Grieving George Talboys
“And so,” he muttered to himself as he went back to his chambers, “‘with that she walked off as graceful as you please.’Who was it that walked off; and what was the story which the locksmith was telling when I interrupted him at that sentence? Oh, George Talboys, George Talboys, am I ever to come any nearer to the secret of your fate? Am I coming nearer to it now, slowly but surely? Is the radius to grow narrower day by day until it draws a dark circle around the home of those I love? How is it all to end?”
In this part of the novel we find Robert Audley still searching for his friend George Tallboys who went missing a couple of chapters ago. After meeting Lady Audley in London, he goes back to his apartment and finds out that a locksmith (Mr. White) has been in his room. He then goes to see this locksmith to understand what happened, but the man tells him that there has been an error and he shouldn’t have been there. Mr. White then leaves the room and Robert starts asking himself some questions: when he entered the room the locksmith was telling a story and the only thing he heard was “and so, with that she walked off gracefully” so he immediately starts thinking about who that person could’ve been. There are some repetitions inside this passage: “with that she walked off” “who was it that walked off” this repetition helps the reader to realize how much Robert overthinks. He is fixated with the idea of finding out what happened to George and this is expressed by the repetition of the phrase “George Talboys, George Talboys”, also, the word “nearer” is used two times in this text: Robert asks George if he’s ever coming any close to the unraveling of the secret that concerns his disappearance, then asks him if he’s coming nearer to it now and if he’s understanding how to arrive to a sort of closure.
What I’m really trying to say here is that I think these lines are important to understand how strongly Robert feels about George and these few lines really emphasize how he truly wants to arrive to the end of this mystery by giving us an insight into his mind.