Lady Audley's Secret - Mary Elizabeth Braddon (books to read in your 20s female .TXT) 📗
- Author: Mary Elizabeth Braddon
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“George—George who?”
“George Talboys.”
“What, has he come?” cried Alicia. “I’m so glad; for I’m dying to see
this handsome young widower.”
“Are you, Alicia?” said her cousin, “Then egad, I’ll run and fetch him,
and introduce you to him at once.”
Now, so complete was the dominion which Lady Audley had, in her own
childish, unthinking way, obtained over her devoted husband, that it was
very rarely that the baronet’s eyes were long removed from his wife’s
pretty face. When Robert, therefore, was about to re-enter the inn, it
needed but the faintest elevation of Lucy’s eyebrows, with a charming
expression of weariness and terror, to make her husband aware that she
did not want to be bored by an introduction to Mr. George Talboys.
“Never mind tonight, Bob,” he said. “My wife is a little tired after
our long day’s pleasure. Bring your friend to dinner tomorrow, and then
he and Alicia can make each other’s acquaintance. Come round and speak
to Lady Audley, and then we’ll drive home.”
My lady was so terribly fatigued that she could only smile sweetly, and
hold out a tiny gloved hand to her nephew by marriage.
“You will come and dine with us tomorrow, and bring your interesting
friend?” she said, in a low and tired voice. She had been the chief
attraction of the race-course, and was wearied out by the exertion of
fascinating half the county.
“It’s a wonder she didn’t treat you to her never-ending laugh,”
whispered Alicia, as she leaned over the carriage-door to bid Robert
good-night; “but I dare say she reserves that for your delectation
tomorrow. I suppose you are fascinated as well as everybody else?”
added the young lady, rather snappishly.
“She is a lovely creature, certainly,” murmured Robert, with placid
admiration.
“Oh, of course! Now, she is the first woman of whom I ever heard you say
a civil word, Robert Audley. I’m sorry to find you can only admire wax
dolls.”
Poor Alicia had had many skirmishes with her cousin upon that particular
temperament of his, which, while it enabled him to go through life with
perfect content and tacit enjoyment, entirely precluded his feeling one
spark of enthusiasm upon any subject whatever.
“As to his ever falling in love,” thought the young lady sometimes, “the
idea is preposterous. If all the divinities on earth were ranged before
him, waiting for his sultanship to throw the handkerchief, he would only
lift his eyebrows to the middle of his forehead, and tell them to
scramble for it.”
But, for once in his life, Robert was almost enthusiastic.
“She’s the prettiest little creature you ever saw in your life, George,”
he cried, when the carriage had driven off and he returned to his
friend. “Such blue eyes, such ringlets, such a ravishing smile, such a
fairy-like bonnet—all of a-tremble with heart’s-ease and dewy spangles,
shining out of a cloud of gauze. George Talboys, I feel like the hero of
a French novel: I am falling in love with my aunt.”
The widower only sighed and puffed his cigar fiercely out of the open
window. Perhaps he was thinking of that far-away time—little better
than five years ago, in fact; but such an age gone by to him—when he
first met the woman for whom he had worn crape round his hat three days
before. They returned, all those old unforgotten feelings; they came
back, with the scene of their birth-place. Again he lounged with his
brother officers upon the shabby pier at the shabby watering-place,
listening to a dreary band with a cornet that was a note and a half
flat. Again he heard the old operatic airs, and again she came
tripping toward him, leaning on her old father’s arm, and pretending
(with such a charming, delicious, serio-comic pretense) to be listening
to the music, and quite unaware of the admiration of half a dozen
open-mouthed cavalry officers. Again the old fancy came back that she
was something too beautiful for earth, or earthly uses, and that to
approach her was to walk in a higher atmosphere and to breathe a purer
air. And since this she had been his wife, and the mother of his child.
She lay in the little churchyard at Ventnor, and only a year ago he had
given the order for her tombstone. A few slow, silent tears dropped upon
his waistcoat as he thought of these things in the quiet and darkening
room.
Lady Audley was so exhausted when she reached home, that she excused
herself from the dinner-table, and retired at once to her dressing-room,
attended by her maid, Phoebe Marks.
She was a little capricious in her conduct to this maid—sometimes very
confidential, sometimes rather reserved; but she was a liberal mistress,
and the girl had every reason to be satisfied with her situation.
This evening, in spite of her fatigue, she was in extremely high
spirits, and gave an animated account of the races, and the company
present at them.
“I am tired to death, though, Phoebe,” she said, by-and-by. “I am afraid
I must look a perfect fright, after a day in the hot sun.”
There were lighted candles on each side of the glass before which Lady
Audley was standing unfastening her dress. She looked full at her maid
as she spoke, her blue eyes clear and bright, and the rosy childish lips
puckered into an arch smile.
“You are a little pale, my lady,” answered the girl, “but you look as
pretty as ever.”
