"Stay here," she said to him, in suddenly altered tones.
"Pardon me," he rejoined, "I don't understand you."
"You will understand me directly.
Give me a little time."
He still lingered near the door, with his eyes fixed inquiringly on her.
A man of a lower nature than his, or a man believing in Mercy less devotedly than he believed, would now have felt his first suspicion of her.
Julian was as far as ever from suspecting her, even yet.
"Do you wish to be alone?" he asked, considerately.
"Shall I leave you for a while and return again?"
She looked up with a start of terror.
"Leave me?" she repeated, and suddenly checked herself on the point of saying more.
Nearly half the length of the room divided them from each other.
The words which she was longing to say were words that would never pass her lips unless she could see some encouragement in his face.
"No!" she cried out to him, on a sudden, in her sore need, "don't leave me!
Come back to me!"
He obeyed her in silence.
In silence, on her side, she pointed to the chair near her.
He took it.
She looked at him, and checked herself again; resolute to make her terrible confession, yet still hesitating how to begin.
Her woman's instinct whispered to her,
"Find courage in his touch!"
She said to him, simply and artlessly said to him,
"Give me encouragement.
Give me strength.
Let me take your hand."
He neither answered nor moved.
His mind seemed to have become suddenly preoccupied; his eyes rested on her vacantly.
He was on the brink of discovering her secret; in another instant he would have found his way to the truth.
In that instant, innocently as his sister might have taken it, she took his hand.
The soft clasp of her fingers, clinging round his, roused his senses, fired his passion for her, swept out of his mind the pure aspirations which had filled it but the moment before, paralyzed his perception when it was just penetrating the mystery of her disturbed manner and her strange words.
All the man in him trembled under the rapture of her touch.
But the thought of Horace was still present to him: his hand lay passive in hers; his eyes looked uneasily away from her.
She innocently strengthened her clasp of his hand.
She innocently said to him,
"Don't look away from me. Your eyes give me courage."
His hand returned the pressure of hers.
He tasted to the full the delicious joy of looking at her.
She had broken down his last reserves of self-control.
The thought of Horace, the sense of honor, became obscured in him.
In a moment more he might have said the words which he would have deplored for the rest of his life, if she had not stopped him by speaking first.
"I have more to say to you," she resumed abruptly, feeling the animating resolution to lay her heart bare before him at last; "more, far more, than I have said yet.
Generous, merciful friend, let me say it here!"
She attempted to throw herself on her knees at his feet.
He sprung from his seat and checked her, holding her with both his hands, raising her as he rose himself.
In the words which had just escaped her, in the startling action which had accompanied them, the truth burst on him.
The guilty woman she had spoken of was herself!
While she was almost in his arms, while her bosom was just touching his, before a word more had passed his lips or hers, the library door opened.
Lady Janet Roy entered the room.
CHAPTER XVIII. THE SEARCH IN THE GROUNDS.
GRACE ROSEBERRY, still listening in the conservatory, saw the door open, and recognized the mistress of the house.