Aurora Floyd & Lady Audley's Secret (Victorian Mysteries). Mary Elizabeth Braddon

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 sandal-wood 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 to-morrow morning.”

      “To-morrow 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 to-morrow 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?” cried Lady Audley, eagerly.

      “It would be rather unprofessional to tell you if it were so, my lady,” answered Robert, gravely.

      My lady bit her lip, and relapsed into silence. Alicia threw down her book, and watched her cousin’s preoccupied face. He talked to her now and then for a few minutes, but it was evidently an effort to him to arouse himself from his revery.

      “Upon my word, Robert Audley, you are a very agreeable companion,” exclaimed Alicia at length, her rather limited stock of patience quite exhausted by two or three of these abortive attempts at conversation. “Perhaps the next time you come to the Court you will be good enough to bring your mind with you. By your present inanimate appearance, I should imagine that you had left your intellect, such as it is, somewhere in the Temple. You were never one of the liveliest of people, but latterly you have really grown almost unendurable. I suppose you are in love, Mr. Audley, and are thinking of the honored object of your affections.”

      He was thinking of Clara Talboys’ uplifted face, sublime in its unutterable grief; of her impassioned words still ringing in his ears as clearly as when they were first spoken. Again he saw her looking at him with her bright brown eyes. Again he heard that solemn question: “Shall you or I find my brother’s murderer?” And he was in Essex; in the little village from which he firmly believed George Talboys had never departed. He was on the spot at which all record of his friend’s life ended as suddenly as a story ends when the reader shuts the book. And could he withdraw now from the investigation in which he found himself involved? Could he stop now? For any consideration? No; a thousand times no! Not with the image of that grief-stricken face imprinted on his mind. Not with the accents of that earnest appeal ringing on his ear.