Horace started.
"Serious reasons?" he repeated.
"You surprise me."
"I shall surprise you still more before I have done."
Their eyes met as Lady Janet answered in those terms.
Horace observed signs of agitation in her, which he now noticed for the first time.
His face darkened with an expression of sullen distrust—and he took the chair in silence.
CHAPTER XXIV. LADY JANET'S LETTER.
THE narrative leaves Lady Janet and Horace Holmcroft together, and returns to Julian and Mercy in the library.
An interval passed—a long interval, measured by the impatient reckoning of suspense—after the cab which had taken Grace Roseberry away had left the house.
The minutes followed each other; and still the warning sound of Horace's footsteps was not heard on the marble pavement of the hall.
By common (though unexpressed) consent, Julian and Mercy avoided touching upon the one subject on which they were now both interested alike.
With their thoughts fixed secretly in vain speculation on the nature of the interview which was then taking place in Lady Janet's room, they tried to speak on topics indifferent to both of them—tried, and failed, and tried again.
In a last and longest pause of silence between them, the next event happened.
The door from the hall was softly and suddenly opened.
Was it Horace?
No—not even yet.
The person who had opened the door was only Mercy's maid.
"My lady's love, miss; and will you please to read this directly?"
Giving her message in those terms, the woman produced from the pocket of her apron Lady Janet's second letter to Mercy, with a strip of paper oddly pinned round the envelope.
Mercy detached the paper, and found on the inner side some lines in pencil, hurriedly written in Lady Janet's hand.
They ran thus.
"Don't lose a moment in reading my letter.
And mind this, when H. returns to you—meet him firmly: say nothing."
Enlightened by the warning words which Julian had spoken to her, Mercy was at no loss to place the right interpretation on those strange lines.
Instead of immediately opening the letter, she stopped the maid at the library door.
Julian's suspicion of the most trifling events that were taking place in the house had found its way from his mind to hers.
"Wait!" she said. "I don't understand what is going on upstairs; I want to ask you something."
The woman came back—not very willingly.
"How did you know I was here?" Mercy inquired.
"If you please, miss, her ladyship ordered me to take the letter to you some little time since.
You were not in your room, and I left it on your table."
"I understand that.
But how came you to bring the letter here?"
"My lady rang for me, miss.
Before I could knock at her door she came out into the corridor with that morsel of paper in her hand—"
"So as to keep you from entering her room?"
"Yes, miss.
Her ladyship wrote on the paper in a great hurry, and told me to pin it round the letter that I had left in your room.
I was to take them both together to you, and to let nobody see me.
'You will find Miss Roseberry in the library' (her ladyship says), 'and run, run, run! there isn't a moment to lose!' Those were her own words, miss."
"Did you hear anything in the room before Lady Janet came out and met you?"
The woman hesitated, and looked at Julian.
"I hardly know whether I ought to tell you, miss."
Julian turned away to leave the library.
Mercy stopped him by a motion of her hand.
"You know that I shall not get you into any trouble," she said to the maid. "And you may speak quite safely before Mr. Julian Gray."
Thus re-assured, the maid spoke.
"To own the truth, miss, I heard Mr. Holmcroft in my lady's room.
His voice sounded as if he was angry.