Lady Audley rose and took the lighted lamp from her
writing-table. “The money is in my dressing-room,”
she said; “I will go and fetch it.”
“Oh, my lady,” exclaimed Phoebe, suddenly,
“I forgot something; I was in such a way about
this business that I quite forgot it.”
“Quite forgot what?”
“A letter that was given me to bring to you,
my lady, just before I left home.”
“What letter?”
“A letter from Mr. Audley. He heard my
husband mention that I was coming down here, and he
asked me to carry this letter.”
Lady Audley set the lamp down upon the table nearest
to her, and held out her hand to receive the letter.
Phoebe Marks could scarcely fail to observe that the
little jeweled hand shook like a leaf.
“Give it me—give it me,” she
cried; “let me see what more he has to say.”
Lady Audley almost snatched the letter from Phoebe’s
hand in her wild impatience. She tore open the
envelope and flung it from her; she could scarcely
unfold the sheet of note-paper in her eager excitement.
The letter was very brief. It contained only
these words:
“Should Mrs. George Talboys really have survived
the date of her supposed death, as recorded in the
public prints, and upon the tombstone in Ventnor churchyard,
and should she exist in the person of the lady suspected
and accused by the writer of this, there can be no
great difficulty in finding some one able and willing
to identify her. Mrs. Barkamb, the owner of North
Cottages, Wildernsea, would no doubt consent to throw
some light upon this matter; either to dispel a delusion
or to confirm a suspicion.
“ROBERT AUDLEY.
“March 3, 1859.
“The Castle Inn, Mount Stanning.”
THE RED LIGHT IN THE SKY.
My lady crushed the letter fiercely in her hand, and
flung it from her into the flames.
“If he stood before me now, and I could kill
him,” she muttered in a strange, inward whisper,
“I would do it—I would do it!”
She snatched up the lamp and rushed into the adjoining
room. She shut the door behind her. She
could not endure any witness of her horrible despair—she
could endure nothing, neither herself nor her surroundings.
The door between my lady’s dressing-room and
the bed-chamber in which Sir Michael lay, had been
left open. The baronet slept peacefully, his
noble face plainly visible in the subdued lamplight.
His breathing was low and regular, his lips curved
into a half smile—a smile of tender happiness
which he often wore when he looked at his beautiful
wife, the smile of an all-indulgent father, who looks
admiringly at his favorite child.
Some touch of womanly feeling, some sentiment of compassion
softened Lady Audley’s glance as it fell upon
that noble, reposing figure. For a moment the
horrible egotism of her own misery yielded to her pitying
tenderness for another. It was perhaps only a
semi-selfish tenderness after all, in which pity for
herself was as powerful as pity for her husband; but
for once in a way, her thoughts ran out of the narrow
groove of her own terrors and her own troubles to dwell
with prophetic grief upon the coming sorrows of another.
