"I feel the deepest interest in hearing all that you have still to confide to me," he answered. "But anxious as I may be, I will not hurry you. I will wait, if you wish it."
"I am afraid I must own that I do wish it," Mercy rejoined. "Not on my account--but because my time is at the disposal of Horace Holmcroft. I expect to see him in a few minutes."
"Could you give me those few minutes?" Julian asked. "I have something on my side to say to you which I think you ought to know before you see any one--Horace himself included."
He spoke with a certain depression of tone which was not a.s.sociated with her previous experience of him. His face looked prematurely old and careworn in the red light of the fire. Something had plainly happened to sadden and to disappoint him since they had last met.
"I willingly offer you all the time that I have at my own command,"
Mercy replied. "Does what you have to tell me relate to Lady Janet?"
He gave her no direct reply. "What I have to tell you of Lady Janet,"
he said, gravely, "is soon told. So far as she is concerned you have nothing more to dread. Lady Janet knows all."
Even the heavy weight of oppression caused by the impending interview with Horace failed to hold its place in Mercy"s mind when Julian answered her in those words.
"Come into the lighted room," she said, faintly. "It is too terrible to hear you say that in the dark."
Julian followed her into the library. Her limbs trembled under her.
She dropped into a chair, and shrank under his great bright eyes, as he stood by her side looking sadly down on her.
"Lady Janet knows all!" she repeated, with her head on her breast, and the tears falling slowly over her cheeks. "Have you told her?"
"I have said nothing to Lady Janet or to any one. Your confidence is a sacred confidence to me, until you have spoken first."
"Has Lady Janet said anything to you?"
"Not a word. She has looked at you with the vigilant eyes of love; she has listened to you with the quick hearing of love--and she has found her own way to the truth. She will not speak of it to me--she will not speak of it to any living creature. I only know now how dearly she loved you. In spite of herself she clings to you still. Her life, poor soul, has been a barren one; unworthy, miserably unworthy, of such a nature as hers. Her marriage was loveless and childless. She has had admirers, but never, in the higher sense of the word, a friend. All the best years of her life have been wasted in the unsatisfied longing for something to love. At the end of her life You have filled the void. Her heart has found its youth again, through You. At her age--at any age--is such a tie as this to be rudely broken at the mere bidding of circ.u.mstances?
No! She will suffer anything, risk anything, forgive anything, rather than own, even to herself, that she has been deceived in you. There is more than her happiness at stake; there is pride, a n.o.ble pride, in such love as hers, which will ignore the plainest discovery and deny the most unanswerable truth. I am firmly convinced--from my own knowledge of her character, and from what I have observed in her to-day--that she will find some excuse for refusing to hear your confession. And more than that, I believe (if the exertion of her influence can do it) that she will leave no means untried of preventing you from acknowledging your true position here to any living creature. I take a serious responsibility on myself in telling you this--and I don"t shrink from it. You ought to know, and you shall know, what trials and what temptations may yet lie before you."
He paused--leaving Mercy time to compose herself, if she wished to speak to him.
She felt that there was a necessity for her speaking to him. He was plainly not aware that Lady Janet had already written to her to defer her promised explanation. This circ.u.mstance was in itself a confirmation of the opinion which he had expressed. She ought to mention it to him; she tried to mention it to him. But she was not equal to the effort.
The few simple words in which he had touched on the tie that bound Lady Janet to her had wrung her heart. Her tears choked her. She could only sign to him to go on.
"You may wonder at my speaking so positively," he continued, "with nothing better than my own conviction to justify me. I can only say that I have watched Lady Janet too closely to feel any doubt. I saw the moment in which the truth flashed on her, as plainly as I now see you.
It did not disclose itself gradually--it burst on her, as it burst on me. She suspected nothing--she was frankly indignant at your sudden interference and your strange language--until the time came in which you pledged yourself to produce Mercy Merrick. Then (and then only) the truth broke on her mind, trebly revealed to her in your words, your voice, and your look. Then (and then only) I saw a marked change come over her, and remain in her while she remained in the room. I dread to think of what she may do in the first reckless despair of the discovery that she has made. I distrust--though G.o.d knows I am not naturally a suspicious man--the most apparently trifling events that are now taking place about us. You have held n.o.bly to your resolution to own the truth.
