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“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.

CHAPTER XXVI.

SO FAR AND NO FARTHER.

Robert left Audley the next morning by an early train, and reached Shoreditch a little after nine o’clock.  He did not return to his chambers, but called a cab and drove straight to Crescent Villas, West Brompton.  He knew that he should fail in finding the lady he went to seek at this address, as his uncle had failed a few months before, but he thought it possible to obtain some clew to the schoolmistress’ new residence, in spite of Sir Michael’s ill-success.

“Mrs. Vincent was in a dying state, according to the telegraphic message,” Robert thought.  “If I do find her, I shall at least succeed in discovering whether that message was genuine.”

He found Crescent Villas after some difficulty.  The houses were large, but they lay half imbedded among the chaos of brick and rising mortar around them.  New terraces, new streets, new squares led away into hopeless masses of stone and plaster on every side.  The roads were sticky with damp clay, which clogged the wheels of the cab and buried the fetlocks of the horse.  The desolations—­that awful aspect of incompleteness and discomfort which pervades a new and unfinished neighborhood—­had set its dismal seal upon the surrounding streets which had arisen about and intrenched Crescent Villas; and Robert wasted forty minutes by his watch, and an hour and a quarter by the cabman’s reckoning, in driving up and down uninhabited streets and terraces, trying to find the Villase; whose chimney-tops were frowning down upon him black and venerable, amid groves of virgin plaster, undimmed by time or smoke.