Robert sprang from his easy-chair, upsetting his dogs on the carpet.
"Alicia, my darling, what is it?"
"It"s--it"s--it"s the feather of my hat that got into my eyes," sobbed his cousin; and before he could investigate the truth of this a.s.sertion Alicia had darted out of the room.
Robert Audley was preparing to follow her, when he heard her voice in the court-yard below, amidst the tramping of horses and the clamor of visitors, dogs, and grooms. Sir Harry Towers, the most aristocratic young sportsman in the neighborhood, had just taken her little foot in his hand as she sprung into her saddle.
"Good Heaven!" exclaimed Robert, as he watched the merry party of equestrians until they disappeared under the archway. "What does all this mean? How charmingly she sits her horse! What a pretty figure, too, and a fine, candid, brown, rosy face: but to fly at a fellow like that, without the least provocation! That"s the consequence of letting a girl follow the hounds. She learns to look at everything in life as she does at six feet of timber or a sunk fence; she goes through the world as she goes across country--straight ahead, and over everything. Such a nice girl as she might have been, too, if she"d been brought up in Figtree Court! If ever I marry, and have daughters (which remote contingency may Heaven forefend!) they shall be educated in Paper Buildings, take their sole exercise in the Temple Gardens, and they shall never go beyond the gates till they are marriageable, when I will walk them straight across Fleet street to St. Dunstan"s church, and deliver them into the hands of their husbands."
With such reflections as these did Mr. Robert Audley beguile the time until my lady re-entered the drawing-room, fresh and radiant in her elegant morning costume, her yellow curls glistening with the perfumed waters in which she had bathed, and her velvet-covered sketch-book in her arms. She planted a little easel upon a table by the window, seated herself before it, and began to mix the colors upon her palette, Robert watching her out of his half-closed eyes.
"You are sure my cigar does not annoy you, Lady Audley?"
"Oh, no indeed; I am quite used to the smell of tobacco. Mr. Dawson, the surgeon, smoked all the evening when I lived in his house."
"Dawson is a good fellow, isn"t he?" Robert asked, carelessly.
My lady burst into her pretty, gushing laugh.
"The dearest of good creatures," she said. "He paid me five-and-twenty pounds a year--only fancy, five-and-twenty pounds! That made six pounds five a quarter. How well I remember receiving the money--six dingy old sovereigns, and a little heap of untidy, dirty silver, that came straight from the till in the surgery! And then how glad I was to get it! While _now_--I can"t help laughing while I think of it--these colors I am using cost a guinea each at Winsor & Newton"s--the carmine and ultramarine thirty shillings. I gave Mrs. Dawson one of my silk dresses the other day, and the poor thing kissed me, and the surgeon carried the bundle home under his cloak."
My lady laughed long and joyously at the thought. Her colors were mixed; she was copying a water-colored sketch of an impossibly Turneresque atmosphere. The sketch was nearly finished, and she had only to put in some critical little touches with the most delicate of her sable pencils. She prepared herself daintily for the work, looking sideways at the painting.
All this time Mr. Robert Audley"s eyes were fixed intently on her pretty face.
"It _is_ a change," he said, after so long a pause that my lady might have forgotten what she had been talking of, "it _is_ a change! Some women would do a great deal to accomplish such a change as that."
Lady Audley"s clear blue eyes dilated as she fixed them suddenly on the young barrister. The wintry sunlight, gleaming full upon her face from a side window, lit up the azure of those beautiful eyes, till their color seemed to flicker and tremble betwixt blue and green, as the opal tints of the sea change upon a summer"s day. The small brush fell from her hand, and blotted out the peasant"s face under a widening circle of crimson lake.
Robert Audley was tenderly coaxing the crumbled leaf of his cigar with cautious fingers.
"My friend at the corner of Chancery Lane has not given me such good Manillas as usual," he murmured. "If ever you smoke, my dear aunt (and I am told that many women take a quiet weed under the rose), be very careful how you choose your cigars."
My lady drew a long breath, picked up her brush, and laughed aloud at Robert"s advice.
"What an eccentric creature you are, Mr. Audley I Do you know that you sometimes puzzle me--"
"Not more than you puzzle me, dear aunt."
My lady put away her colors and sketch book, and seating herself in the deep recess of another window, at a considerable distance from Robert Audley, settled to a large piece of Berlin-wool work--a piece of embroidery which the Penelopes of ten or twelve years ago were very fond of exercising their ingenuity upon--the Olden Time at Bolton Abbey.
Seated in the embrasure of this window, my lady was separated from Robert Audley by the whole length of the room, and the young man could only catch an occasional glimpse of her fair face, surrounded by its bright aureole of hazy, golden hair.
