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“Yes, mum.”

“You won’t forget?”

“No, mum.”

“Then be off with you.”

The boy waited for no second bidding, but in another moment was scudding along the lonely high road, down the sharp descent that led to Audley.

Phoebe Marks went to the window, and looked out at the black figure of the lad hurrying through the dusky winter evening.

“If there’s any bad meaning in his coming here,” she thought, “my lady will know of it in time, at any rate,”

Phoebe herself brought the neatly arranged tea-tray, and the little covered dish of ham and eggs which had been prepared for this unlooked-for visitor. Her pale hair was as smoothly braided, and her light gray dress fitted as precisely as of old. The same neutral tints pervaded her person and her dress; no showy rose-colored ribbons or rustling silk gown proclaimed the well-to-do innkeeper’s wife. Phoebe Marks was a person who never lost her individuality. Silent and self-constrained, she seemed to hold herself within herself, and take no color from the outer world.

Robert looked at her thoughtfully as she spread the cloth, and drew the table nearer to the fireplace.

“That,” he thought, “is a woman who could keep a secret.”

The dogs looked rather suspiciously at the quiet figure of Mrs. Marks gliding softly about the room, from the teapot to the caddy, and from the caddy to the kettle singing on the hob.

“Will you pour out my tea for me, Mrs. Marks?” said Robert, seating himself on a horsehair-covered arm-chair, which fitted him as tightly in every direction as if he had been measured for it.

“You have come straight from the Court, sir?” said Phoebe, as she handed Robert the sugar-basin.

“Yes; I only left my uncle’s an hour ago.”

“And my lady, sir, was she quite well?”

“Yes, quite well.”

“As gay and light-hearted as ever, sir?”

“As gay and light-hearted as ever.”

Phoebe retired respectfully after having given Mr. Audley his tea, but as she stood with her hand upon the lock of the door he spoke again.

“You knew Lady Audley when she was Miss Lucy Graham, did you not?” he asked.

“Yes, sir. I lived at Mrs. Dawson’s when my lady was governess there.”

“Indeed! Was she long in the surgeon’s family?”

“A year and a half, sir.”

“And she came from London?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And she was an orphan, I believe?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Always as cheerful as she is now?”

“Always, sir.”

Robert emptied his teacup and handed it to Mrs. Marks. Their eyes met—a lazy look in his, and an active, searching glance in hers.

“This woman would be good in a witness-box,” he thought; “it would take a clever lawyer to bother her in a cross-examination.”

He finished his second cup of tea, pushed away his plate, fed his dogs, and lighted his pipe, while Phoebe carried off the tea-tray.

The wind came whistling up across the frosty open country, and through the leafless woods, and rattled fiercely at the window-frames.

“There’s a triangular draught from those two windows and the door that scarcely adds to the comfort of this apartment,” murmured Robert; “and there certainly are pleasanter sensations than that of standing up to one’s knees in cold water.”

He poked the fire, patted his dogs, put on his great coat, rolled a rickety old sofa close to the hearth, wrapped his legs in his railway rug, and stretching himself at full length upon the narrow horsehair cushion, smoked his pipe, and watched the bluish-gray wreaths curling upward to the dingy ceiling.

“No,” he murmured, again; “that is a woman who can keep a secret. A counsel for the prosecution could get very little out of her.”

I have said that the bar-parlor was only separated from the sitting-room occupied by Robert by a lath-and-plaster partition. The young barrister could hear the two or three village tradesmen and a couple of farmers laughing and talking round the bar, while Luke Marks served them from his stock of liquors.