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Mrs. Marks clasped her hands piteously.

“I didn’t come away of my own free will, my lady,” she said; “no one could have been more unwilling to leave the house than I was this night. I was sent here.”

“Who sent you here?”

“Luke, my lady. You can’t tell how hard he can be upon me if I go against him.”

“Why did he send you?”

The innkeeper’s wife dropped her eyelids under Lady Audley’s angry glances, and hesitated confusedly before she answered this question.

“Indeed, my lady,” she stammered, “I didn’t want to come. I told Luke that it was too bad for us to worry you, first asking this favor, and then asking that, and never leaving you alone for a month together; but—but—he bore me down with his loud, blustering talk, and he made me come.”

“Yes, yes,” cried Lady Audley, impatiently. “I know that. I want to know why you have come.”

“Why, you know, my lady,” answered Phoebe, half reluctantly, “Luke is very extravagant; and all I can say to him, I can’t get him to be careful or steady. He’s not sober; and when he’s drinking with a lot of rough countrymen, and drinking, perhaps even more than they do, it isn’t likely that his head can be very clear for accounts. If it hadn’t been for me we should have been ruined before this; and hard as I’ve tried, I haven’t been able to keep the ruin off. You remember giving me the money for the brewer’s bill, my lady?”

“Yes, I remember very well,” answered Lady Audley, with a bitter laugh, “for I wanted that money to pay my own bills.”

“I know you did, my lady, and it was very, very hard for me to have to come and ask you for it, after all that we’d received from you before. But that isn’t the worst: when Luke sent me down here to beg the favor of that help he never told me that the Christmas rent was still owing; but it was, my lady, and it’s owing now, and—and there’s a bailiff in the house to-night, and we’re to be sold up to-morrow unless—”

“Unless I pay your rent, I suppose,” cried Lucy Audley. “I might have guessed what was coming.”

“Indeed, indeed, my lady, I wouldn’t have asked it,” sobbed Phoebe Marks, “but he made me come.”

“Yes,” answered my lady, bitterly, “he made you come; and he will make you come whenever he pleases, and whenever he wants money for the gratification of his low vices; and you and he are my pensioners as long as I live, or as long as I have any money to give; for I suppose when my purse is empty and my credit ruined, you and your husband will turn upon me and sell me to the highest bidder. Do you know, Phoebe Marks, that my jewel-case has been half emptied to meet your claims? Do you know that my pin-money, which I thought such a princely allowance when my marriage settlement was made, and when I was a poor governess at Mr. Dawson’s, Heaven help me! my pin-money has been overdrawn half a year to satisfy your demands? What can I do to appease you? Shall I sell my Marie Antoinette cabinet, or my pompadour china, Leroy’s and Benson’s ormolu clocks, or my Gobelin tapestried chairs and ottomans? How shall I satisfy you next?”

“Oh, my lady, my lady,” cried Phoebe, piteously, “don’t be so cruel to me; you know, you know that it isn’t I who want to impose upon you.”

“I know nothing,” exclaimed Lady Audley, “except that I am the most miserable of women. Let me think,” she cried, silencing Phoebe’s consolatory murmurs with an imperious gesture. “Hold your tongue, girl, and let me think of this business, if I can.”

She put her hands to her forehead, clasping her slender fingers across her brow, as if she would have controlled the action of her brain by their convulsive pressure.

“Robert Audley is with your husband,” she said, slowly, speaking to herself rather than to her companion. “These two men are together, and there are bailiffs in the house, and your brutal husband is no doubt brutally drunk by this time, and brutally obstinate and ferocious in his drunkenness. If I refuse to pay this money his ferocity will be multiplied by a hundredfold. There’s little use in discussing that matter. The money must be paid.”