PAGE 142
Lady Audrey’s Secret
by
Lady Audley rose and took the lighted lamp from her writing-table. “The money is in my dressing-room,” she said; “I will go and fetch it.”
“Oh, my lady,” exclaimed Phoebe, suddenly, “I forgot something; I was in such a way about this business that I quite forgot it.”
“Quite forgot what?”
“A letter that was given me to bring to you, my lady, just before I left home.”
“What letter?”
“A letter from Mr. Audley. He heard my husband mention that I was coming down here, and he asked me to carry this letter.”
Lady Audley set the lamp down upon the table nearest to her, and held out her hand to receive the letter. Phoebe Marks could scarcely fail to observe that the little jeweled hand shook like a leaf.
“Give it megive it me,” she cried; “let me see what more he has to say.”
Lady Audley almost snatched the letter from Phoebe’s hand in her wild impatience. She tore open the envelope and flung it from her; she could scarcely unfold the sheet of note-paper in her eager excitement.
The letter was very brief. It contained only these words:
“Should Mrs. George Talboys really have survived the date of her supposed death, as recorded in the public prints, and upon the tombstone in Ventnor churchyard, and should she exist in the person of the lady suspected and accused by the writer of this, there can be no great difficulty in finding some one able and willing to identify her. Mrs. Barkamb, the owner of North Cottages, Wildernsea, would no doubt consent to throw some light upon this matter; either to dispel a delusion or to confirm a suspicion.
“ROBERT AUDLEY.
“March 3, 1859.
“The Castle Inn, Mount Stanning.”
CHAPTER XXXII
THE RED LIGHT IN THE SKY
My lady crushed the letter fiercely in her hand, and flung it from her into the flames.
“If he stood before me now, and I could kill him,” she muttered in a strange, inward whisper, “I would do itI would do it!” She snatched up the lamp and rushed into the adjoining room. She shut the door behind her. She could not endure any witness of her horrible despairshe could endure nothing, neither herself nor her surroundings.
The door between my lady’s dressing-room and the bed-chamber in which Sir Michael lay, had been left open. The baronet slept peacefully, his noble face plainly visible in the subdued lamplight. His breathing was low and regular, his lips curved into a half smilea smile of tender happiness which he often wore when he looked at his beautiful wife, the smile of an all-indulgent father, who looks admiringly at his favorite child.
Some touch of womanly feeling, some sentiment of compassion softened Lady Audley’s glance as it fell upon that noble, reposing figure. For a moment the horrible egotism of her own misery yielded to her pitying tenderness for another. It was perhaps only a semi-selfish tenderness after all, in which pity for herself was as powerful as pity for her husband; but for once in a way, her thoughts ran out of the narrow groove of her own terrors and her own troubles to dwell with prophetic grief upon the coming sorrows of another.
“If they make him believe, how wretched he will be,” she thought. But intermingled with that thought there was anotherthere was the thought of her lovely face, her bewitching manner, her arch smile, her low, musical laugh, which was like a peal of silvery bells ringing across a broad expanse of flat meadow-land and a rippling river in the misty summer evening. She thought of all these things with a transient thrill of triumph, which was stronger even than her terror.
If Sir Michael Audley lived to be a hundred years old, whatever he might learn to believe of her, however he might grow to despise her, would he ever be able to disassociate her from these attributes? No; a thousand times no. To the last hour of his life his memory would present her to him invested with the loveliness that had first won his enthusiastic admiration, his devoted affection. Her worst enemies could not rob her of that fairy dower which had been so fatal in its influence upon her frivolous mind.