Mr. Harcourt Talboys sat with his gray eyes fixed severely on his visitor, his elbows on the red-morocco arms of his chair, and his finger-tips joined. It was the attitude in which, had he been Junius Brutus, he would have sat at the trial of his son. Had Robert Audley been easily to be embarrassed, Mr. Talboys might have succeeded in making him feel so: as he would have sat with perfect tranquility upon an open gunpowder barrel lighting his cigar, he was not at all disturbed upon this occasion. The father's dignity seemed a very small thing to him when he thought of the possible causes of the son's disappearance.
"I wrote to you some time since, Mr. Talboys," he said quietly, when he saw that he was expected to open the conversation.
Harcourt Talboys bowed. He knew that it was of his lost son that Robert came to speak. Heaven grant that his icy stoicism was the paltry affectation of a vain man, rather than the utter heartlessness which Robert thought it. He bowed across his finger-tips at his visitor. The trial had begun, and Junius Brutus was enjoying himself.
"I received your communication, Mr. Audley," he said. "It is among other business letters: it was duly answered."
"That letter concerned your son."
There was a little rustling noise at the window where the lady sat, as Robert said this: he looked at her almost instantaneously, but she did not seem to have stirred. She was not working, but she was perfectly quiet.
"She's as heartless as her father, I expect, though she is like George," thought Mr. Audley.
"If your letter concerned the person who was once my son, perhaps, sir," said Harcourt Talboys, "I must ask you to remember that I have no longer a son."
"You have no reason to remind me of that, Mr. Talboys," answered Robert, gravely; "I remember it only too well. I have fatal reason to believe that you have no longer a son. I have bitter cause to think that he is dead."
It may be that Mr. Talboys' complexion faded to a paler shade of buff as Robert said this; but he only elevated his bristling gray eyebrows and shook his head gently.
"No," he said, "no, I assure you, no."
"I believe that George Talboys died in the month of September."
The girl who had been addressed as Clara, sat with work primly folded upon her lap, and her hands lying clasped together on her work, and never stirred when Robert spoke of his friend's death. He could not distinctly see her face, for she was seated at some distance from him, and with her back to the window.