LITMIR.BIZ

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like some dismal baronial habitation, deep in a woodland solitude.

      The man who opened the door to the unlooked-for visitor, brightened as he recognized his master’s nephew.

      “Sir Michael will be cheered up a bit, sir, by the sight of you,” he said, as he ushered Robert Audley into the fire-lit library, which seemed desolate by reason of the baronet’s easy-chair standing empty on the broad hearth-rug. “Shall I bring you some dinner here, sir, before you go up-stairs?” the servant asked. “My lady and Miss Audley have dined early during my master’s illness, but I can bring you anything you would please to take, sir.”

      “I’ll take nothing until I have seen my uncle,” Robert answered, hurriedly; “that is to say, if I can see him at once. He is not too ill to receive me, I suppose?” he added, anxiously.

      “Oh, no, sir — not too ill; only a little low, sir. This way, if you please.”

      He conducted Robert up the short flight of shallow oaken stairs to the octagon chamber in which George Talboys had sat long five months before, staring absently at my lady’s portrait. The picture was finished now, and hung in the post of honor opposite the window, amidst Claudes, Poussins and Wouvermans, whose less brilliant hues were killed by the vivid coloring of the modern artist. The bright face looked out of that tangled glitter of golden hair, in which the Pre–Raphaelites delight, with a mocking smile, as Robert paused for a moment to glance at the well-remembered picture. Two or three moments afterward he had passed through my lady’s boudoir and dressing-room and stood upon the threshold of Sir Michael’s room. The baronet lay in a quiet sleep, his arm laying outside the bed, and his strong hand clasped in his young wife’s delicate fingers. Alicia sat in a low chair beside the broad open hearth, on which the huge logs burned fiercely in the frosty atmosphere. The interior of this luxurious bedchamber might have made a striking picture for an artist’s pencil. The massive furniture, dark and somber, yet broken up and relieved here and there by scraps of gilding, and masses of glowing color; the elegance of every detail, in which wealth was subservient to purity of taste; and last, but greatest in importance, the graceful figures of the two women, and the noble form of the old man would have formed a worthy study for any painter.

      Lucy Audley, with her disordered hair in a pale haze of yellow gold about her thoughtful face, the flowing lines of her soft muslin dressing-gown falling in straight folds to her feet, and clasped at the waist by a narrow circlet of agate links might have served as a model for a mediaeval saint, in one of the tiny chapels hidden away in the nooks and corners of a gray old cathedral, unchanged by Reformation or Cromwell; and what saintly martyr of the Middle Ages could have borne a holier aspect than the man whose gray beard lay upon the dark silken coverlet of the stately bed?

      Robert paused upon the threshold, fearful of awaking his uncle. The two ladies had heard his step, cautious though he had been, and lifted their heads to look at him. My lady’s face, quietly watching the sick man, had worn an anxious earnestness which made it only more beautiful; but the same face recognizing Robert Audley, faded from its delicate brightness, and looked scared and wan in the lamplight.

      “Mr. Audley!” she cried, in a faint, tremulous voice.

      “Hush!” whispered Alicia, with a warning gesture; “you will wake papa. How good of you to come, Robert,” she added, in the same whispered tones, beckoning to her cousin to take an empty chair near the bed.

      The young man seated himself in the indicated seat at the bottom of the bed, and opposite to my lady, who sat close beside the pillows. He looked long and earnestly at the face of the sleeper; still longer, still more earnestly at the face of Lady Audley, which was slowly recovering its natural hues.

      “He has not been very ill, has he?” Robert asked, in the same key as that in which Alicia had spoken.

      My lady answered the question.

      “Oh, no, not dangerously ill,” she said, without taking her eyes from her husband’s face; “but still we have been anxious, very, very anxious.”

      Robert never relaxed his scrutiny of that pale face.

      “She shall look at me,” he thought; “I will make her meet my eyes, and I will read her as I have read her before. She shall know how useless her artifices are with me.”

      He paused for a few minutes before he spoke again. The regular breathing of the sleeper the ticking of a gold hunting-watch at the head of the bed, and the crackling of the burning logs, were the only sounds that broke the stillness.

      “I have no doubt you have been anxious, Lady Audley,” Robert said, after a pause, fixing my lady’s eyes as they wandered furtively to his face. “There is no one to whom my uncle’s life I can be of more value than to you. Your happiness, your prosperity, your safety depend alike upon his existence.”

      The whisper in which he uttered these words was too low to reach the other side of the room, where Alicia sat.

      Lucy Audley’s eyes met those of the speaker with some gleam of triumph in their light.

      “I know that,” she said. “Those who strike me must strike through him.”

      She pointed to the sleeper as she spoke, still looking at Robert Audley. She defied him with her blue eyes, their brightness intensified by the triumph in their glance. She defied him with her quiet smile — a smile of fatal beauty, full of lurking significance and mysterious meaning — the smile which the artist had exaggerated in his portrait of Sir Michael’s wife.

      Robert turned away from the lovely face, and shaded his eyes with his hand; putting a barrier between my lady and himself; a screen which baffled her penetration and provoked her curiosity. Was he still watching her or was he thinking? and of what was he thinking?

      Robert had been seated at the bedside for upward of an hour before his uncle awoke. The baronet was delighted at his nephew’s coming.

      “It was very good of you to come to me, Bob,” he said. “I have been thinking of you a good deal since I have been ill. You and Lucy must be good friends, you know, Bob; and you must learn to think of her as your aunt, sir; though she is young and beautiful; and — and — you understand, eh?”

      Robert grasped his uncle’s hand, but he looked down as he answered: “I do understand you, sir,” he said, quietly; “and I give you my word of honor that I am steeled against my lady’s fascinations. She knows that as well as I do.”

      Lucy Audley made a little grimace with her pretty little lips. “Bah, you silly Robert,” she exclaimed; “you take everything au serieux. If I thought you were rather too young for a nephew, it was only in my fear of other people’s foolish gossip; not from any —”

      She hesitated for a moment, and escaped any conclusion to her sentence by the timely intervention of Mr. Dawson, her late employer, who entered the room upon his evening visit while she was speaking.

      He felt the patient’s pulse; asked two or three questions; pronounced the baronet to be steadily improving; exchanged a few commonplace remarks with Alicia and Lady Audley, and prepared to leave the room. Robert rose and accompanied him to the door.

      “I will light you to the staircase,” he said, taking a candle from one of the tables, and lighting it at the lamp.

      “No, no, Mr. Audley, pray do not trouble yourself,” expostulated the surgeon; “I know my way very well indeed.”

      Robert insisted, and the two men left the room together. As they entered the octagon ante-chamber the barrister paused and shut the door behind him.

      “Will you see that the door is closed, Mr. Dawson?” he said, pointing to that which opened upon the staircase. “I wish to have a few moments’ private conversation with you.”

      “With much pleasure,” replied the surgeon, complying with Robert’s request; “but if you are at all alarmed about your uncle, Mr. Audley, I can set your mind at rest. There is no occasion for the least uneasiness. Had his illness been at all serious I should have telegraphed immediately for the family physician.”

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