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Lady Audley noticed his abstraction, and asked him what he was thinking of.

“George Talboys,” he answered abruptly.

She gave a little nervous shudder.

“Upon my word,” she said, “you make me quite uncomfortable by the way in which you talk of Mr. Talboys. One would think that something extraordinary had happened to him.”

“God forbid! But I cannot help feeling uneasy about him.”

Later in the evening Sir Michael asked for some music, and my lady went to the piano. Robert Audley strolled after her to the instrument to turn over the leaves of her music; but she played from memory, and he was spared the trouble his gallantry would have imposed upon him.

He carried a pair of lighted candles to the piano, and arranged them conveniently for the pretty musician. She struck a few chords, and then wandered into a pensive sonata of Beethoven’s. It was one of the many paradoxes in her character, that love of somber and melancholy melodies, so opposite to her gay nature.

Robert Audley lingered by her side, and as he had no occupation in turning over the leaves of her music, he amused himself by watching her jeweled, white hands gliding softly over the keys, with the lace sleeves dropping away from, her graceful, arched wrists. He looked at her pretty fingers one by one; this one glittering with a ruby heart; that encircled by an emerald serpent; and about them all a starry glitter of diamonds. From the fingers his eyes wandered to the rounded wrists: the broad, flat, gold bracelet upon her right wrist dropped over her hand, as she executed a rapid passage. She stopped abruptly to rearrange it; but before she could do so Robert Audley noticed a bruise upon her delicate skin.

“You have hurt your arm, Lady Audley!” he exclaimed. She hastily replaced the bracelet.

“It is nothing,” she said. “I am unfortunate in having a skin which the slightest touch bruises.”

She went on playing, but Sir Michael came across the room to look into the matter of the bruise upon his wife’s pretty wrist.

“What is it, Lucy?” he asked; “and how did it happen?”

“How foolish you all are to trouble yourselves about anything so absurd!” said Lady Audley, laughing. “I am rather absent in mind, and amused myself a few days ago by tying a piece of ribbon around my arm so tightly, that it left a bruise when I removed it.”

“Hum!” thought Robert. “My lady tells little childish white lies; the bruise is of a more recent date than a few days ago; the skin has only just begun to change color.”

Sir Michael took the slender wrist in his strong hand.

“Hold the candle, Robert,” he said, “and let us look at this poor little arm.”

It was not one bruise, but four slender, purple marks, such as might have been made by the four fingers of a powerful hand, that had grasped the delicate wrist a shade too roughly. A narrow ribbon, bound tightly, might have left some such marks, it is true, and my lady protested once more that, to the best of her recollection, that must have been how they were made.

Across one of the faint purple marks there was a darker tinge, as if a ring worn on one of those strong and cruel fingers had been ground into the tender flesh.

“I am sure my lady must tell white lies,” thought Robert, “for I can’t believe the story of the ribbon.”

He wished his relations good-night and good-by at about half past ten o’clock; he should run up to London by the first train to look for George in Figtree Court.

“If I don’t find him there I shall go to Southampton,” he said; “and if I don’t find him there—”

“What then?” asked my lady.

“I shall think that something strange has happened.”

Robert Audley felt very low-spirited as he walked slowly home between the shadowy meadows; more low-spirited still when he re-entered the sitting room at Sun Inn, where he and George had lounged together, staring out of the window and smoking their cigars.