Lady Audley's Secret

by M. E. Braddon

"I think so, most decidedly. You traded on your secret, and you were paid to keep it. It would be more honest to hold to your bargain, and keep it still."

"Would it now?" said Mr. Marks with a ghastly grin; "but suppose my lady had one secret and I another. How then?"

"What do you mean?"

"Suppose I could have told something all along; and would have told it, perhaps, if I'd been a little better treated; if what was give to me had been give a little more liberal like, and not flung at me as if I was a dog, and was only give it to be kep' from bitin'. Suppose I could have told somethin', and would have told it but for that? How then?"

It was impossible to describe the ghastliness of the triumphant grin that lighted up the sick man's haggard face.

"His mind is wandering," Robert thought; "I had need be patient with him, poor fellow. It would be strange if I could not be patient with a dying man."

Luke marks lay staring at Mr. Audley for some moments with that triumphant grin upon his face. The old woman, wearied out with watching her dying son, had dropped into a doze, and sat nodding her sharp chin over the handful of fire, upon which the broth that was never to be eaten, still bubbled and simmered.

Mr. Audley waited very patiently until it should be the sick man's pleasure to speak. Every sound was painfully distinct in that dead hour of the night. The dropping of the ashes on the hearth, the ominous crackling of the burning coals, the slow and ponderous ticking of the sulky clock in the room below, the low moaning of the March wind (which might have been the voice of an English Banshee, screaming her dismal warning to the watchers of the dying), the hoarse breathing of the sick man--every sound held itself apart from all other sounds, and made itself into a separate voice, loud with a gloomy portent in the solemn stillness of the house.

Robert sat with his face shaded by his hands, thinking what was to become of him now that the secret of his friend's fate had been told, and the dark story of George Talboys and his wicked wife had been finished in the Belgian mad-house. What was to become of him?

He had no claim upon Clara Talboys; for he had resolved to keep the horrible secret that had been told to him. How then could he dare to meet her with that secret held back fom her? How could he ever look into her earnest eyes, and yet withhold the truth? He felt that all power of reservation would fail before the searching glance of those calm brown eyes. If he was indeed to keep this secret he must never see her again. To reveal it would be to embitter her life. Could he, for any selfish motive of his own, tell her this terrible story?--or could he think that if he told her she would suffer her murdered brother to lie unavenged and forgotten in his unhallowed grave?