He gave her no direct reply. "What I have to tell you of Lady Janet,"
he said, gravely, "is soon told. So far as she is concerned you have
nothing more to dread. Lady Janet knows all."
Even the heavy weight of oppression caused by the impending interview
with Horace failed to hold its place in Mercy's mind when Julian
answered her in those words.
"Come into the lighted room," she said, faintly. "It is too terrible to
hear you say that in the dark."
Julian followed her into the library. Her limbs trembled under her.
She dropped into a chair, and shrank under his great bright eyes, as he
stood by her side looking sadly down on her.
"Lady Janet knows all!" she repeated, with her head on her breast, and
the tears falling slowly over her cheeks. "Have you told her?"
"I have said nothing to Lady Janet or to any one. Your confidence is a
sacred confidence to me, until you have spoken first."
"Has Lady Janet said anything to you?"
"Not a word. She has looked at you with the vigilant eyes of love; she
has listened to you with the quick hearing of love--and she has found
her own way to the truth. She will not speak of it to me--she will not
speak of it to any living creature. I only know now how dearly she loved
you. In spite of herself she clings to you still. Her life, poor soul,
has been a barren one; unworthy, miserably unworthy, of such a nature as
hers. Her marriage was loveless and childless. She has had admirers, but
never, in the higher sense of the word, a friend. All the best years of
her life have been wasted in the unsatisfied longing for something to
love. At the end of her life You have filled the void. Her heart has
found its youth again, through You. At her age--at any age--is such a
tie as this to be rudely broken at the mere bidding of circumstances?
No! She will suffer anything, risk anything, forgive anything, rather
than own, even to herself, that she has been deceived in you. There is
more than her happiness at stake; there is pride, a noble pride, in such
love as hers, which will ignore the plainest discovery and deny the most
unanswerable truth. I am firmly convinced--from my own knowledge of her
character, and from what I have observed in her to-day--that she will
find some excuse for refusing to hear your confession. And more than
that, I believe (if the exertion of her influence can do it) that she
will leave no means untried of preventing you from acknowledging
your true position here to any living creature. I take a serious
responsibility on myself in telling you this--and I don't shrink
from it. You ought to know, and you shall know, what trials and what
temptations may yet lie before you."