Sir Michael could hear no more.  He and his daughter Alicia departed that evening for the Continent.  Next day, Dr. Mosgrave, a mental specialist, arrived from London.  He was fully informed of the history of Lady Audley, examined her, and finally reported to Robert:  “The lady is not mad, but she has a hereditary taint in her blood.  She has the cunning of madness, with the prudence of intelligence.  She is dangerous.”  He gave Robert a letter addressed to Monsieur Val, Villebrumeuse, Belgium, who, he said, was the proprietor and medical superintendent of an excellent maison de sante, and would, no doubt, willingly receive Lady Audley into his establishment, and charge himself with the full responsibility of her future life.

Robert escorted Lady Audley to Villebrumeuse, where she was presented to Monsieur Val as Madame Taylor.  When Monsieur Val retired from the reception room, at my lady’s request, she turned to Robert, and said:  “You have brought me to a living grave; you have used your power basely and cruelly.”

“I have done that which I thought was just to others, and merciful to you,” replied Robert.  “Live here and repent.”

“I cannot,” cried my lady.  “I would defy you and kill myself if I dared.  Do you know what I am thinking of?  It is of the day upon which George Talboys—­disappeared!  The body of George Talboys lies at the bottom of the old well in the shrubbery beyond the lime walk.  He came to me there, goaded me beyond endurance, and I called him a madman and a liar.  I was going to leave him when he seized me by the wrist and sought to detain me by force.  You yourself saw the bruises.  I became mad, and drew the loose iron spindle from the shrunken wood of the windlass.  My first husband sank with one horrible cry into the black mouth of the well!”

VI.—­The Mystery Cleared Up

On arrival in London, Robert Audley received a letter from Clara Talboys saying that Luke Marks, the man whom he had saved in the fire at the Castle Inn, was lying at his mother’s cottage at Audley, and expressed a very earnest wish to see him.  Robert took train at once to Audley.

The dying man confessed that on the night of George Talboys’s disappearance, when going home to his mother’s cottage, he heard groans come from the laurel bushes in the shrubbery near the old well.  On search, he found Talboys covered with slime, and with a broken arm.  He carried the crippled man to his mother’s cottage, washed, fed, and nursed him.

Next day Talboys gave him a five-pound note to accompany him to the town of Brentwood, where he called on a surgeon to have his broken arm set and dressed.  That done, Talboys wrote two notes in pencil with his left hand, and gave them to Luke to deliver—­one with a cross to be handed to Lady Audley, and the other to the nephew of Sir Michael, and then took train to London in a second-class carriage.

Phoebe, who had seen from her window Lady Audley pushing George Talboys into the well, said that my lady was in their power, and that she would do anything for them to keep her secret.  So the letters were not delivered.