The Greatest Murder Mysteries of Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Mary Elizabeth Braddon

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СКАЧАТЬ a coward I am to think of myself or my own danger,” he thought. “The more I see of this woman the more reason I have to dread her influence upon others; the more reason to wish her far away from this house.”

      He looked about him in the dusky obscurity. The lonely garden was as quiet as some solitary grave-yard, walled in and hidden away from the world of the living.

      “It was somewhere in this garden that she met George Talboys upon the day of his disappearance,” he thought. “I wonder where it was they met; I wonder where it was that he looked into her cruel face and taxed her with her falsehood?”

      My lady, with her little hand resting lightly upon the opposite post to that against which Robert leaned, toyed with her pretty foot among the long weeds, but kept a furtive watch upon her enemy’s face.

      “It is to be a duel to the death, then, my lady,” said Robert Audley, solemnly. “You refuse to accept my warning. You refuse to run away and repent of your wickedness in some foreign place, far from the generous gentleman you have deceived and fooled by your false witcheries. You choose to remain here and defy me.”

      “I do,” answered Lady Audley, lifting her head and looking full at the young barrister. “It is no fault of mine if my husband’s nephew goes mad, and chooses me for the victim of his monomania.”

      “So be it, then, my lady,” answered Robert. “My friend George Talboys was last seen entering these gardens by the little iron gate by which we came in to-night. He was last heard inquiring for you. He was seen to enter these gardens, but he was never seen to leave them. I believe that he met his death within the boundary of these grounds; and that his body lies hidden below some quiet water, or in some forgotten corner of this place. I will have such a search made as shall level that house to the earth and root up every tree in these gardens, rather than I will fail in finding the grave of my murdered friend.”

      Lucy Audley uttered a long, low, wailing cry, and threw up her arms above her head with a wild gesture of despair, but she made no answer to the ghastly charge of her accuser. Her arms slowly dropped, and she stood staring at Robert Audley, her white face gleaming through the dusk, her blue eyes glittering and dilated.

      “You shall never live to do this,” she said. “I will kill you first. Why have you tormented me so? Why could you not let me alone? What harm had I ever done you that you should make yourself my persecutor, and dog my steps, and watch my looks, and play the spy upon me? Do you want to drive me mad? Do you know what it is to wrestle with a mad-woman? No,” cried my lady, with a laugh, “you do not, or you would never —”

      She stopped abruptly and drew herself suddenly to her fullest hight. It was the same action which Robert had seen in the old half-drunken lieutenant; and it had that same dignity — the sublimity of extreme misery.

      “Go away, Mr. Audley,” she said. “You are mad, I tell you, you are mad.”

      “I am going, my lady,” answered Robert, quietly. “I would have condoned your crimes out of pity to your wretcheness. You have refused to accept my mercy. I wished to have pity upon the living. I shall henceforth only remember my duty to the dead.”

      He walked away from the lonely well under the shadow of the limes. My lady followed him slowly down that long, gloomy avenue, and across the rustic bridge to the iron gate. As he passed through the gate, Alicia came out of a little half-glass door that opened from an oak-paneled breakfast-room at one angle of the house, and met her cousin upon the threshold of the gateway.

      “I have been looking for you everywhere, Robert,” she said. “Papa has come down to the library, and will be glad to see you.”

      The young man started at the sound of his cousin’s fresh young voice. “Good Heaven!” he thought, “can these two women be of the same clay? Can this frank, generous-hearted girl, who cannot conceal any impulse of her innocent nature, be of the same flesh and blood as that wretched creature whose shadow falls upon the path beside me!”

      He looked from his cousin to Lady Audley, who stood near the gateway, waiting for him to stand aside and let her pass him.

      “I don’t know what has come to your cousin, my dear Alicia,” said my lady. “He is so absent-minded and eccentric as to be quite beyond my comprehension.”

      “Indeed,” exclaimed Miss Audley; “and yet I should imagine, from the length of your tete-a-tete, that you had made some effort to understand him.”

      “Oh, yes,” said Robert, quietly, “my lady and I understand each other very well; but as it is growing late I will wish you good-evening, ladies. I shall sleep to-night at Mount Stanning, as I have some business to attend to up there, and I will come down and see my uncle to-morrow.”

      “What, Robert,” cried Alicia, “you surely won’t go away without seeing papa?”

      “Yes, my dear,” answered the young man. “I am a little disturbed by some disagreeable business in which I am very much concerned, and I would rather not see my uncle. Good-night, Alicia. I will come or write to-morrow.”

      He pressed his cousin’s hand, bowed to Lady Audley, and walked away under the black shadows of the archway, and out into the quiet avenue beyond the Court.

      My lady and Alicia stood watching him until he was out of sight.

      “What in goodness’ name is the matter with my Cousin Robert?” exclaimed Miss Audley, impatiently, as the barrister disappeared. “What does he mean by these absurd goings-on? Some disagreeable business that disturbs him, indeed! I suppose the unhappy creature has had a brief forced upon him by some evil-starred attorney, and is sinking into a state of imbecility from a dim consciousness of his own incompetence.”

      “Have you ever studied your cousin’s character, Alicia?” asked my lady, very seriously, after a pause.

      “Studied his character! No, Lady Audley. Why should I study his character?” said Alicia. “There is very little study required to convince anybody that he is a lazy, selfish Sybarite, who cares for nothing in the world except his own ease and comfort.”

      “But have you never thought him eccentric?”

      “Eccentric!” repeated Alicia, pursing up her red lips and shrugging up her shoulders. “Well, yes — I believe that is the excuse generally made for such people. I suppose Bob is eccentric.”

      “I have never heard you speak of his father and mother,” said my lady, thoughtfully. “Do you remember them?”

      “I never saw his mother. She was a Miss Dalrymple, a very dashing girl, who ran away with my uncle, and lost a very handsome fortune in consequence. She died at Nice when poor Bob was five years old.”

      “Did you ever hear anything particular about her?”

      “How do you mean ‘particular?’” asked Alicia.

      “Did you ever hear that she was eccentric — what people call ‘odd?’”

      “Oh, no,” said Alicia, laughing. “My aunt was a very reasonable woman, I believe, though she did marry for love. But you must remember that she died before I was born, and I have not, therefore, felt very much curiosity about her.”

      “But you recollect your uncle, I suppose.”

      “My СКАЧАТЬ