PAGE 61
Lady Audrey’s Secret
by
“But you won’t be too abrupt, dear? You won’t be rude?”
“Rude! No, Lucy. I left him smoking in the lime-walk. I’ll go and tell him that he must get out of the house in an hour.”
So in that leafless avenue, under whose gloomy shade George Talboys had stood on that thunderous evening before the day of his disappearance, Sir Michael Audley told his nephew that the Court was no home for him, and that my lady was too young and pretty to accept the attentions of a handsome nephew of eight-and-twenty.
Robert only shrugged his shoulders and elevated his thick, black eyebrows as Sir Michael delicately hinted all this.
“I have been attentive to my lady,” he said. “She interests me;” and then, with a change in his voice, and an emotion not common to him, he turned to the baronet, and grasping his hand, exclaimed, “God forbid, my dear uncle, that I should ever bring trouble upon such a noble heart as yours! God forbid that the slightest shadow of dishonor should ever fall upon your honored headleast of all through agency of mine.”
The young man uttered these few words in a broken and disjointed fashion in which Sir Michael had never heard him speak, before, and then turning away his head, fairly broke down.
He left the court that night, but he did not go far. Instead of taking the evening train for London, he went straight up to the little village of Mount Stanning, and walking into the neatly-kept inn, asked Phoebe Marks if he could be accommodated with apartments.
CHAPTER XVII
AT THE CASTLE INN
The little sitting-room into which Phoebe Marks ushered the baronet’s nephew was situated on the ground floor, and only separated by a lath-and-plaster partition from the little bar-parlor occupied by the innkeeper and his wife.
It seemed as though the wise architect who had superintended the building of the Castle Inn had taken especial care that nothing but the frailest and most flimsy material should be used, and that the wind, having a special fancy for this unprotected spot, should have full play for the indulgence of its caprices.
To this end pitiful woodwork had been used instead of solid masonry; rickety ceilings had been propped up by fragile rafters, and beams that threatened on every stormy night to fall upon the heads of those beneath them; doors whose specialty was never to be shut, yet always to be banging; windows constructed with a peculiar view to letting in the draft when they were shut, and keeping out the air when they were open. The hand of genius had devised this lonely country inn; and there was not an inch of woodwork, or trowelful of plaster employed in all the rickety construction that did not offer its own peculiar weak point to every assault of its indefatigable foe.
Robert looked about him with a feeble smile of resignation.
It was a change, decidedly, from the luxurious comforts of Audley Court, and it was rather a strange fancy of the young barrister to prefer loitering at this dreary village hostelry to returning to his snug chambers in Figtree Court.
But he had brought his Lares and Penates with him, in the shape of his German pipe, his tobacco canister, half a dozen French novels, and his two ill-conditioned, canine favorites, which sat shivering before the smoky little fire, barking shortly and sharply now and then, by way of hinting for some slight refreshment.
While Mr. Robert Audley contemplated his new quarters, Phoebe Marks summoned a little village lad who was in the habit of running errands for her, and taking him into the kitchen, gave him a tiny note, carefully folded and sealed.
“You know Audley Court?”
“Yes, mum.”
“If you’ll run there with this letter to-night, and see that it’s put safely in Lady Audley’s hands, I’ll give you a shilling.”
“Yes, mum.”
“You understand? Ask to see my lady; you can say you’ve a messagenot a note, mindbut a message from Phoebe Marks; and when you see her, give this into her own hand.”