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Audley waited very patiently, watching the gray clouds sailing across the gray sky, the gray vessels gliding past upon the gray sea. After about ten minutes' search, and a great deal of rustling, crackling, folding and unfolding of the papers, Mrs. Barkamb uttered an exclamation of triumph. "I've got the letter," she said; "and there's a note inside it from Mrs. Talboys."
"The next of kin to the lands of Hazeldean may have his day." The baron smiled. "You have good prospects in that direction, Leslie; look now to another. I spoke to you of the borough of Lansmere. Your patron, Audley Egerton, intends to stand for it."
The copper-plate engravings of lovely ladies, who had flourished in that day, were yellow and spotted with mildew; the costumes grotesque and outlandish; the simpering beauties faded and commonplace. Robert Audley did not stop to read any of the mild productions. He ran rapidly through the leaves, looking for any scrap of writing or fragment of a letter which might have been used to mark a place.
The September sunlight sparkled upon the fountain in the Temple Gardens when Robert Audley returned to Figtree Court early the following morning.
At the corner of Grosvenor Square and South Audley Street a man passed him in the mist, walking very fast, and with the collar of his grey ulster turned up. He had a bag in his hand. Dorian recognised him. It was Basil Hallward. A strange sense of fear, for which he could not account, came over him. He made no sign of recognition, and went on quickly in the direction of his own house.
"If so, he is ruined!" said Levy, coldly; "and therefore, from regard to you, and feeling interest in your future fate, I say, Rest no hopes of fortune or career upon Audley Egerton. Keep your place for the present, but be prepared at the next election to stand upon popular principles. Avenel shall return you to parliament; and the rest is with luck and energy.
He answered her very gravely: "I had a friend, Lady Audley, whom I loved very dearly, and since I have lost him I fear that my feelings toward other people are strangely embittered." "You mean the Mr. Talboys who went to Australia?" "Yes, I mean the Mr. Talboys who I was told set out for Liverpool with the idea of going to Australia." "And you do not believe in his having sailed for Australia?"
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 short cut from Audley Court to the high-road. "Oh, yes, my lady; he's sure to sit up.
'I saw it again, he said with a sigh. 'Saw what! 'What you all mean. It touched me, and seemed true and real when Lance was singing. What was it "Born to save the sons of earth"? Oh! but such as I am, and at my age, too! And with a few words from Mr. Audley, there came such a disburthening of self-accusation as before to Felix.
Still, Audley was considered to be opulent; and he did not dispel that favourable notion by any imprudent exhibition of parsimony. On entering the world of London, the Clubs flew open to receive him, and he woke one morning to find himself, not indeed famous but the fashion.
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