"My daughter knows my ideas upon this subject, Mr. Audley," said Harcourt Talboys; "there is no reason why she should not hear all you have to say. Miss Clara Talboys, Mr. Robert Audley," he added, waving his hand majestically.
The young lady bent her head in recognition of Robert's bow.
"Let her hear it," he thought. "If she has so little feeling as to show no emotion upon such a subject, let her hear the worst I have to tell."
There was a few minutes' pause, during which Robert took some papers from his pocket; among them the document which he had written immediately after George's disappearance.
"I shall require all your attention, Mr. Talboys," he said, "for that which I have to disclose to you is of a very painful nature. Your son was my very dear friend--dear to me for many reasons. Perhaps most of all dear, because I had known him and been with him through the great trouble of his life; and because he stood comparatively alone in the world--cast off by you who should have been his best friend, bereft of the only woman he had ever loved."
"The daughter of a drunken pauper," Mr. Talboys remarked, parenthetically.
"Had he died in his bed, as I sometimes thought be would," continued Robert Audley, "of a broken heart, I should have mourned for him very sincerely, even though I had closed his eyes with my own hands, and had seen him laid in his quiet resting-place. I should have grieved for my old schoolfellow, and for the companion who had been dear to me. But this grief would have been a very small one compared to that which I feel now, believing, as I do only too firmly, that my poor friend has been murdered."
"Murdered!"
The father and daughter simultaneously repeated the horrible word. The father's face changed to a ghastly duskiness of hue; the daughter's face dropped upon her clasped hands, and was never lifted again throughout the interview.
"Mr. Audley, you are mad!" exclaimed Harcourt Talboys; "you are mad, or else you are commissioned by your friend to play upon my feelings. I protest against this proceeding as a conspiracy, and I--I revoke my intended forgiveness of the person who was once my son!"
He was himself again as he said this. The blow had been a sharp one, but its effect had been momentary.
"It is far from my wish to alarm you unnecessarily, sir," answered Robert. "Heaven grant that you may be right and I wrong. I pray for it, but I cannot think it--I cannot even hope it. I come to you for advice. I will state to you plainly and dispassionately the circumstances which have aroused my suspicions. If you say those suspicions are foolish and unfounded I am ready to submit to your better judgment. I will leave England; and I abandon my search for the evidence wanting to--to confirm my fears. If you say go on, I will go on."