Prepare yourself, before the evening is over, to be tried and tempted again."
Mercy lifted her head. Fear took the place of grief in her eyes, as they rested in startled inquiry on Julian"s face.
"How is it possible that temptation can come to me now?" she asked.
"I will leave it to events to answer that question," he said. "You will not have long to wait. In the meantime I have put you on your guard."
He stooped, and spoke his next words earnestly, close at her ear. "Hold fast by the admirable courage which you have shown thus far," he went on. "Suffer anything rather than suffer the degradation of yourself. Be the woman whom I once spoke of--the woman I still have in my mind--who can n.o.bly reveal the n.o.ble nature that is in her. And never forget this--my faith in you is as firm as ever!"
She looked at him proudly and gratefully.
"I am pledged to justify your faith in me," she said. "I have put it out of my own power to yield. Horace has my promise that I will explain everything to him, in this room."
Julian started.
"Has Horace himself asked it of you?" he inquired. "_He_, at least, has no suspicion of the truth."
"Horace has appealed to my duty to him as his betrothed wife," she answered. "He has the first claim to my confidence--he resents my silence, and he has a right to resent it. Terrible as it will be to open _his_ eyes to the truth, I must do it if he asks me."
She was looking at Julian while she spoke. The old longing to a.s.sociate with the hard trial of the confession the one man who had felt for her, and believed in her, revived under another form. If she could only know, while she was saying the fatal words to Horace, that Julian was listening too, she would be encouraged to meet the worst that could happen! As the idea crossed her mind, she observed that Julian was looking toward the door through which they had lately pa.s.sed. In an instant she saw the means to her end. Hardly waiting to hear the few kind expressions of sympathy and approval which he addressed to her, she hinted timidly at the proposal which she had now to make to him.
"Are you going back into the next room?" she asked.
"Not if you object to it," he replied.
"I don"t object. I want you to be there."
"After Horace has joined you?"
"Yes. After Horace has joined me."
"Do you wish to see me when it is over?"
She summoned her resolution, and told him frankly what she had in her mind.
"I want you to be near me while I am speaking to Horace," she said. "It will give me courage if I can feel that I am speaking to you as well as to him. I can count on _your_ sympathy--and sympathy is so precious to me now! Am I asking too much, if I ask you to leave the door unclosed when you go back to the dining-room? Think of the dreadful trial--to him as well as to me! I am only a woman; I am afraid I may sink under it, if I have no friend near me. And I have no friend but you."
In those simple words she tried her powers of persuasion on him for the first time.
Between perplexity and distress Julian was, for the moment, at a loss how to answer her. The love for Mercy which he dared not acknowledge was as vital a feeling in him as the faith in her which he had been free to avow. To refuse anything that she asked of him in her sore need--and, more even than that, to refuse to hear the confession which it had been her first impulse to make to _him_--these were cruel sacrifices to his sense of what was due to Horace and of what was due to himself. But shrink as he might, even from the appearance of deserting her, it was impossible for him (except under a reserve which was almost equivalent to a denial) to grant her request.
"All that I can do I will do," he said. "The doors shall be left unclosed, and I will remain in the next room, on this condition, that Horace knows of it as well as you. I should be unworthy of your confidence in me if I consented to be a listener on any other terms. You understand that, I am sure, as well as I do."
She had never thought of her proposal to him in this light. Woman-like, she had thought of nothing but the comfort of having him near her. She understood him now. A faint flush of shame rose on her pale cheeks as she thanked him. He delicately relieved her from her embarra.s.sment by putting a question which naturally occurred under the circ.u.mstances.
"Where is Horace all this time?" he asked. "Why is he not here?"
"He has been called away," she answered, "by a message from Lady Janet."
The reply more than astonished Julian; it seemed almost to alarm him. He returned to Mercy"s chair; he said to her, eagerly, "Are you sure?"
"Horace himself told me that Lady Janet had insisted on seeing him."
"When?"
"Not long ago. He asked me to wait for him here while he went upstairs."
Julian"s face darkened ominously.
"This confirms my worst fears," he said. "Have _you_ had any communication with Lady Janet?"
Mercy replied by showing him his aunt"s note. He read it carefully through.