Something in her shuddered and shrank at the bare idea of finding herself in the same room with him.
She felt it, she knew it: her guilty conscience owned and feared its master in Julian Gray!
The minutes passed.
The violence of her agitation began to tell physically on her weakened frame.
She found herself crying silently without knowing why.
A weight was on her head, a weariness was in all her limbs.
She sank lower on the cushions—her eyes closed—the monotonous ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece grew drowsily fainter and fainter on her ear.
Little by little she dropped into slumber—slumber so light that she started when a morsel of coal fell into the grate, or when the birds chirped and twittered in their aviary in the winter-garden.
Lady Janet and Horace came in.
She was faintly conscious of persons in the room.
After an interval she opened her eyes, and half rose to speak to them.
The room was empty again.
They had stolen out softly and left her to repose.
Her eyes closed once more.
She dropped back into slumber, and from slumber, in the favoring warmth and quiet of the place, into deep and dreamless sleep.
CHAPTER VIII. THE MAN APPEARS.
After an interval of rest Mercy was aroused by the shutting of a glass door at the far end of the conservatory.
This door, leading into the garden, was used only by the inmates of the house, or by old friends privileged to enter the reception-rooms by that way.
Assuming that either Horace or Lady Janet was returning to the dining-room, Mercy raised herself a little on the' sofa and listened.
The voice of one of the men-servants caught her ear. It was answered by another voice, which instantly set her trembling in every limb.
She started up, and listened again in speechless terror.
Yes! there was no mistaking it.
The voice that was answering the servant was the unforgotten voice which she had heard at the Refuge.
The visitor who had come in by the glass door was—Julian Gray!
His rapid footsteps advanced nearer and nearer to the dining-room.
She recovered herself sufficiently to hurry to the library door.
Her hand shook so that she failed at first to open it.
She had just succeeded when she heard him again—speaking to her.
"Pray don't run away!
I am nothing very formidable.
Only Lady Janet's nephew—Julian Gray."
She turned slowly, spell-bound by his voice, and confronted him in silence.
He was standing, hat in hand, at the entrance to the conservatory, dressed in black, and wearing a white cravat, but with a studious avoidance of anything specially clerical in the make and form of his clothes.
Young as he was, there were marks of care already on his face, and the hair was prematurely thin and scanty over his forehead.
His slight, active figure was of no more than the middle height.
His complexion was pale.
The lower part of his face, without beard or whiskers, was in no way remarkable.
An average observer would have passed him by without notice but for his eyes.
These alone made a marked man of him.
The unusual size of the orbits in which they were set was enough of itself to attract attention; it gave a grandeur to his head, which the head, broad and firm as it was, did not possess.
As to the eyes themselves, the soft, lustrous brightness of them defied analysis No two people could agree about their color; divided opinion declaring alternately that they were dark gray or black.
Painters had tried to reproduce them, and had given up the effort, in despair of seizing any one expression in the bewildering variety of expressions which they presented to view.
They were eyes that could charm at one moment and terrify at another; eyes that could set people laughing or crying almost at will.
In action and in repose they were irresistible alike.
When they first descried Mercy running to the door, they brightened gayly with the merriment of a child.
When she turned and faced him, they changed instantly, softening and glowing as they mutely owned the interest and the admiration which the first sight of her had roused in him.
His tone and manner altered at the same time.
He addressed her with the deepest respect when he spoke his next words.
"Let me entreat you to favor me by resuming your seat," he said. "And let me ask your pardon if I have thoughtlessly intruded on you."
He paused, waiting for her reply before he advanced into the room.