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

and shaded the lamp by the bedside. Alicia and her father’s wife were taking tea in Lady Audley’s boudoir, the room next to the antechamber in which Robert and Mr. Dawson had been seated.

Lucy Audley looked up from her occupation among the fragile china cups and watched Robert rather anxiously as he walked softly to his uncle’s room and back again to the boudoir. She looked very pretty and innocent, seated behind the graceful group of delicate opal china and glittering silver. Surely a pretty woman never looks prettier than when making tea. The most feminine and most domestic of all occupations imparts a magic harmony to her every movement, a witchery to her every glance. The floating mists from the boiling liquid in which she infuses the soothing herbs; whose secrets are known to her alone, envelope her in a cloud of scented vapor, through which she seems a social fairy, weaving potent spells with Gunpowder and Bohea. At the tea-table she reigns omnipotent, unapproachable. What do men know of the mysterious beverage? Read how poor Hazlitt made his tea, and shudder at the dreadful barbarism. How clumsily the wretched creatures attempt to assist the witch president of the tea-tray; how hopelessly they hold the kettle, how continually they imperil the frail cups and saucers, or the taper hands of the priestess. To do away with the tea-table is to rob woman of her legitimate empire. To send a couple of hulking men about among your visitors, distributing a mixture made in the housekeeper’s room, is to reduce the most social and friendly of ceremonies to a formal giving out of rations. Better the pretty influence of the tea cups and saucers gracefully wielded in a woman’s hand than all the inappropriate power snatched at the point of the pen from the unwilling sterner sex. Imagine all the women of England elevated to the high level of masculine intellectuality, superior to crinoline; above pearl powder and Mrs. Rachael Levison; above taking the pains to be pretty; above tea-tables and that cruelly scandalous and rather satirical gossip which even strong men delight in; and what a drear, utilitarian, ugly life the sterner sex must lead.

My lady was by no means strong-minded. The starry diamonds upon her white fingers flashed hither and thither among the tea-things, and she bent her pretty head over the marvelous Indian tea-caddy of sandalwood and silver, with as much earnestness as if life held no higher purpose than the infusion of Bohea.

“You’ll take a cup of tea with us, Mr. Audley?” she asked, pausing with the teapot in her hand to look up at Robert, who was standing near the door.

“If you please.”

“But you have not dined, perhaps? Shall I ring and tell them to bring you something a little more substantial than biscuits and transparent bread and butter?”

“No, thank you, Lady Audley. I took some lunch before I left town. I’ll trouble you for nothing but a cup of tea.”

He seated himself at the little table and looked across it at his Cousin Alicia, who sat with a book in her lap, and had the air of being very much absorbed by its pages. The bright brunette complexion had lost its glowing crimson, and the animation of the young lady’s manner was suppressed⁠—on account of her father’s illness, no doubt, Robert thought.

“Alicia, my dear,” the barrister said, after a very leisurely contemplation of his cousin, “you’re not looking well.”

Miss Audley shrugged her shoulders, but did not condescend to lift her eyes from her book.

“Perhaps not,” she answered, contemptuously. “What does it matter? I’m growing a philosopher of your school, Robert Audley. What does it matter? Who cares whether I am well or ill?”

“What a spitfire she is,” thought the barrister. He always knew his cousin was angry with him when she addressed him as “Robert Audley.”

“You needn’t pitch into a fellow because he asks you a civil question, Alicia,” he said, reproachfully. “As to nobody caring about your health, that’s nonsense. I care.” Miss Audley looked up with a bright smile. “Sir Harry Towers cares.” Miss Audley returned to her book with a frown.

“What are you reading there, Alicia?” Robert asked, after a pause, during which he had sat thoughtfully stirring his tea.

“Changes and Chances.”

“A novel?”

“Yes.”

“Who is it by?”

“The author of Follies and Faults,” answered Alicia, still pursuing her study of the romance upon her lap.

“Is it interesting?”

Miss Audley pursed up her mouth and shrugged her shoulders.

“Not particularly,” she said.

“Then I think you might have better manners than to read it while your first cousin is sitting opposite you,” observed Mr. Audley, with some gravity, “especially as he has only come to pay you a flying visit, and will be off tomorrow morning.”

“Tomorrow morning!” exclaimed my lady, looking up suddenly.

Though the look of joy upon Lady Audley’s face was as brief as a flash of lightning on a summer sky, it was not unperceived by Robert.

“Yes,” he said; “I shall be obliged to run up to London tomorrow on business, but I shall return the next day, if you will allow me, Lady Audley, and stay here till my uncle recovers.”

“But you are not seriously alarmed about him, are you?” asked my lady, anxiously. “You do not think him very ill?”

“No,” answered Robert. “Thank Heaven, I think there is not the slightest cause for apprehension.”

My lady sat silent for a few moments, looking at the empty teacups with a prettily thoughtful face⁠—a face grave with the innocent seriousness of a musing child.

“But you were closeted such a long time with Mr. Dawson, just now,” she said, after this brief pause. “I was quite alarmed at the length of your conversation. Were you talking of Sir Michael all the time?”

“No; not all the time?”

My lady looked down at the teacups once more.

“Why, what could you find to say to Mr. Dawson, or he to say to you?” she asked, after another pause. “You are almost strangers to each other.”

“Suppose Mr. Dawson wished to consult me about some law business.”

“Was it that?”