Phoebe Marks shrugged her shoulders, folded her work, shut her work-box, and crossing her hands in her lap, sat with her gray eyes fixed upon her husband's bull-like face.
"Then you don't particularly care to live at Mount Stanning?" said Robert, politely, as if anxious to change the conversation.
"No, I don't," answered Luke; "and I don't care who knows it; and, as I said before, if folks hadn't been so precious stingy, I might have had a public in a thrivin' market town, instead of this tumble-down old place, where a man has his hair blowed off his head on a windy day. What's fifty pound, or what's a hundred pound"
"No, you're not goin' to stop my mouth with all your 'Luke, Lukes!'" answered Mr. Marks to his wife's remonstrance. "I say again, what's a hundred pound?"
"No," answered Robert Audley, with wonderful distinctness, and addressing his words to Luke Marks, but fixing his eyes upon Phoebe's anxious face. "What, indeed, is a hundred pounds to a man possessed of the power which you hold, or rather which your wife holds, over the person in question."
Phoebe's face, at all times almost colorless, seemed scarcely capable of growing paler; but as her eyelids drooped under Robert Audley's searching glance, a visible change came over the pallid hues of her complexion.
"A quarter to twelve," said Robert, looking at his watch.
"Late hours for such a quiet village as Mount Stanning. Good-night, my worthy host. Good-night, Mrs. Marks. You needn't send me my shaving water till nine o'clock to-morrow morning."
ROBERT RECEIVES A VISITOR WHOM HE HAD SCARCELY EXPECTED.
Eleven o'clock struck the next morning, and found Mr. Robert Audley still lounging over the well ordered little breakfast table, with one of his dogs at each side of his arm-chair, regarding him with watchful eyes and opened mouths, awaiting the expected morsel of ham or toast. Robert had a county paper on his knees, and made a feeble effort now and then to read the first page, which was filled with advertisements of farming stock, quack medicines, and other interesting matter.
The weather had changed, and the snow, which had for the last few days been looming blackly in the frosty sky, fell in great feathery flakes against the windows, and lay piled in the little bit of garden-ground without.