“That’s right, Phoebe,” she said, flinging herself into a chair, and
throwing back her curls at the maid, who stood, brush in hand, ready to
arrange the luxuriant hair for the night. “Do you know, Phoebe, I have
heard some people say that you and I are alike?”
“I have heard them say so, too, my lady,” said the girl, quietly “but
they must be very stupid to say it, for your ladyship is a beauty, and I
am a poor, plain creature.”
“Not at all, Phoebe,” said the little lady, superbly; “you are like
me, and your features are very nice; it is only color that you want. My
hair is pale yellow shot with gold, and yours is drab; my eyebrows and
eyelashes are dark brown, and yours are almost—I scarcely like to say
it, but they’re almost white, my dear Phoebe. Your complexion is sallow,
and mine is pink and rosy. Why, with a bottle of hair-dye, such as we
see advertised in the papers, and a pot of rouge, you’d be as
good-looking as I, any day, Phoebe.”
She prattled on in this way for a long time, talking of a hundred
different subjects, and ridiculing the people she had met at the races,
for her maid’s amusement. Her step-daughter came into the dressing-room
to bid her good-night, and found the maid and mistress laughing aloud
over one of the day’s adventures. Alicia, who was never familiar with
her servants, withdrew in disgust at my lady’s frivolity.
“Go on brushing my hair, Phoebe,” Lady Audley said, every time the girl
was about to complete her task, “I quite enjoy a chat with you.”
At last, just as she had dismissed her maid, she suddenly called her
back. “Phoebe Marks,” she said, “I want you to do me a favor.”
“Yes, my lady.”
“I want you to go to London by the first train tomorrow morning to
execute a little commission for me. You may take a day’s holiday
afterward, as I know you have friends in town; and I shall give you a
five-pound note if you do what I want, and keep your own counsel about
it.”
“Yes, my lady.”
“See that that door is securely shut, and come and sit on this stool at
my feet.”
The girl obeyed. Lady Audley smoothed her maid’s neutral-tinted hair
with her plump, white, and bejeweled hand as she reflected for a few
moments.
“And now listen, Phoebe. What I want you to do is very simple.”
It was so simple that it was told in five minutes, and then Lady Audley
retired into her bedroom, and curled herself up cozily under the
eider-down quilt. She was a chilly creature, and loved to bury herself
in soft wrappings of satin and fur.
“Kiss me, Phoebe,” she said, as the girl arranged the curtains. “I hear
Sir Michael’s step in the anteroom; you will meet him as you go out, and
you may as well tell him that you are going up by the first train
tomorrow morning to get my dress from Madam Frederick for the dinner at
Morton Abbey.”
It was late the next morning when Lady Audley went down to
breakfast—past ten o’clock. While she was sipping her coffee a servant
brought her a sealed packet, and a book for her to sign.
“A telegraphic message!” she cried; for the convenient word telegram had
not yet been invented. “What can be the matter?”
She looked up at her husband with wide-open, terrified eyes, and seemed
half afraid to break the seal. The envelope was addressed to Miss Lucy
Graham, at Mr. Dawson’s, and had been sent on from the village.
“Read it, my darling,” he said, “and do not be alarmed; it may be
nothing of any importance.”
It came from a Mrs. Vincent, the schoolmistress with whom she had lived
before entering Mr. Dawson’s family. The lady was dangerously ill, and
implored her old pupil to go and see her.
“Poor soul! she always meant to leave me her money,” said Lucy, with a
mournful smile. “She has never heard of the change in my fortunes. Dear
Sir Michael, I must go to her.”
“To be sure you must, dearest. If she was kind to my poor girl in her
adversity, she has a claim upon her prosperity that shall never be
forgotten. Put on your bonnet, Lucy; we shall be in time to catch the
express.”
“You will go with me?”
“Of course, my darling. Do you suppose I would let you go alone?”
“I was sure you would go with me,” she said, thoughtfully.
“Does your friend send any address?”
“No; but she always lived at Crescent Villa, West Brompton; and no doubt
she lives there still.”
There was only time for Lady Audley to hurry on her bonnet and shawl
before she heard the carriage drive round to the door, and Sir Michael
calling to her at the foot of the staircase.
Her suite of rooms, as I have said, opened one out of another, and
terminated in an octagon antechamber hung with oil-paintings. Even in
her haste she paused deliberately at the door of this room,
double-locked it, and dropped the key into her pocket. This door once
locked cut off all access to my lady’s apartments.
CHAPTER VIII.
BEFORE THE STORM.
So the dinner at Audley Court was postponed, and Miss Alicia had to wait
still longer for an introduction to the handsome young widower, Mr.
George Talboys.
I am afraid, if the real truth is to be told, there was, perhaps,
something of affectation in the anxiety this young lady expressed to
make George’s acquaintance; but if poor Alicia for a moment calculated
upon arousing any latent spark of jealousy lurking in her cousin’s
breast by this exhibition of interest, she was not so well acquainted
with Robert Audley’s disposition as she might have been. Indolent,
handsome, and indifferent, the young barrister took life as altogether
too absurd a mistake for any one event in its foolish course to
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