"Would you like to hear what the bet was?" he asked.
"I should prefer seeing you able to control yourself in the presence of this lady," Julian answered, quietly.
"I offered to lay Lady Janet two hundred pounds to one," Horace proceeded, "that I should find you here, making love to Miss Roseberry behind my back."
Mercy interfered before Julian could reply.
"If you cannot speak without insulting one of us," she said, "permit me to request that you will not address yourself to Mr. Julian Gray."
Horace bowed to her with a mockery of respect.
"Pray don't alarm yourself--I am pledged to be scrupulously civil to both of you," he said. "Lady Janet only allowed me to leave her on condition of my promising to behave with perfect politeness. What else can I do? I have two privileged people to deal with--a parson and a woman. The parson's profession protects him, and the woman's sex protects her. You have got me at a disadvantage, and you both of you know it. I beg to apologize if I have forgotten the clergyman's profession and the lady's sex."
"You have forgotten more than that," said Julian. "You have forgotten that you were born a gentleman and bred a man of honor. So far as I am concerned, I don't ask you to remember that I am a clergyman--I obtrude my profession on nobody--I only ask you to remember your birth and your breeding. It is quite bad enough to cruelly and unjustly suspect an old f riend who has never forgotten what he owes to you and to himself. But it is still more unworthy of you to acknowledge those suspicions in the hearing of a woman whom your own choice has doubly bound you to respect."
He stopped. The two eyed each other for a moment in silence.
It was impossible for Mercy to look at them, as she was looking now, without drawing the inevitable comparison between the manly force and dignity of Julian and the womanish malice and irritability of Horace. A last faithful impulse of loyalty toward the man to whom she had been betrothed impelled her to part them, before Horace had hopelessly degraded himself in her estimation by contrast with Julian.
"You had better wait to speak to me," she said to him, "until we are alone."
"Certainly," Horace answered with a sneer, "if Mr. Julian Gray will permit it."
Mercy turned to Julian, with a look which said plainly, "Pity us both, and leave us!"
"Do you wish me to go?" he asked.
"Add to all your other kindnesses to me," she answered. "Wait for me in that room."
She pointed to the door that led into the dining-room. Julian hesitated.
"You promise to let me know it if I can be of the smallest service to you?" he said.
"Yes, yes!" She followed him as he withdrew, and added, rapidly, in a whisper, "Leave the door ajar!"
He made no answer. As she returned to Horace he entered the dining-room. The one concession he could make to her he did make. He closed the door so noiselessly that not even her quick hearing could detect that he had shut it.
Mercy spoke to Horace, without waiting to let him speak first.
"I have promised you an explanation of my conduct," she said, in accents that trembled a little in spite of herself. "I am ready to perform my promise."
"I have a question to ask you before you do that," he rejoined. "Can you speak the truth?"
"I am waiting to speak the truth."
"I will give you an opportunity. Are you or are you not in love with Julian Gray?"
"You ought to be ashamed to ask the question!"
"Is that your only answer?"
"I have never been unfaithful to you, Horace, even in thought. If I had not been true to you, should I feel my position as you see I feel it now?"
He smiled bitterly. "I have my own opinion of your fidelity and of his honor," he said. "You couldn't even send him into the next room without whispering to him first. Never mind that now. At least you know that Julian Gray is in love with you."
"Mr. Julian Gray has never breathed a word of it to me."
"A man can show a woman that he loves her, without saying it in words."
Mercy's power of endurance began to fail her. Not even Grace Roseberry had spoken more insultingly to her of Julian than Horace was speaking now. "Whoever says that of Mr. Julian Gray, lies!" she answered, warmly.
"Then Lady Janet lies," Horace retorted.
"Lady Janet never said it! Lady Janet is incapable of saying it!"
"She may not have said it in so many words; but she never denied it when I said it. I reminded her of the time when Julian Gray first heard from me that I was going to marry you: he was so overwhelmed that he was barely capable of being civil to me. Lady Janet was present, and could not deny it. I asked her if she had observed, since then, signs of a confidential understanding between you two. She could not deny the signs. I asked if she had ever found you two together. She could not deny that she had found you together, this very day, under circumstances which justified suspicion. Yes! yes! Look as angry as you like! you don't know what has been going on upstairs. Lady Janet is bent on breaking off our engagement--and Julian Gray is at the bottom of it."
As to Julian, Horace was utterly wrong. But as to Lady Janet, he echoed the warning words which Julian himself had spoken to Mercy. She was staggered, but she still held to her own opinion. "I don't believe it," she said, firmly.
He advanced a step, and fixed his angry eyes on her searchingly.
"Do you know why Lady Janet sent for me?" he asked.
"No."
"Then I will tell you. Lady Janet is a stanch friend of yours, there is no denying that. She wished to inform me that she had altered her mind about your promised explanation of your conduct. She said, 'Reflection has convinced me that no explanation is required; I have laid my positive commands on my adopted daughter that no explanation shall take place.' Has she done that?"
"Yes."
"Now observe! I waited till she had finished, and then I said, 'What have I to do with this?' Lady Janet has one merit--she speaks out. 'You are to do as I do,' she answered. 'You are to consider that no explanation is required, and you are to consign the whole matter to oblivion from this time forth.' 'Are you serious?' I asked. 'Quite serious.' 'In that case I have to inform your ladyship that you insist on more than you may suppose: you insist on my breaking my engagement to Miss Roseberry. Either I am to have the explanation that she has promised me, or I refuse to marry her.' How do you think Lady Janet took that? She shut up her lips, and she spread out her hands, and she looked at me as much as to say, 'Just as you please! Refuse if you like; it's nothing to me!'"
He paused for a moment. Mercy remained silent, on her side: she foresaw what was coming. Mistaken in supposing that Horace had left the house, Julian had, beyond all doubt, been equally in error in concluding that he had been entrapped into breaking off the engagement upstairs.
"Do you understand me so far?" Horace asked.
"I understand you perfectly."
"I will not trouble you much longer," he resumed.