FullReads

“About you, Lucy!” cried Sir Michael.

“Yes, dear. He seems to connect me in some vague manner—which I cannot quite understand—with the disappearance of this Mr. Talboys.”

“Impossible, Lucy! You must have misunderstood him.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then he must be mad,” said the baronet—”he must be mad. I will wait till he goes back to town, and then send some one to his chambers to talk to him. Good Heaven! what a mysterious business this is.”

“I fear I have distressed you, darling,” murmured Lady Audley.

“Yes, my dear, I am very much distressed by what you have told me; but you were quite right to talk to me frankly about this dreadful business. I must think it over, dearest, and try and decide what is best to be done.”

My lady rose from the low ottoman on which she had been seated. The fire had burned down, and there was only a faint glow of red light in the room. Lucy Audley bent over her husband’s chair, and put her lips to his broad forehead.

“How good you have always been to me, dear,” she whispered softly. “You would never let any one influence you against me, would you, dear?”

“Influence me against you?” repeated the baronet. “No, my love.”

“Because you know, dear,” pursued my lady, “there are wicked people as well as mad people in the world, and there may be some persons to whose interest it would be to injure me.”

“They had better not try it, then, my dear,” answered Sir Michael; “they would find themselves in rather a dangerous position if they did.”

Lady Audley laughed aloud, with a gay, triumphant, silvery peal of laughter that vibrated through the quiet room.

“My own dear darling,” she said, “I know you love me. And now I must run away, dear, for it’s past seven o’clock. I was engaged to dine at Mrs. Montford’s, but I must send a groom with a message of apology, for Mr. Audley has made me quite unfit for company. I shall stay at home and nurse you, dear. You’ll go to bed very early, won’t you, and take great care of yourself?”

“Yes, dear.”

My lady tripped out of the room to give her orders about the message that was to be carried to the house at which she was to have dined. She paused for a moment as she closed the library door—she paused, and laid her hand upon her breast to check the rapid throbbing of her heart.

“I have been afraid of you, Mr. Robert Audley,” she thought; “but perhaps the time may come in which you will have cause to be afraid of me.”