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“I—I’ve been longer than I intended to be, Luke,” Phoebe answered, in her most conciliatory manner; “but I’ve seen my lady, and she’s been very kind, and—and she’ll settle this business for us.”

“She’s been very kind, has she?” muttered Mr. Marks, with a drunken laugh; “thank her for nothing. I know the vally of her kindness. She’d be oncommon kind, I dessay, if she warn’t obligated to be it.”

The man in possession, who had fallen into a maudlin and semi-unconscious state of intoxication upon about a third of the liquor that Mr. Marks had consumed, only stared in feeble wonderment at his host and hostess. He sat near the table. Indeed, he had hooked himself on to it with his elbows, as a safeguard against sliding under it, and he was making imbecile attempts to light his pipe at the flame of a guttering tallow candle near him.

“My lady has promised to settle the business for us, Luke,” Phoebe repeated, without noticing Luke’s remarks. She knew her husband’s dogged nature well enough by this time to know that it was worse than useless to try to stop him from doing or saying anything which his own stubborn will led him to do or say. “My lady will settle it,” she said, “and she’s come down here to see about it to-night,” she added.

The poker dropped from the landlord’s hand, and fell clattering among the cinders on the hearth.

“My Lady Audley come here to-night!” he said.

“Yes, Luke.”

My lady appeared upon the threshold of the door as Phoebe spoke.

“Yes, Luke Marks,” she said, “I have come to pay this man, and to send him about his business.”

Lady Audley said these words in a strange, semi-mechanical manner; very much as if she had learned the sentence by rote, and were repeating it without knowing what she said.

Mr. Marks gave a discontented growl, and set his empty glass down upon the table with an impatient gesture.

“You might have given the money to Phoebe,” he said, “as well as have brought it yourself. We don’t want no fine ladies up here, pryin’ and pokin’ their precious noses into everythink.”

“Luke, Luke!” remonstrated Phoebe, “when my lady has been so kind!”

“Oh, damn her kindness!” cried Mr. Marks; “it ain’t her kindness as we want, gal, it’s her money. She won’t get no snivelin’ gratitood from me. Whatever she does for us she does because she is obliged; and if she wasn’t obliged she wouldn’t do it—”

Heaven knows how much more Luke Marks might have said, had not my lady turned upon him suddenly and awed him into silence by the unearthly glitter of her beauty. Her hair had been blown away from her face, and being of a light, feathery quality, had spread itself into a tangled mass that surrounded her forehead like a yellow flame. There was another flame in her eyes—a greenish light, such as might flash from the changing-hued orbs of an angry mermaid.

“Stop,” she cried. “I didn’t come up here in the dead of night to listen to your insolence. How much is this debt?”

“Nine pound.”

Lady Audley produced her purse—a toy of ivory, silver, and turquoise—she took from it a note and four sovereigns. She laid these upon the table.

“Let that man give me a receipt for the money,” she said, “before I go.”

It was some time before the man could be roused into sufficient consciousness for the performance of this simple duty, and it was only by dipping a pen into the ink and pushing it between his clumsy fingers, that he was at last made to comprehend that his autograph was wanted at the bottom of the receipt which had been made out by Phoebe Marks. Lady Audley took the document as soon as the ink was dry, and turned to leave the parlor. Phoebe followed her.

“You mustn’t go home alone, my lady,” she said. “You’ll let me go with you?”

“Yes, yes; you shall go home with me.”