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Very often he could even hear their words, especially the landlord’s, for he spoke in a coarse, loud voice, and had a more boastful manner than any of his customers.

“The man is a fool,” said Robert, as he laid down his pipe. “I’ll go and talk to him by-and-by.”

He waited till the few visitors to the Castle had dropped away one by one, and when Luke Marks had bolted the door upon the last of his customers, he strolled quietly into the bar-parlor, where the landlord was seated with his wife.

Phoebe was busy at a little table, upon which stood a prim work-box, with every reel of cotton and glistening steel bodkin in its appointed place. She was darning the coarse gray stockings that adorned her husband’s awkward feet, but she did her work as daintily as if they had been my lady’s delicate silken hose.

I say that she took no color from external things, and that the vague air of refinement that pervaded her nature clung to her as closely in the society of her boorish husband at the Castle Inn as in Lady Audley’s boudoir at the Court.

She looked up suddenly as Robert entered the bar-parlor. There was some shade of vexation in her pale gray eyes, which changed to an expression of anxiety—nay, rather of almost terror—as she glanced from Mr. Audley to Luke Marks.

“I have come in for a few minutes’ chat before I go to bed,” said Robert, settling himself very comfortably before the cheerful fire. “Would you object to a cigar, Mrs. Marks? I mean, of course, to my smoking one,” he added, explanatorily.

“Not at all, sir.”

“It would be a good ‘un her objectin’ to a bit o’ ‘bacca,” growled Mr. Marks, “when me and the customers smokes all day.”

Robert lighted his cigar with a gilt-paper match of Phoebe’s making that adorned the chimney-piece, and took half a dozen reflective puffs before he spoke.

“I want you to tell me all about Mount Stanning, Mr. Marks,” he said, presently.

“Then that’s pretty soon told,” replied Luke, with a harsh, grating laugh. “Of all the dull holes as ever a man set foot in, this is about the dullest. Not that the business don’t pay pretty tidy; I don’t complain of that; but I should ha’ liked a public at Chelmsford, or Brentwood, or Romford, or some place where there’s a bit of life in the streets; and I might have had it,” he added, discontentedly, “if folks hadn’t been so precious stingy.”

As her husband muttered this complaint in a grumbling undertone, Phoebe looked up from her work and spoke to him.

“We forgot the brew-house door, Luke,” she said. “Will you come with me and help me put up the bar?”

“The brew-house door can bide for to-night,” said Mr. Marks; “I ain’t agoin’ to move now. I’ve seated myself for a comfortable smoke.”

He took a long clay pipe from a corner of the fender as he spoke, and began to fill it deliberately.

“I don’t feel easy about that brew-house door, Luke,” remonstrated his wife; “there are always tramps about, and they can get in easily when the bar isn’t up.”

“Go and put the bar up yourself, then, can’t you?” answered Mr. Marks.

“It’s too heavy for me to lift.”

“Then let it bide, if you’re too fine a lady to see to it yourself. You’re very anxious all of a sudden about this here brew-house door. I suppose you don’t want me to open my mouth to this here gent, that’s about it. Oh, you needn’t frown at me to stop my speaking! You’re always putting in your tongue and clipping off my words before I’ve half said ’em; but I won’t stand it.”

“Do you hear? I won’t stand it!”

Phoebe Marks shrugged her shoulders, folded her work, shut her work-box, and crossing her hands in her lap, sat with her gray eyes fixed upon her husband’s bull-like face.

“Then you don’t particularly care to live at Mount Stanning?” said Robert, politely, as if anxious to change the conversation.