"Her father's name was Maldon," George muttered; "he could never have sent her here to die alone."
They said nothing more; but Robert walked straight to a hotel where he inquired for a Mr. Maldon.
Yes, they told him, there was a gentleman of that name stopping at Ventnor, a Captain Maldon; his daughter was lately dead. The waiter would go and inquire for the address.
The hotel was a busy place at this season; people hurrying in and out, and a great bustle of grooms and waiters about the halls.
George Talboys leaned against the doorpost, with much the same look in his face, as that which had frightened his friend in the Westminister coffee-house.
The worst was confirmed now. His wife, Captain Maldon's daughter was dead.
The waiter returned in about five minutes to say that Captain Maldon was lodging at Lansdowne Cottage, No. 4.
They easily found the house, a shabby, low-windowed cottage, looking toward the water.
Was Captain Maldon at home? No, the landlady said; he had gone out on the beach with his little grandson. Would the gentleman walk in and sit down a bit?
George mechanically followed his friend into the little front parlor--dusty, shabbily furnished, and disorderly, with a child's broken toys scattered on the floor, and the scent of stale tobacco hanging about the muslin window-curtains.
"Look!" said George, pointing to a picture over the mantelpiece.
It was his own portrait, painted in the old dragooning days. A pretty good likeness, representing him in uniform, with his charger in the background.
Perhaps the most animated of men would have been scarcely so wise a comforter as Robert Audley. He did not utter a word to the stricken widower, but quietly seated himself with his back to George, looking out of the open window.
For some time the young man wandered restlessly about the room, looking at and sometimes touching the nick-nacks lying here and there.
Her workbox, with an unfinished piece of work; her album full of extracts from Byron and Moore, written in his own scrawling hand; some books which he had given her, and a bunch of withered flowers in a vase they had bought in Italy.
"Her portrait used to hang by the side of mine," he muttered; "I wonder what they have done with it."
By-and-by he said, after about an hour's silence: "I should like to see the woman of the house; I should like to ask her about--"
He broke down, and buried his face in his hands.
Robert summoned the landlady. She was a good-natured garrulous creature, accustomed to sickness and death, for many of her lodgers came to her to die.