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.

She told all the particulars of Mrs. Talboys' last hours; how she had
come to Ventnor only ten days before her death, in the last stage of
decline; and how, day by day, she had gradually, but surely, sunk under
the fatal malady. Was the gentleman any relative? she asked of Robert
Audley, as George sobbed aloud.

"Yes, he is the lady's husband."