"I can only spare you twenty minutes," he said. "I will see the lady, if you please. You say her mother died in a madhouse?"
"She did. Will you see Lady Audley alone?"
"Yes, alone, if you please."
Robert rung for my lady's maid, and under convoy of that smart young damsel the physician found his way to the octagon antechamber, and the fairy boudoir with which it communicated.
Ten minutes afterward, he returned to the library, in which Robert sat waiting for him.
"I have talked to the lady," he said, quietly, "and we understand each other very well. There is latent insanity! Insanity which might never appear; or which might appear only once or twice in a lifetime. It would be a dementia in its worst phase, perhaps; acute mania; but its duration would be very brief, and it would only arise under extreme mental pressure. The lady is not mad; but she has the hereditary taint in her blood. She has the cunning of madness, with the prudence of intelligence. I will tell you what she is, Mr. Audley. She is dangerous!"
Dr. Mosgrave walked up and down the room once or twice before he spoke again.
"I will not discuss the probabilities of the suspicion which distresses you, Mr. Audley," he said, presently, "but I will tell you this much, I do not advise any esclandre. This Mr. George Talboys has disappeared, but you have no evidence of his death. If you could produce evidence of his death, you could produce no evidence against this lady, beyond the one fact that she had a powerful motive for getting rid of him. No jury in the United Kingdom would condemn her upon such evidence as that."
Robert Audley interrupted Dr. Mosgrave, hastily.
"I assure you, my dear sir," he said, "that my greatest fear is the necessity of any exposure—any disgrace."