She had never yet seen the circumstances in this sinister light. She was
alone in her room, at a crisis in her life. She was worn and weakened by
emotions which had shaken her to the soul.
Little by little she felt the enervating influences let loose on her, in
her lonely position, by her new train of thought. Little by little her
heart began to sink under the stealthy chill of superstitious dread.
Vaguely horrible presentiments throbbed in her with her pulses, flowed
through her with her blood. Mystic oppressions of hidden disaster
hovered over her in the atmosphere of the room. The cheerful
candle-light turned traitor to her and grew dim. Supernatural murmurs
trembled round the house in the moaning of the winter wind. She was
afraid to look behind her. On a sudden she felt her own cold hands
covering her face, without knowing when she had lifted them to it, or
why.
Still helpless, under the horror that held her, she suddenly heard
footsteps--a man's footsteps--in the corridor outside. At other times
the sound would have startled her: now it broke the spell. The footsteps
suggested life, companionship, human interposition--no matter of what
sort. She mechanically took up her pen; she found herself beginning to
remember her letter to Julian Gray.
At the same moment the footsteps stopped outside her door. The man
knocked.
She still felt shaken. She was hardly mistress of herself yet. A faint
cry of alarm escaped her at the sound of the knock. Before it could be
repeated she had rallied her courage, and had opened the door.
The man in the corridor was Horace Holmcroft.
His ruddy complexion had turned pale. His hair (of which he was
especially careful at other times) was in disorder. The superficial
polish of his manner was gone; the undisguised man, sullen, distrustful,
irritated to the last degree of endurance, showed through. He looked at
her with a watchfully suspicious eye; he spoke to her, without preface
or apology, in a coldly angry voice.
"Are you aware," he asked, "of what is going on downstairs?"
"I have not left my room," she answered. "I know that Lady Janet has
deferred the explanation which I had promised to give her, and I know no
more."
"Has nobody told you what Lady Janet did after you left us? Has nobody
told you that she politely placed her own boudoir at the disposal of the
very woman whom she had ordered half an hour before to leave the house?
Do you really not know that Mr. Julian Gray has himself conducted this
suddenly-honored guest to her place of retirement? and that I am left
alone in the midst of these changes, contradictions, and mysteries--the
only person who is kept out in the dark?"
"It is surely needless to ask me these questions," said Mercy, gently.
"Who could possibly have told me what was going on below stairs before
you knocked at my door?"