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“I do not wish for any apology, Lady Audley.”

“But you are entitled to one,” answered my lady, quietly. “Why, my dear Robert, should we be so ceremonious toward each other? You were very comfortable at Audley; we were very glad to have you there; but, my dear, silly husband must needs take it into his foolish head that it is dangerous for his poor little wife’s peace of mind to have a nephew of eight or nine and twenty smoking his cigars in her boudoir, and, behold! our pleasant little family circle is broken up.”

Lucy Audley spoke with that peculiar childish vivacity which seemed so natural to her, Robert looking down almost sadly at her bright, animated face.

“Lady Audley,” he said, “Heaven forbid that either you or I should ever bring grief or dishonor upon my uncle’s generous heart! Better, perhaps, that I should be out of the house—better, perhaps, that I had never entered it!”

My lady had been looking at the fire while her nephew spoke, but at his last words she lifted her head suddenly, and looked him full in the face with a wondering expression—an earnest, questioning gaze, whose full meaning the young barrister understood.

“Oh, pray do not be alarmed, Lady Audley,” he said, gravely. “You have no sentimental nonsense, no silly infatuation, borrowed from Balzac or Dumas fils, to fear from me. The benchers of the Inner Temple will tell you that Robert Audley is troubled with none of the epidemics whose outward signs are turn-down collars and Byronic neckties. I say that I wish I had never entered my uncle’s house during the last year; but I say it with a far more solemn meaning than any sentimental one.”

My lady shrugged her shoulders.

“If you insist on talking in enigmas, Mr. Audley,” she said, “you must forgive a poor little woman if she declines to answer them.”

Robert made no reply to this speech.

“But tell me,” said my lady, with an entire change of tone, “what could have induced you to come up to this dismal place?”

“Curiosity.”

“Curiosity?”

“Yes; I felt an interest in that bull-necked man, with the dark-red hair and wicked gray eyes. A dangerous man, my lady—a man in whose power I should not like to be.”

A sudden change came over Lady Audley’s face; the pretty, roseate flush faded out from her cheeks, and left them waxen white, and angry flashes lightened in her blue eyes.

“What have I done to you, Robert Audley,” she cried, passionately—”what have I done to you that you should hate me so?”

He answered her very gravely:

“I had a friend, Lady Audley, whom I loved very dearly, and since I have lost him I fear that my feelings toward other people are strangely embittered.”

“You mean the Mr. Talboys who went to Australia?”

“Yes, I mean the Mr. Talboys who I was told set out for Liverpool with the idea of going to Australia.”

“And you do not believe in his having sailed for Australia?”

“I do not.”

“But why not?”

“Forgive me, Lady Audley, if I decline to answer that question.”

“As you please,” she said, carelessly.

“A week after my friend disappeared,” continued Robert, “I posted an advertisement to the Sydney and Melbourne papers, calling upon him if he was in either city when the advertisement appeared, to write and tell me of his whereabouts, and also calling on any one who had met him, either in the colonies or on the voyage out, to give me any information respecting him. George Talboys left Essex, or disappeared from Essex, on the 6th of September last. I ought to receive some answer to this advertisement by the end of this month. To-day is the 27th; the time draws very near.”

“And if you receive no answer?” asked Lady Audley.

“If I receive no answer I shall think that my fears have been not unfounded, and I shall do my best to act.”

“What do you mean by that?”