Lady Audley's Secret

"But you are not seriously alarmed about him, are you?" asked my lady, anxiously.

"You do not think him very ill?"

"No," answered Robert. "Thank Heaven, I think there is not the slightest cause for apprehension."

My lady sat silent for a few moments, looking at the empty teacups with a prettily thoughtful face--a face grave with the innocent seriousness of a musing child.

"But you were closeted such a long time with Mr. Dawson, just now," she said, after this brief pause. "I was quite alarmed at the length of your conversation. Were you talking of Sir Michael all the time?"

"No; not all the time?"

My lady looked down at the teacups once more.

"Why, what could you find to say to Mr. Dawson, or he to say to you?" she asked, after another pause. "You are almost strangers to each other."

"Suppose Mr. Dawson wished to consult me about some law business."

"Was it that?" cried Lady Audley, eagerly.

"It would be rather unprofessional to tell you if it were so, my lady," answered Robert, gravely.

My lady bit her lip, and relapsed into silence. Alicia threw down her book, and watched her cousin's preoccupied face. He talked to her now and then for a few minutes, but it was evidently an effort to him to arouse himself from his revery.

"Upon my word, Robert Audley, you are a very agreeable companion," exclaimed Alicia at length, her rather limited stock of patience quite exhausted by two or three of these abortive attempts at conversation. "Perhaps the next time you come to the Court you will be good enough to bring your mind with you. By your present inanimate appearance, I should imagine that you had left your intellect, such as it is, somewhere in the Temple. You were never one of the liveliest of people, but latterly you have really grown almost unendurable. I suppose you are in love, Mr. Audley, and are thinking of the honored object of your affections."

He was thinking of Clara Talboys' uplifted face, sublime in its unutterable grief; of her impassioned words still ringing in his ears as clearly as when they were first spoken. Again he saw her looking at him with her bright brown eyes. Again he heard that solemn question: "Shall you or I find my brother's murderer?" And he was in Essex; in the little village from which he firmly believed George Talboys had never departed. He was on the spot at which all record of his friend's life ended as suddenly as a story ends when the reader shuts the book. And could he withdraw now from the investigation in which he found himself involved? Could he stop now? For any consideration? No; a thousand times no! Not with the image of that grief-stricken face imprinted on his mind. Not with the accents of that earnest appeal ringing on his ear.