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Lady Audley did not answer. She was trembling again, with the cold perhaps, for the wind had torn her heavy cloak from her shoulders, and had left her slender figure exposed to the blast.

“It’s at Mount Stanning, my lady!” cried Phoebe Marks. “It’s the Castle that’s on fire—I know it is, I know it is! I thought of fire to-night, and I was fidgety and uneasy, for I knew this would happen some day. I wouldn’t mind if it was only the wretched place, but there’ll be life lost, there’ll be life lost!” sobbed the girl, distractedly. “There’s Luke, too tipsy to help himself, unless others help him; there’s Mr. Audley asleep—”

Phoebe Marks stopped suddenly at the mention of Robert’s name, and fell upon her knees, clasping her uplifted hands, and appealing wildly to Lady Audley.

“Oh, my God!” she cried. “Say it’s not true, my lady, say it’s not true! It’s too horrible, it’s too horrible, it’s too horrible!”

“What’s too horrible?”

“The thought that’s in my mind; the terrible thought that’s in my mind.”

“What do you mean, girl?” cried my lady, fiercely.

“Oh, God forgive me if I’m wrong!” the kneeling woman gasped in detached sentences, “and God grant I may be. Why did you go up to the Castle, my lady? Why were you so set on going against all I could say—you who are so bitter against Mr. Audley and against Luke, and who knew they were both under that roof? Oh, tell me that I do you a cruel wrong, my lady; tell me so—tell me! for as there is a Heaven above me I think that you went to that place to-night on purpose to set fire to it. Tell me that I’m wrong, my lady; tell me that I’m doing you a wicked wrong.”

“I will tell you nothing, except that you are a mad woman,” answered Lady Audley; in a cold, hard voice. “Get up; fool, idiot, coward! Is your husband such a precious bargain that you should be groveling there, lamenting and groaning for him? What is Robert Audley to you, that you behave like a maniac, because you think he is in danger? How do you know the fire is at Mount Stanning? You see a red patch in the sky, and you cry out directly that your own paltry hovel is in flames, as if there were no place in the world that could burn except that. The fire may be at Brentwood, or further away—at Romford, or still further away, on the eastern side of London, perhaps. Get up, mad woman, and go back and look after your goods and chattels, and your husband and your lodger. Get up and go: I don’t want you.”

“Oh! my lady, my lady, forgive me,” sobbed Phoebe; “there’s nothing you can say to me that’s hard enough for having done you such a wrong, even in my thoughts. I don’t mind your cruel words—I don’t mind anything if I’m wrong.”

“Go back and see for yourself,” answered Lady Audley, sternly. “I tell you again, I don’t want you.”

She walked away in the darkness, leaving Phoebe Marks still kneeling upon the hard road, where she had cast herself in that agony of supplication. Sir Michael’s wife walked toward the house in which her husband slept with the red blaze lighting up the skies behind her, and with nothing but the blackness of the night before.

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE BEARER OF THE TIDINGS

It was very late the next morning when Lady Audley emerged from her dressing-room, exquisitely dressed in a morning costume of delicate muslin, delicate laces, and embroideries; but with a very pale face, and with half-circles of purple shadow under her eyes. She accounted for this pale face and these hollow eyes by declaring that she had sat up reading until a very late hour on the previous night.

Sir Michael and his young wife breakfasted in the library at a comfortable round table, wheeled close to the blazing fire; and Alicia was compelled to share this meal with her step-mother, however she might avoid that lady in the long interval between breakfast and dinner.