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“Lady Audley will not go with him,” said Robert, gravely; “he is about to separate himself from her.”

“For a time?”

“No, forever.”

“Separate himself from her forever!” exclaimed Alicia. “Then this grief—”

“Is connected with Lady Audley. Lady Audley is the cause of your father’s sorrow.”

Alicia’s face, which had been pale before, flushed crimson. Sorrow, of which my lady was the cause—a sorrow which was to separate Sir Michael forever from his wife! There had been no quarrel between them—there had never been anything but harmony and sunshine between Lady Audley and her generous husband. This sorrow must surely then have arisen from some sudden discovery; it was, no doubt, a sorrow associated with disgrace. Robert Audley understood the meaning of that vivid blush.

“You will offer to accompany your father wherever he may choose to go, Alicia,” he said. “You are his natural comforter at such a time as this, but you will best befriend him in this hour of trial by avoiding all intrusion upon his grief. Your very ignorance of the particulars of that grief will be a security for your discretion. Say nothing to your father that you might not have said to him two years ago, before he married a second wife. Try and be to him what you were before the woman in yonder room came between you and your father’s love.”

“I will,” murmured Alicia, “I will.”

“You will naturally avoid all mention of Lady Audley’s name. If your father is often silent, be patient; if it sometimes seems to you that the shadow of this great sorrow will never pass away from his life, be patient still; and remember that there can be no better hope of a cure of his grief than the hope that his daughter’s devotion may lead him to remember there is one woman upon this earth who will love him truly and purely until the last.”

“Yes—yes, Robert, dear cousin, I will remember.”

Mr. Audley, for the first time since he had been a schoolboy, took his cousin in his arms and kissed her broad forehead.

“My dear Alicia,” he said, “do this and you will make me happy. I have been in some measure the means of bringing this sorrow upon your father. Let me hope that it is not an enduring one. Try and restore my uncle to happiness, Alicia, and I will love you more dearly than brother ever loved a noble-hearted sister; and a brotherly affection may be worth having, perhaps, after all, my dear, though it is very different to poor Sir Harry’s enthusiastic worship.”

Alicia’s head was bent and her face hidden from her cousin while he spoke, but she lifted her head when he had finished, and looked him full in the face with a smile that was only the brighter for her eyes being filled with tears.

“You are a good fellow, Bob,” she said; “and I’ve been very foolish and wicked to feel angry with you because—”

The young lady stopped suddenly.

“Because what, my dear?” asked Mr. Audley.

“Because I’m silly, Cousin Robert,” Alicia said, quickly; “never mind that, Bob, I’ll do all you wish, and it shall not be my fault if my dearest father doesn’t forget his troubles before long. I’d go to the end of the world with him, poor darling, if I thought there was any comfort to be found for him in the journey. I’ll go and get ready directly. Do you think papa will go to-night?”

“Yes, my dear; I don’t think Sir Michael will rest another night under this roof yet awhile.”

“The mail goes at twenty minutes past nine,” said Alicia; “we must leave the house in an hour if we are to travel by it. I shall see you again before we go, Robert?”

“Yes, dear.”

Miss Audley ran off to her room to summon her maid, and make all necessary preparations for the sudden journey, of whose ultimate destination she was as yet quite ignorant.

She went heart and soul into the carrying out of the duty which Robert had dictated to her. She assisted in the packing of her portmanteaus, and hopelessly bewildered her maid by stuffing silk dresses into her bonnet-boxes and satin shoes into her dressing-case. She roamed about her rooms, gathering together drawing-materials, music-books, needle-work, hair-brushes, jewelry, and perfume-bottles, very much as she might have done had she been about to sail for some savage country, devoid of all civilized resources. She was thinking all the time of her father’s unknown grief, and perhaps a little of the serious face and earnest voice which had that night revealed her Cousin Robert to her in a new character.