Lady Audley’s Secret by M. E. Braddon (top ebook reader TXT) 📕

absent. There was little fear of Sir Michael’s awaking for some time, as he was a heavy sleeper in the early part of the night, and had slept more heavily than usual since his illness.

Lady Audley crossed the library, and opened the door of the breakfast-room, which communicated with it. This latter apartment was one of the later additions to the Court. It was a simple, cheerful chamber, with brightly papered walls and pretty maple furniture, and was more occupied by Alicia than anyone else. The paraphernalia of that young lady’s favorite pursuits were scattered about the room⁠—drawing-materials, unfinished scraps of work, tangled skeins of silk, and all the other tokens of a careless damsel’s presence; while Miss Audley’s picture⁠—a pretty crayon sketch of a rosy-faced hoyden in a riding-habit and hat⁠—hung over the quaint Wedgewood ornaments on the chimneypiece. My lady looked upon these familiar objects with scornful hatred flaming in her blue eyes.

“How glad she will be if any disgrace befalls me,” she thought; “how she will rejoice if I am driven out of this house!”

Lady Audley set the lamp upon a table near the fireplace, and went to the window. She removed the iron-bar and the light wooden shutter, and then opened the glass-door. The March night was black and moonless, and a gust of wind blew in upon her as she opened this door, and filled the room with its chilly breath, extinguishing the lamp upon the table.

“No matter,” my lady muttered, “I could not have left it burning. I shall know how to find my way through the house when I come back. I have left all the doors ajar.”

She stepped quickly out upon the smooth gravel, and closed the glass-door behind her. She was afraid lest that treacherous wind should blow-to the door opening into the library, and thus betray her.

She was in the quadrangle now, with that chill wind sweeping against her, and swirling her silken garments round her with a shrill, rustling noise, like the whistling of a sharp breeze against the sails of a yacht. She crossed the quadrangle and looked back⁠—looked back for a moment at the firelight gleaming between the rosy-tinted curtains in her boudoir, and the dim gleam of the lamp through the mullioned windows in the room where Sir Michael Audley lay asleep.

“I feel as if I were running away,” she thought; “I feel as if I were running away secretly in the dead of the night, to lose myself and be forgotten. Perhaps it would be wiser in me to run away, to take this man’s warning, and escape out of his power forever. If I were to run away and disappear as⁠—as George Talboys disappeared. But where could I go? what would become of me? I have no money; my jewels are not worth a couple of hundred pounds, now that I have got rid of the best part of them. What could I do? I must go back to the old life, the old, hard, cruel, wretched life⁠—the life of poverty, and humiliation, and vexation, and discontent. I should have to go back and wear myself out in that long struggle, and die⁠—as my mother died, perhaps!”

My lady stood still for a moment on the smooth lawn between the quadrangle and the archway, with her head drooping upon her breast and her hands locked together, debating this question in the unnatural activity of her mind. Her attitude reflected the state of that mind⁠—it expressed irresolution and perplexity. But presently a sudden change came over her; she lifted her head⁠—lifted it with an action of defiance and determination.

“No! Mr. Robert Audley,” she said, aloud, in a low, clear voice; “I will not go back⁠—I will not go back. If the struggle between us is to be a duel to the death, you shall not find me drop my weapon.”

She walked with a firm and rapid step under the archway. As she passed under that massive arch, it seemed as if she disappeared into some black gulf that had waited open to receive her. The stupid clock struck twelve, and the whole archway seemed to vibrate under its heavy strokes, as Lady Audley emerged upon the other side and joined Phoebe Marks, who had waited for her late mistress very near the gateway of the Court.

“Now, Phoebe,” she said, “it is three miles from here to Mount Stanning, isn’t it?”

“Yes, my lady.”

“Then we can walk the distance in an hour and a half.”

Lady Audley had not stopped to say this; she was walking quickly along the avenue with her humble companion by her side. Fragile and delicate as she was in appearance, she was a very good walker. She had been in the habit of taking long country rambles with Mr. Dawson’s children in her old days of dependence, and she thought very little of a distance of three miles.

“Your beautiful husband will sit up for you, I suppose, Phoebe?” she said, as they struck across an open field that was used as a shortcut from Audley Court to the highroad.

“Oh, yes, my lady; he’s sure to sit up. He’ll be drinking with the man, I dare say.”

“The man! What man?”

“The man that’s in possession, my lady.”

“Ah, to be sure,” said Lady Audley, indifferently.

It was strange that Phoebe’s domestic troubles should seem so very far away from her thoughts at the time she was taking such an extraordinary step toward setting things right at the Castle Inn.

The two women crossed the field and turned into the high road. The way to Mount Stanning was all up hill, and the long road looked black and dreary in the dark night; but my lady walked on with a desperate courage, which was no common constituent in her selfish sensuous nature, but a strange faculty born out of her great despair. She did not speak again to her companion until they were close upon the glimmering lights at the top of the hill. One of these village lights, glaring redly through