Robert Audley had been a week at the Court, but as yet neither he nor my lady had mentioned the name of George Talboys.
This morning, however, after exhausting the usual topics of conversation, Lady Audley made an inquiry about her nephew"s friend; "That Mr. George--George--" she said, hesitating.
"Talboys," suggested Robert.
"Yes, to be sure--Mr. George Talboys. Rather a singular name, by-the-by, and certainly, by all accounts, a very singular person. Have you seen him lately?"
"I have not seen him since the 7th of September last--the day upon which he left me asleep in the meadows on the other side of the village."
"Dear me!" exclaimed my lady, "what a very strange young man this Mr.
George Talboys must be! Pray tell me all about it."
Robert told, in a few words, of his visit to Southampton and his journey to Liverpool, with their different results, my lady listening very attentively.
In order to tell this story to better advantage, the young man left his chair, and, crossing the room, took up his place opposite to Lady Audley, in the embrasure of the window.
"And what do you infer from all this?" asked my lady, after a pause.
"It is so great a mystery to me," he answered, "that I scarcely dare to draw any conclusion whatever; but in the obscurity I think I can grope my way to two suppositions, which to me seem almost certainties."
"And they are--"
"First, that George Talboys never went beyond Southampton. Second, that he never went to Southampton at all."
"But you traced him there. His father-in-law had seen him."
"I have reason to doubt his father-in-law"s integrity."
"Good gracious me!" cried my lady, piteously. "What do you mean by all this?"
"Lady Audley," answered the young man, gravely, "I have never practiced as a barrister. I have enrolled myself in the ranks of a profession, the members of which hold solemn responsibilities and have sacred duties to perform; and I have shrunk from those responsibilities and duties, as I have from all the fatigues of this troublesome life. But we are sometimes forced into the very position we have most avoided, and I have found myself lately compelled to think of these things. Lady Audley, did you ever study the theory of circ.u.mstantial evidence?"
"How can you ask a poor little woman about such horrid things?"
exclaimed my lady.
"Circ.u.mstantial evidence," continued the young man, as if he scarcely heard Lady Audley"s interruption--"that wonderful fabric which is built out of straws collected at every point of the compa.s.s, and which is yet strong enough to hang a man. Upon what infinitesimal trifles may sometimes hang the whole secret of some wicked mystery, inexplicable heretofore to the wisest upon the earth! A sc.r.a.p of paper, a shred of some torn garment, the b.u.t.ton off a coat, a word dropped incautiously from the overcautious lips of guilt, the fragment of a letter, the shutting or opening of a door, a shadow on a window-blind, the accuracy of a moment tested by one of Benson"s watches--a thousand circ.u.mstances so slight as to be forgotten by the criminal, but links of iron in the wonderful chain forged by the science of the detective officer; and lo!
the gallows is built up; the solemn bell tolls through the dismal gray of the early morning, the drop creaks under the guilty feet, and the penalty of crime is paid."
Faint shadows of green and crimson fell upon my lady"s face from the painted escutcheons in the mullioned window by which she sat; but every trace of the natural color of that face had faded out, leaving it a ghastly ashen gray.
Sitting quietly in her chair, her head fallen back upon the amber damask cushions, and her little hands lying powerless in her lap, Lady Audley had fainted away.
"The radius grows narrower day by day," said Robert Audley. "George Talboys never reached Southampton."
CHAPTER XVI.
ROBERT AUDLEY GETS HIS CONGE.
The Christmas week was over, and one by one the country visitors dropped away from Audley Court. The fat squire and his wife abandoned the gray, tapestried chamber, and left the black-browed warriors looming from the wall to scowl upon and threaten new guests, or to glare vengefully upon vacancy. The merry girls on the second story packed, or caused to be packed, their trunks and imperials, and tumbled gauze ball-dresses were taken home that had been brought fresh to Audley. Blundering old family chariots, with horses whose untrimmed fetlocks told of rougher work than even country roads, were brought round to the broad s.p.a.ce before the grim oak door, and laden with chaotic heaps of womanly luggage. Pretty rosy faces peeped out of carriage windows to smile the last farewell upon the group at the hall door, as the vehicle rattled and rumbled under the ivied archway. Sir Michael was in request everywhere. Shaking hands with the young sportsmen; kissing the rosy-cheeked girls; sometimes even embracing portly matrons who came to thank him for their pleasant visit; everywhere genial, hospitable, generous, happy, and beloved, the baronet hurried from room to room, from the hall to the stables, from the stables to the court-yard, from the court-yard to the arched gateway to speed the parting guest.