Would he never understand that women detested having other women exhibited as examples to them? She looked round at him with a sense of impatient wonder. He was sitting at the luncheon-table, with his back turned on her, and his head resting on his hand. If he had attempted to rejoin her, she would have repelled him ; if he had spoken, she would have met him with a sharp reply. He sat apart from her, without uttering a word. In a man's hands silence is the most terrible of all protests to the woman who loves him. Violence she can endure. Words she is always ready to meet by words on her side. Silence conquers her. After a moment's hesitation, Mercy left the sofa and advanced submissively toward the table. She had offended him--and she alone was in fault. How should he know it, poor fellow, when he innocently mortified her? Step by step she drew closer and closer. He never looked round; he never moved. She laid her hand timidly on his shoulder. "Forgive me, Horace," she whispered in his ear. "I am suffering this morning; I am not myself. I didn't mean what I said. Pray forgive me." There was no resisting the caressing tenderness of voice and manner which accompanied those words. He looked up; he took her hand. She bent over him, and touched his forehead with her lips. "Am I forgiven?" she asked.
"Oh, my darling," he said, "if you only knew how I loved you!"
"I do know it," she answered, gently, twining his hair round her finger, and arranging it over his forehead where his hand had ruffled it.
They were completely absorbed in each other, or they must, at that moment, have heard the library door open at the other end of the room.
Lady Janet had written the necessary reply to her nephew, and had returned, faithful to her engagement, to plead the cause of Horace. The first object that met her view was her client pleading, with conspicuous success, for himself! "I am not wanted, evidently," thought the old lady. She noiselessly closed the door again and left the lovers by themselves.
Horace returned, with unwise persistency, to the question of the deferred marriage. At the first words that he spoke she drew back directly--sadly, not angrily.
"Don't press me to-day," she said; "I am not well to-day."
He rose and looked at her anxiously. "May l speak about it to-morrow?"
"Yes, to-morrow." She returned to the sofa, and changed the subject. "What a time Lady Janet is away!" she said. "What can be keeping her so long?"
Horace did his best to appear interested in the question of Lady Janet's prolonged absence. "What made her leave you?" he asked, standing at the back of the sofa and leaning over her.
"She went into the library to write a note to her nephew. By-the-by, who is her nephew?"
"Is it possible you don't know?"
"Indeed, I don't."
"You have heard of him, no doubt," said Horace. "Lady Janet's nephew is a celebrated man." He paused, and stooping nearer to her, lifted a love-lock that lay over her shoulder and pressed it to his lips. "Lady Janet's nephew," he resumed, "is Julian Gray."
She started off her seat, and looked round at him in blank, bewildered terror, as if she doubted the evidence of her own senses.
Horace was completely taken by surprise. "My dear Grace!" he exclaimed; "what have I said or done to startle you this time?"
She held up her hand for silence. "Lady Janet's nephew is Julian Gray," she repeated; "and I only know it now!"
Horace's perplexity increased. "My darling, now you do know it, what is there to alarm you?" he asked.
(There was enough to alarm the boldest woman living--in such a position, and with such a temperament as hers. To her mind the personation of Grace Roseberry had suddenly assumed a new aspect: the aspect of a fatality. It had led her blindfold to the house in which she and the preacher at the Refuge were to meet. He was coming--the man who had reached her inmost heart, who had influenced her whole life! Was the day of reckoning coming with him?)
"Don't notice me," she said, faintly. "I have been ill all the morning. You saw it yourself when you came in here; even the sound of your voice alarmed me. I shall be better directly. I am afraid I startled you?"
"My dear Grace, it almost looked as if you were terrified at the sound of Julian's name! He is a public celebrity, I know; and I have seen ladies start and stare at him when he entered a room. But you looked perfectly panic-stricken."
She rallied her courage by a desperate effort; she laughed--a harsh, uneasy laugh--and stopped him by putting her hand over his mouth. "Absurd!" she said, lightly. "As if Mr. Julian Gray had anything to do with my looks! I am better already. See for yourself!" She looked round at him again with a ghastly gayety; and returned, with a desperate assumption of indifference, to the subject of Lady Janet's nephew. "Of course I have heard of him," she said. "Do you know that he is expected here to-day? Don't stand there behind me--it's so hard to talk to you. Come and sit down."
He obeyed--but she had not quite satisfied him yet. His face had not lost its expression of anxiety and surprise. She persisted in playing her part, determined to set at rest in him any possible suspicion that she had reasons of her own for being afraid of Julian Gray. "Tell me about this famous man of yours," she said, putting her arm familiarly through his arm. "What is he like?"
The caressing action and the easy tone had their effect on Horace. His face began to clear; he answered her lightly on his side.
"Prepare yourself to meet the most unclerical of clergymen," he said. "Julian is a lost sheep among the parsons, and a thorn in the side of his bishop. Preaches, if they ask him, in Dissenters' chapels. Declines to set up any pretensions to priestly authority and priestly power. Goes about doing good on a plan of his own. Is quite resigned never to rise to the high places in his profession. Says it's rising high enough for him to be the Archdeacon of the afflicted, the Dean of the hungry, and the Bishop of the poor. With all his oddities, as good a fellow as ever lived. Immensely popular with the women. They all go to him for advice. I wish you would go, too."
Mercy changed color. "What do you mean?" she asked, sharply.
"Julian is famous for his powers of persuasion," said Horace, smiling. "If he spoke to you, Grace, he would prevail on you to fix the day. Suppose I ask Julian to plead for me?"
He made the proposal in jest. Mercy's unquiet mind accepted it as addressed to her in earnest. "He will do it," she thought, with a sense of indescribable terror, "if I don't stop him!" There is but one chance for her. The only certain way to prevent Horace from appealing to his friend was to grant what Horace wished for before his friend entered the house. She laid her hand on his shoulder; she hid the terrible anxieties that were devouring her under an assumption of coquetry painful and pitiable to see.
"Don't talk nonsense!" she said, gayly. "What were we saying just now--before we began to speak of Mr.