"Mad!" cried Miss Audley, indignantly; "you are dreaming, my lady, or—or—you are trying to frighten me," added the young lady, with considerable alarm.
"I only wish to put you on your guard, Alicia," answered my lady. "Mr. Audley may be as you say, merely eccentric; but he has talked to me this evening in a manner that has filled me with absolute terror, and I believe that he is going mad. I shall speak very seriously to Sir Michael this very night."
"Speak to papa," exclaimed Alicia; "you surely won't distress papa by suggesting such a possibility!"
"I shall only put him on his guard, my dear Alicia."
"But he'll never believe you," said Miss Audley; "he will laugh at such an idea."
"No, Alicia; he will believe anything that I tell him," answered my lady, with a quiet smile.
CHAPTER XXX.
PREPARING THE GROUND.
Lady Audley went from the garden to the library, a pleasant, oak-paneled, homely apartment in which Sir Michael liked to sit reading or writing, or arranging the business of his estate with his steward, a stalwart countryman, half agriculturalist, half lawyer, who rented a small farm a few miles from the Court.