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“Indeed!” said my lady; “and what reason could any one have for announcing the death of Mrs. Talboys, if Mrs. Talboys had been alive?”

“The lady herself might have had a reason,” Robert answered, quietly.

“What reason?”

“How if she had taken advantage of George’s absence to win a richer husband? How if she had married again, and wished to throw my poor friend off the scent by this false announcement?”

Lady Audley shrugged her shoulders.

“Your suppositions are rather ridiculous, Mr. Audley,” she said; “it is to be hoped that you have some reasonable grounds for them.”

“I have examined a file of each of the newspapers published in Chelmsford and Colchester,” continued Robert, without replying to my lady’s last observation, “and I find in one of the Colchester papers, dated July the 2d, 1850, a brief paragraph among numerous miscellaneous scraps of information copied from other newspapers, to the effect that a Mr. George Talboys, an English gentleman, had arrived at Sydney from the gold-fields, carrying with him nuggets and gold-dust to the amount of twenty thousand pounds, and that he had realized his property and sailed for Liverpool in the fast-sailing clipper Argus. This is a very small fact, of course, Lady Audley, but it is enough to prove that any person residing in Essex in the July of the year fifty-seven, was likely to become aware of George Talboys’ return from Australia. Do you follow me?”

“Not very clearly,” said my lady. “What have the Essex papers to do with the death of Mrs. Talboys?”

“We will come to that by-and-by, Lady Audley. I say that I believe the announcement in the Times to have been a false announcement, and a part of the conspiracy which was carried out by Helen Talboys and Lieutenant Maldon against my poor friend.”

“A conspiracy!”

“Yes, a conspiracy concocted by an artful woman, who had speculated upon the chances of her husband’s death, and had secured a splendid position at the risk of committing a crime; a bold woman, my lady, who thought to play her comedy out to the end without fear of detection; a wicked woman, who did not care what misery she might inflict upon the honest heart of the man she betrayed; but a foolish woman, who looked at life as a game of chance, in which the best player was likely to hold the winning cards, forgetting that there is a Providence above the pitiful speculators, and that wicked secrets are never permitted to remain long hidden. If this woman of whom I speak had never been guilty of any blacker sin than the publication of that lying announcement in the Times newspaper, I should still hold her as the most detestable and despicable of her sex—the most pitiless and calculating of human creatures. That cruel lie was a base and cowardly blow in the dark; it was the treacherous dagger-thrust of an infamous assassin.”

“But how do you know that the announcement was a false one?” asked my lady. “You told us that you had been to Ventnor with Mr. Talboys to see his wife’s grave. Who was it who died at Ventnor if it was not Mrs. Talboys?”

“Ah, Lady Audley,” said Robert, “that is a question which only two or three people can answer, and one or other of those persons shall answer it to me before long. I tell you, my lady, that I am determined to unravel the mystery of George Talboy’s death. Do you think I am to be put off by feminine prevarication—by womanly trickery? No! Link by link I have put together the chain of evidence, which wants but a link here and there to be complete in its terrible strength. Do you think I will suffer myself to be baffled? Do you think I shall fail to discover those missing links? No, Lady Audley, I shall not fail, for I know where to look for them! There is a fair-haired woman at Southampton—a woman called Plowson, who has some share in the secrets of the father of my friend’s wife. I have an idea that she can help me to discover the history of the woman who lies buried in Ventnor churchyard, and I will spare no trouble in making that discovery, unless—”