She softly drew back, and placed herself in safer hiding, beyond the range of view from the dining-room.
Lady Janet advanced no further than the threshold.
She stood there and looked at her nephew and her adopted daughter in stern silence.
Mercy dropped into the chair at her side.
Julian kept his place by her.
His mind was still stunned by the discovery that had burst on it; his eyes still rested on her in mute terror of inquiry.
He was as completely absorbed in the one act of looking at her as if they had been still alone together in the room.
Lady Janet was the first of the three who spoke.
She addressed herself to her nephew.
"You were right, Mr. Julian Gray," she said, with her bitterest emphasis of tone and manner. "You ought to have found nobody in this room on your return but me.
I detain you no longer.
You are free to leave my house."
Julian looked round at his aunt.
She was pointing to the door.
In the excited state of his sensibilities at that moment the action stung him to the quick.
He answered without his customary consideration for his aunt's age and his aunt's position toward him.
"You apparently forget, Lady Janet, that you are not speaking to one of your footmen," he said.
"There are serious reasons (of which you know nothing) for my remaining in your house a little longer.
You may rely upon my trespassing on your hospitality as short a time as possible."
He turned again to Mercy as he said those words, and surprised her timidly looking up at him.
In the instant when their eyes met, the tumult of emotions struggling in him became suddenly stilled.
Sorrow for her—compassionating sorrow—rose in the new calm and filled his heart.
Now, and now only, he could read in the wasted and noble face how she had suffered.
The pity which he had felt for the unnamed woman grew to a tenfold pity for her.
The faith which he professed—honestly professed—in the better nature of the unnamed woman strengthened into a tenfold faith in her.
He addressed himself again to his aunt, in a gentler tone.
"This lady," he resumed, "has something to say to me in private which she has not said yet.
That is my reason and my apology for not immediately leaving the house."
Still under the impression of what she had seen on entering the room, Lady Janet looked at him in angry amazement.
Was Julian actually ignoring Horace Holmcroft's claims, in the presence of Horace Holmcroft's betrothed wife?
She appealed to her adopted daughter.
"Grace!" she exclaimed, "have you heard him?
Have you nothing to say?
Must I remind you—"
She stopped.
For the first time in Lady Janet's experience of her young companion, she found herself speaking to ears that were deaf to her.
Mercy was incapable of listening.
Julian's eyes had told her that Julian understood her at last!
Lady Janet turned to her nephew once more, and addressed him in the hardest words that she had ever spoken to her sister's son.
"If you have any sense of decency," she said—"I say nothing of a sense of honor—you will leave this house, and your acquaintance with that lady will end here.
Spare me your protests and excuses; I can place but one interpretation on what I saw when I opened that door."
"You entirely misunderstand what you saw when you opened that door," Julian answered, quietly.
"Perhaps I misunderstand the confession which you made to me not an hour ago?" retorted Lady Janet.
Julian cast a look of alarm at Mercy.
"Don't speak of it!" he said, in a whisper. "She might hear you."
"Do you mean to say she doesn't know you are in love with her?"
"Thank God, she has not the faintest suspicion of it!"
There was no mistaking the earnestness with which he made that reply.
It proved his innocence as nothing else could have proved it.
Lady Janet drew back a step—utterly bewildered; completely at a loss what to say or what to do next.