tell you when we are alone,” Robert said, glancing at his

cousin, who stood a little way behind my lady, watching this

confidential little dialogue.

 

“He is in love with my stepmother’s wax-doll beauty,” thought Alicia,

“and it is for her sake he has become such a disconsolate object. He’s

just the sort of person to fall in love with his aunt.”

 

Miss Audley walked away to the grass-plat, turning her back upon Robert

and my lady.

 

“The absurd creature turned as white as a sheet when he saw her,” she

thought. “So he can be in love, after all. That slow lump of torpidity

he calls his heart can beat, I suppose, once in a quarter of a century;

but it seems that nothing but a blue-eyed wax-doll can set it going. I

should have given him up long ago if I’d known that his idea of beauty

was to be found in a toy-shop.”

 

Poor Alicia crossed the grass-plat and disappeared upon the opposite

side of the quadrangle, where there was a Gothic gate that communicated

with the stables. I am sorry to say that Sir Michael Audley’s daughter

went to seek consolation from her dog Caesar and her chestnut mare

Atalanta, whose loose box the young lady was in the habit of visiting

every day.

 

“Will you come into the lime-walk, Lady Audley?” said Robert, as his

cousin left the garden. “I wish to talk to you without fear of

interruption or observation. I think we could choose no safer place than

that. Will you come there with me?”

 

“If you please,” answered my lady. Mr. Audley could see that she was

trembling, and that she glanced from side to side as if looking for some

outlet by which she might escape him.

 

“You are shivering, Lady Audley,” he said.

 

“Yes, I am very cold. I would rather speak to you some other day,

please. Let it be tomorrow, if you will. I have to dress for