The bitterest moment she had felt yet was the moment in which he raised her hand to his lips, and murmured tenderly,
"My own true Grace!"
She could only sign to him to leave her, and hurry back into her own room.
Her first feeling, when she found herself alone again, was wonder—wonder that it should never have occurred to her, until he had himself suggested it, that her betrothed husband had the foremost right to her confession.
Her horror at owning to either of them that she had cheated them out of their love had hitherto placed Horace and Lady Janet on the same level.
She now saw for the first time that there was no comparison between the claims which they respectively had on her.
She owned an allegiance to Horace to which Lady Janet could assert no right.
Cost her what it might to avow the truth to him with her own lips, the cruel sacrifice must be made.
Without a moment's hesitation she put away her writing materials.
It amazed her that she should ever have thought of using Julian Gray as an interpreter between the man to whom she was betrothed and herself.
Julian's sympathy (she thought) must have made a strong impression on her indeed to blind her to a duty which was beyond all compromise, which admitted of no dispute!
She had asked for five minutes of delay before she followed Horace.
It was too long a time.
Her one chance of finding courage to crush him with the dreadful revelation of who she really was, of what she had really done, was to plunge headlong into the disclosure without giving herself time to think.
The shame of it would overpower her if she gave herself time to think.
She turned to the door to follow him at once.
Even at that terrible moment the most ineradicable of all a woman's instincts—the instinct of personal self-respect—brought her to a pause.
She had passed through more than one terrible trial since she had dressed to go downstairs.
Remembering this, she stopped mechanically, retraced her steps, and looked at herself in the glass.
There was no motive of vanity in what she now did.
The action was as unconscious as if she had buttoned an unfastened glove, or shaken out a crumpled dress.
Not the faintest idea crossed her mind of looking to see if her beauty might still plead for her, and of trying to set it off at its best.
A momentary smile, the most weary, the most hopeless, that ever saddened a woman's face, appeared in the reflection which her mirror gave her back.
"Haggard, ghastly, old before my time!" she said to herself.
"Well! better so.
He will feel it less—he will not regret me."
With that thought she went downstairs to meet him in the library.
CHAPTER XXII. THE MAN IN THE DINING-ROOM.
IN the great emergencies of life we feel, or we act, as our dispositions incline us.
But we never think.
Mercy's mind was a blank as she descended the stairs.
On her way down she was conscious of nothing but the one headlong impulse to get to the library in the shortest possible space of time.
Arrived at the door, the impulse capriciously left her.
She stopped on the mat, wondering why she had hurried herself, with time to spare.
Her heart sank; the fever of her excitement changed suddenly to a chill as she faced the closed door, and asked herself the question, Dare I go in?
Her own hand answered her.
She lifted it to turn the handle of the lock.
It dropped again helplessly at her side.
The sense of her own irresolution wrung from her a low exclamation of despair.
Faint as it was, it had apparently not passed unheard.
The door was opened from within—and Horace stood before her.
He drew aside to let her pass into the room.
But he never followed her in.
He stood in the doorway, and spoke to her, keeping the door open with his hand.
"Do you mind waiting here for me?" he asked.
She looked at him, in vacant surprise, doubting whether she had heard him aright.
"It will not be for long," he went on.
"I am far too anxious to hear what you have to tell me to submit to any needless delays.
The truth is, I have had a message from Lady Janet."
(From Lady Janet!