George Talboys and his friend visited the churchyard where his wife was buried, commissioned a mason to erect a headstone on the grave, and then went to the beach to seek Captain Maldon and the little boy.
The captain, when he saw his son-in-law, coloured violently with something of a frightened look. He told Talboys that only a few months after his departure he and Helen came to live at Southampton, where she had obtained a few pupils for the piano; but her health failed, and she fell into a decline, of which she died. Broken-hearted, Talboys started for Liverpool to take ship for Australia, but failed to catch the steamer; returned to London, and accompanied Robert Audley on a long visit to Russia.
A year passed, and Robert proposed to take his friend to Audley Court, but had a letter from his cousin Alicia, saying that her stepmother had taken into her head that she was too ill to entertain, though in reality there was nothing the matter with her.
"My lady's airs and graces shan't keep us out of Essex, for all that," said Robert Audley. "We will go to a comfortable old inn in the village of Audley."
Thither they went; but Lady Audley, who had casually seen him, although he was unaware of it, continued on one excuse or another to avoid meeting George Talboys. The two young men strolled up to the Court in the absence of Sir Michael and Lady Audley, where they met Alicia Audley, who showed them the lime walk and the old well.
Robert was anxious to see the portrait of his new aunt; but Lady Audley's picture was in her private apartments, the door of which was locked. Alicia remembered there was, unknown to Lady Audley, access to these by means of a secret passage. In a spirit of fun the young men explored the passage and reached the portrait. George Talboys sat before it without uttering a word, only staring blankly.
"We managed it capitally; but I don't like the portrait," said Robert, when they had crept back. "There is something odd about it."
"There is," answered Alicia. "We never have seen my lady look as she does in that picture; but I think she could look so."
Next day Talboys and Robert went fishing. George pretended to fish; Robert slept on the river-bank. The servants were at dinner at the Court; Alicia had gone riding. Lady Audley sauntered out, book in hand, to the shady lime walk. George Talboys came up to the hall, rang the bell, was told that her ladyship was walking in the lime avenue. He looked disappointed at the intelligence, and walked away. A full hour and a half later, Lady Audley returned to the house, not coming from the lime avenue, but from the opposite direction. In her own room she confronted her maid, Phoebe. The eyes of the two women met.
"Phoebe Marks," said my lady presently, "you are a good girl; and while I live and am prosperous, you shall not want a firm friend and a twenty-pound note."
IV.--The Search and the Counter Check
Robert Audley awoke from his nap to find George Talboys gone. He searched in the grounds and in the inn for him in vain. At the railway-station he heard that a man who, from the description given, might be Talboys, had gone by the afternoon train to London. In the evening he went up to the Court to dinner. Lady Audley was gay and fascinating; but gave a little nervous shudder when Robert, feeling uneasy about his friend, said so.
Again, when Lady Audley was at the piano he observed a bruise on her arm. She said that it was caused by tying a piece of ribbon too tightly round her arm two or three days before. But Robert saw that the bruise was recent, and that it had been made by the four fingers, one of which had a ring, of a powerful hand.
Suspicion began to be aroused in the mind of Robert Audley, first as to the real identity of Lady Audley; and second, as to the fate of his friend. He brought into play all the keenness of his intellect, and abandoned his lazy habits. He went to Southampton, saw Captain Maldon, who told him that George Talboys had arrived the morning before at one o'clock to have a look at his boy before sailing for Australia. On inquiry at Liverpool, this proved to be false.
He sought the assistance of George's father, Squire Talboys, at Grange Heath, Dorsetshire, to discover the murderer; but the squire resolutely refused to accept that his son was dead. He was only hiding, hoping for forgiveness, which would never be given.
The beautiful sister of George Talboys followed Robert when he left the mansion and besought him passionately to avenge her brother's murder, in which she implicitly believed, and this he promised to do.
Then he learned that Phoebe, Lady Audley's maid, had married her cousin Luke Marks, who, under veiled threats, had obtained one hundred pounds from her ladyship to enable him to lease the Castle Inn. And having visited the place, and held conversation with the half-drunken landlord, he felt assured that Luke Marks and his wife had by some means obtained a sinister power over Lady Audley.
Robert thereafter traced the life history of Helen Maldon from her marriage to George Talboys at Wildernsea, Yorkshire, her secret departure from there after her husband's desertion, her appearance the following day as a teacher in a girl's school at Brompton under the name of Lucy Graham; her arrival as a governess in Essex, and finally her marriage to Sir Michael Audley.
Once more he returned to the Court, where his uncle was lying ill, attended by Lady Audley. He demanded a private audience of my lady, at which he told her he had discovered the whole of the conspiracy concocted by an artful woman who had speculated upon the chance of her husband's death, and had secured a splendid position at the risk of committing a crime.
"My friend, George Talboys," said Robert, "was last seen entering these gardens, and was never seen to leave them. I will have such a search made as shall level that house to the earth, and root up every tree rather than I will fail in finding the grave of my murdered friend."
"You shall never live to do this," she said. "I will kill you first!"
That evening Lady Audley gave to her husband a gloss of what his nephew had said, and boldly accused him of being mad. "You would," she said, "never let anyone influence you against me, would you, darling?"
"No, my love; they had better not try it."
Lady Audley laughed aloud, with a gay, triumphant peal as she tripped out of the room; but as she sat in her own chamber, brooding, she muttered: "Dare I defy him? Will anything stop him but--death?"
Just then Phoebe Marks arrived to warn Lady Audley that Robert had appeared at the Castle Inn. She also explained that a bailiff was in the house, as the rent was due, and she wanted money to pay him out. Lady Audley, insisted to Phoebe's astonishment, that she herself would bring the money. She did so; and, unknown to Phoebe, cunningly set fire to the inn, hoping that Robert Audley would meet his death. She and her maid then left the inn to make the long tramp back to the Court. Half the distance had been covered, when Phoebe looked back and saw a red glare in the sky. She stopped, suddenly fell on her knees, and cried: "Oh, my God! Say it's not true! It's too horrible!"
"What's too horrible?" said Lady Audley.
"The thought that is in my mind."
"I will tell you nothing except that you are a mad woman; and go home." Lady Audley walked away in the darkness.
V.--My Lady Tells the Truth
Lady Audley next day was under the dominion of a terrible restlessness. Towards the dinner hour she walked in the quadrangle. In the dusk she lost all self-control when a figure approached. Her knees sank under her and she dropped to the ground. It was Robert Audley who helped her to rise and then led her into the library. In a pitiless voice he called her the incendiary of the fire at the inn. Fortunately, he had changed his room, and escaped being burnt to death, saving, at the same time, Luke Marks. The day was now past, he insisted, for mercy, after last night's deed of horror; and she should no longer pollute the Court with her presence.