"A letter, my lady.
The messenger waits for an answer."
The man presented his salver with the letter on it, and withdrew.
Lady Janet recognized the handwriting on the address with a look of surprise.
"Excuse me, my dear," she said, pausing, with her old-fashioned courtesy, before she opened the envelope.
Mercy made the necessary acknowledgment, and moved away to the other end of the room, little thinking that the arrival of the letter marked a crisis in her life.
Lady Janet put on her spectacles.
"Odd that he should have come back already!" she said to herself, as she threw the empty envelope on the table.
The letter contained these lines, the writer of them being no other than the man who had preached in the chapel of the Refuge:
"DEAR AUNT—I am back again in London before my time.
My friend the rector has shortened his holiday, and has resumed his duties in the country.
I am afraid you will blame me when you hear of the reasons which have hastened his return.
The sooner I make my confession, the easier I shall feel.
Besides, I have a special object in wishing to see you as soon as possible.
May I follow my letter to Mablethorpe House?
And may I present a lady to you—a perfect stranger—in whom I am interested?
Pray say Yes, by the bearer, and oblige your affectionate nephew, "JULIAN GRAY."
Lady Janet referred again suspiciously to the sentence in the letter which alluded to the "lady."
Julian Gray was her only surviving nephew, the son of a favorite sister whom she had lost.
He would have held no very exalted position in the estimation of his aunt—who regarded his views in politics and religion with the strongest aversion—but for his marked resemblance to his mother.
This pleaded for him with the old lady, aided as it was by the pride that she secretly felt in the early celebrity which the young clergyman had achieved as a writer and a preacher.
Thanks to these mitigating circumstances, and to Julian's inexhaustible good-humor, the aunt and the nephew generally met on friendly terms.
Apart from what she called "his detestable opinions," Lady Janet was sufficiently interested in Julian to feel some curiosity about the mysterious "lady" mentioned in the letter.
Had he determined to settle in life?
Was his choice already made?
And if so, would it prove to be a choice acceptable to the family?
Lady Janet's bright face showed signs of doubt as she asked herself that last question.
Julian's liberal views were capable of leading him to dangerous extremes.
His aunt shook her head ominously as she rose from the sofa and advanced to the library door.
"Grace," she said, pausing and turning round, "I have a note to write to my nephew.
I shall be back directly."
Mercy approached her, from the opposite extremity of the room, with an exclamation of surprise.
"Your nephew?" she repeated.
"Your ladyship never told me you had a nephew."
Lady Janet laughed.
"I must have had it on the tip of my tongue to tell you, over and over again," she said.
"But we have had so many things to talk about—and, to own the truth, my nephew is not one of my favorite subjects of conversation.
I don't mean that I dislike him; I detest his principles, my dear, that's all.
However, you shall form your own opinion of him; he is coming to see me to-day.
Wait here till I return; I have something more to say about Horace."
Mercy opened the library door for her, closed it again, and walked slowly to and fro alone in the room, thinking.
Was her mind running on Lady Janet's nephew?
No.
Lady Janet's brief allusion to her relative had not led her into alluding to him by his name.
Mercy was still as ignorant as ever that the preacher at the Refuge and the nephew of her benefactress were one and the same man.
Her memory was busy now with the tribute which Lady Janet had paid to her at the outset of the interview between them:
"It is hardly too much to say, Grace, that I bless the day when you first came to me."
For the moment there was balm for her wounded spirit in the remembrance of those words.
Grace Roseberry herself could surely have earned no sweeter praise than the praise that she had won.
The next instant she was seized with a sudden horror of her own successful fraud.