"To the police station!" she repeated.
"What for?"
"How can you ask the question?" said Horace, irritably.
"To be placed under restraint, of course."
"Do you mean prison?"
"I mean an asylum."
Again Mercy turned to Julian.
There was horror now, as well as surprise, in her face.
"Oh!" she said to him,
"Horace is surely wrong?
It can't be?"
Julian left it to Horace to answer.
Every facility in him seemed to be still absorbed in watching Mercy's face.
She was compelled to address herself to Horace once more.
"What sort of asylum?" she asked. "You don't surely mean a madhouse?" "I do," he rejoined. "The workhouse first, perhaps—and then the madhouse.
What is there to surprise you in that?
You yourself told her to her face she was mad.
Good Heavens! how pale you are!
What is the matter?"
She turned to Julian for the third time.
The terrible alternative that was offered to her had showed itself at last, without reserve or disguise.
Restore the identity that you have stolen, or shut her up in a madhouse—it rests with you to choose!
In that form the situation shaped itself in her mind.
She chose on the instant.
Before she opened her lips the higher nature in her spoke to Julian, in her eyes.
The steady inner light that he had seen in them once already shone in them again, brighter and purer than before.
The conscience that he had fortified, the soul that he had saved, looked at him and said, Doubt us no more!
"Send that man out of the house."
Those were her first words.
She spoke (pointing to the police officer) in clear, ringing, resolute tones, audible in the remotest corner of the room.
Julian's hand stole unobserved to hers, and told her, in its momentary pressure, to count on his brotherly sympathy and help.
All the other persons in the room looked at her in speechless surprise.
Grace rose from her chair.
Even the man in plain clothes started to his feet.
Lady Janet (hurriedly joining Horace, and fully sharing his perplexity and alarm) took Mercy impulsively by the arm, and shook it, as if to rouse her to a sense of what she was doing.
Mercy held firm; Mercy resolutely repeated what she had said:
"Send that man out of the house."
Lady Janet lost all her patience with her.
"What has come to you?" she asked, sternly.
"Do you know what you are saying?
The man is here in your interest, as well as in mine; the man is here to spare you, as well as me, further annoyance and insult.
And you insist—insist, in my presence—on his being sent away!
What does it mean?"
"You shall know what it means, Lady Janet, in half an hour.
I don't insist—I only reiterate my entreaty.
Let the man be sent away."
Julian stepped aside (with his aunt's eyes angrily following him) and spoke to the police officer.
"Go back to the station," he said, "and wait there till you hear from me."
The meanly vigilant eyes of the man in plain clothes traveled sidelong from Julian to Mercy, and valued her beauty as they had valued the carpet and the chairs.
"The old story," he thought. "The nice-looking woman is always at the bottom of it; and, sooner or later, the nice-looking woman has her way."