She stopped. For the first time in Lady Janet's experience of her young
companion, she found herself speaking to ears that were deaf to her.
Mercy was incapable of listening. Julian's eyes had told her that Julian
understood her at last!
Lady Janet turned to her nephew once more, and addressed him in the
hardest words that she had ever spoken to her sister's son.
"If you have any sense of decency," she said--"I say nothing of a sense
of honor--you will leave this house, and your acquaintance with that
lady will end here. Spare me your protests and excuses; I can place but
one interpretation on what I saw when I opened that door."
"You entirely misunderstand what you saw when you opened that door,"
Julian answered, quietly.
"Perhaps I misunderstand the confession which you made to me not an hour
ago?" retorted Lady Janet.
Julian cast a look of alarm at Mercy. "Don't speak of it!" he said, in a
whisper. "She might hear you."
"Do you mean to say she doesn't know you are in love with her?"
"Thank God, she has not the faintest suspicion of it!"
There was no mistaking the earnestness with which he made that reply.
It proved his innocence as nothing else could have proved it. Lady Janet
drew back a step--utterly bewildered; completely at a loss what to say
or what to do next.
The silence that followed was broken by a knock at the library door. The
man-servant--with news, and bad news, legibly written in his disturbed
face and manner--entered the room. In the nervous irritability of the
moment, Lady Janet resented the servant's appearance as a positive
offense on the part of the harmless man. "Who sent for you?" she asked,
sharply. "What do you mean by interrupting us?"
The servant made his excuses in an oddly bewildered manner.
"I beg your ladyship's pardon. I wished to take the liberty--I wanted to
speak to Mr. Julian Gray."
"What is it?" asked Julian.
The man looked uneasily at Lady Janet, hesitated, and glanced at the
door, as if he wished himself well out of the room again.
"I hardly know if I can tell you, sir, before her ladyship," he
answered.
Lady Janet instantly penetrated the secret of her servant's hesitation.
"I know what has happened," she said; "that abominable woman has found
her way here again. Am I right?"
The man's eyes helplessly consulted Julian.
"Yes, or no?" cried Lady Janet, imperatively.
"Yes, my lady."
Julian at once assumed the duty of asking the necessary questions.
"Where is she?" he began.
"Somewhere in the grounds, as we suppose, sir."
"Did _you_ see her?"
"No, sir."
"Who saw her?"
"The lodge-keeper's wife."
This looked serious. The lodge-keeper's wife had been present while
Julian had given his instructions to her husband. She was not likely to
have mistaken the identity of the person whom she had discovered.