Lady Audley’s Secret M. E. Braddon (best historical fiction books of all time TXT) 📖

“I wish I could show you the jewels, Luke,” said the girl; “but I can’t, for she always keeps the keys herself; that’s the case on the dressing-table there.”

“What, that?” cried Luke, staring at the massive walnut-wood and brass inlaid casket. “Why, that’s big enough to hold every bit of clothes I’ve got!”

“And it’s as full as it can be of diamonds, rubies, pearls and emeralds,” answered Phoebe, busy as she spoke in folding the rustling silk dresses, and laying them one by one upon the shelves of the wardrobe. As she was shaking out the flounces of the last, a jingling sound caught her ear, and she put her hand into the pocket.

“I declare!” she exclaimed, “my lady has left her keys in her pocket for once in a way; I can show you the jewelry, if you like, Luke.”

“Well, I may as well have a look at it, my girl,” he said, rising from his chair and holding the light while his cousin unlocked the casket. He uttered a cry of wonder when he saw the ornaments glittering on white satin cushions. He wanted to handle the delicate jewels; to pull them about, and find out their mercantile value. Perhaps a pang of longing and envy shot through his heart as he thought how he would have liked to have taken one of them.

“Why, one of those diamond things would set us up in life, Phoebe,” he said, turning a bracelet over and over in his big red hands.

“Put it down, Luke! Put it down directly!” cried the girl, with a look of terror; “how can you speak about such things?”

He laid the bracelet in its place with a reluctant sigh, and then continued his examination of the casket.

“What’s this?” he asked presently, pointing to a brass knob in the framework of the box.

He pushed it as he spoke, and a secret drawer, lined with purple velvet, flew out of the casket.

“Look ye here!” cried Luke, pleased at his discovery.

Phoebe Marks threw down the dress she had been folding, and went over to the toilette table.

“Why, I never saw this before,” she said; “I wonder what there is in it?”

There was not much in it; neither gold nor gems; only a baby’s little worsted shoe rolled up in a piece of paper, and a tiny lock of pale and silky yellow hair, evidently taken from a baby’s head. Phoebe’s eyes dilated as she examined the little packet.

“So this is what my lady hides in the secret drawer,” she muttered.

“It’s queer rubbish to keep in such a place,” said Luke, carelessly.

The girl’s thin lip curved into a curious smile.

“You will bear me witness where I found this,” she said, putting the little parcel into her pocket.

“Why, Phoebe, you’re not going to be such a fool as to take that,” cried the young man.

“I’d rather have this than the diamond bracelet you would have liked to take,” she answered; “you shall have the public house, Luke.”

Robert Audley was supposed to be a barrister. As a barrister was his name inscribed in the law-list; as a barrister he had chambers in Figtree Court, Temple; as a barrister he had eaten the allotted number of dinners, which form the sublime ordeal through which the forensic aspirant wades on to fame and fortune. If these things can make a man a barrister, Robert Audley decidedly was one. But he had never either had a brief, or tried to get a brief, or even wished to have a brief in all those five years, during which his name had been painted upon one of the doors in Figtree Court. He was a handsome, lazy, care-for-nothing fellow, of about seven-and-twenty; the only son of a younger brother of Sir Michael Audley. His father had left him £400 a year, which his friends had advised him to increase by being called to the bar; and as he found it, after due consideration, more trouble to oppose the wishes of these friends than to eat so many dinners, and to take a set of chambers in the Temple, he adopted the latter course, and unblushingly called himself a barrister.

Sometimes, when the weather was very hot, and he had exhausted himself with the exertion of smoking his German pipe, and reading French novels, he would stroll into the Temple Gardens, and lying in some shady spot, pale and cool, with his shirt collar turned down and a blue silk handkerchief tied loosely about his neck, would tell grave benchers that he had knocked himself up with overwork.

The sly old benchers laughed at the pleasant fiction; but they all agreed that Robert Audley was a good fellow; a generous-hearted fellow; rather a curious fellow, too, with a fund of sly wit and quiet humor, under his listless, dawdling, indifferent, irresolute manner. A man who would never get on in the world; but who would not hurt a worm. Indeed, his chambers were converted into a perfect dog-kennel, by his habit of bringing home stray and benighted curs, who were attracted by his looks in the street, and followed him with abject fondness.

Robert always spent the hunting season at Audley Court; not that he was distinguished as a Nimrod, for he would quietly trot to covert upon a mild-tempered, stout-limbed bay hack, and keep at a very respectful distance from the hard riders; his horse knowing quite as well as he did, that nothing was further from his thoughts than any desire to be in at the death.

The young man was a great favorite with his uncle, and by no means despised by his pretty, gipsy-faced, lighthearted, hoydenish cousin, Miss Alicia Audley. It might have seemed to other men, that the partiality of a young lady who was sole heiress to a very fine estate, was rather well worth cultivating, but it did not so occur to Robert Audley. Alicia was a very nice