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Mr. Robert Audley spoke vaguely, but all three of his listeners knew that the something rash to which he alluded was that one deed for which there is no repentance.

There was a brief pause, during which Lady Audley arranged her yellow ringlets by the aid of the glass over the console table opposite to her.

“Dear me!” she said, “this is very strange. I did not think men were capable of these deep and lasting affections. I thought that one pretty face was as good as another pretty face to them; and that when number one with blue eyes and fair hair died, they had only to look out for number two, with dark eyes and black hair, by way of variety.”

“George Talboys is not one of those men. I firmly believe that his wife’s death broke his heart.”

“How sad!” murmured Lady Audley. “It seems almost cruel of Mrs. Talboys to die, and grieve her poor husband so much.”

“Alicia was right, she is childish,” thought Robert as he looked at his aunt’s pretty face.

My lady was very charming at the dinner-table; she professed the most bewitching incapacity for carving the pheasant set before her, and called Robert to her assistance.

“I could carve a leg of mutton at Mr. Dawson’s,” she said, laughing; “but a leg of mutton is so easy, and then I used to stand up.”

Sir Michael watched the impression my lady made upon his nephew with a proud delight in her beauty and fascination.

“I am so glad to see my poor little woman in her usual good spirits once more,” he said. “She was very down-hearted yesterday at a disappointment she met with in London.”

“A disappointment!”

“Yes, Mr. Audley, a very cruel one,” answered my lady. “I received the other morning a telegraphic message from my dear old friend and school-mistress, telling me that she was dying, and that if I wanted to see her again, I must hasten to her immediately. The telegraphic dispatch contained no address, and of course, from that very circumstance, I imagined that she must be living in the house in which I left her three years ago. Sir Michael and I hurried up to town immediately, and drove straight to the old address. The house was occupied by strange people, who could give me no tidings of my friend. It is in a retired place, where there are very few tradespeople about. Sir Michael made inquiries at the few shops there are, but, after taking an immense deal of trouble, could discover nothing whatever likely to lead to the information we wanted. I have no friends in London, and had therefore no one to assist me except my dear, generous husband, who did all in his power, but in vain, to find my friend’s new residence.”

“It was very foolish not to send the address in the telegraphic message,” said Robert.

“When people are dying it is not so easy to think of all these things,” murmured my lady, looking reproachfully at Mr. Audley with her soft blue eyes.

In spite of Lady Audley’s fascination, and in spite of Robert’s very unqualified admiration of her, the barrister could not overcome a vague feeling of uneasiness on this quiet September evening.

As he sat in the deep embrasure of a mullioned window, talking to my lady, his mind wandered away to shady Figtree Court, and he thought of poor George Talboys smoking his solitary cigar in the room with the birds and canaries.

“I wish I’d never felt any friendliness for the fellow,” he thought. “I feel like a man who has an only son whose life has gone wrong with him. I wish to Heaven I could give him back his wife, and send him down to Ventnor to finish his days in peace.”

Still my lady’s pretty musical prattle ran on as merrily and continuously as the babble in some brook; and still Robert’s thoughts wandered, in spite of himself, to George Talboys.

He thought of him hurrying down to Southampton by the mail train to see his boy. He thought of him as he had often seen him spelling over the shipping advertisements in the Times, looking for a vessel to take him back to Australia. Once he thought of him with a shudder, lying cold and stiff at the bottom of some shallow stream with his dead face turned toward the darkening sky.