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.