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With becoming gallantry he pressed Mistress Audley's hand to his lips, while he bestowed a kiss on Lettice's fair brow, telling her how glad he was to greet her father's daughter. Cicely then took her hand, and led her towards the house, while the captain assisted Mistress Audley up the steep ascent.
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.
"From your affectionate cousin, ALICIA." A sick and deadly terror chilled Robert Audley's heart, as he read this letter a vague yet hideous fear, which he dared not shape into any definite form.
Poor Alicia crossed the grass-plat and disappeared upon the opposite side of the quadrangle, where there was a Gothic gate that communicated with the stables. I am sorry to say that Sir Michael Audley's daughter went to seek consolation from her dog Caesar and her chestnut mare Atalanta, whose loose box the young lady was in the habit of visiting every day.
The usurer continued to possess a determined hold over the imperious great man. He knew Audley's secret; he could reveal that secret to Harley. And the one soft and tender side of the statesman's nature the sole part of him not dipped in the ninefold Styx of practical prosaic life, which renders man so invulnerable to affection was his remorseful love for the school friend whom he still deceived.
Audley's servant approached. "Mr. Egerton feels himself rather more poorly than usual, my Lord; he begs you will excuse his going with you into the town at present. He will come later if his presence is absolutely necessary." "No. Pray tell him to rest and nurse himself. I should have liked him to witness his own triumph, that is all. Say I will represent him at the polling-place.
Helen at first answered by monosyllables, and then, by degrees, with grateful and open affection. Audley's brow grew shaded.
You know that some physicians declare madness to be a mere illness of the brain an illness to which any one is subject, and which may be produced by given causes, and cured by given means." Lady Audley's eyes were still fixed upon the burning coals in the wide grate. She spoke as if she had been discussing a subject that she had often heard discussed before.
And Audley's emotions seemed to him so earnest and genuine, to show so good a heart, that out by little and little came more: first, his suspicions that poor Nora had been betrayed; then his hopes that there might have been private marriage; and as Audley, with his iron self- command, showed just the proper degree of interest, and no more, he went on, till Audley knew that he had a child.
Meanwhile, the miserable Nora deceived by the arts and representations of Levy, acting on the natural impulse of a heart so susceptible to shame, flying from a home which she deemed dishonoured, flying from a lover whose power over her she knew to be so great that she dreaded lest he might reconcile her to dishonour itself had no thought save to hide herself forever from Audley's eye.
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