Julian started.
"Has Horace himself asked it of you?" he inquired. "_He_, at least, has
no suspicion of the truth."
"Horace has appealed to my duty to him as his betrothed wife," she
answered. "He has the first claim to my confidence--he resents my
silence, and he has a right to resent it. Terrible as it will be to open
_his_ eyes to the truth, I must do it if he asks me."
She was looking at Julian while she spoke. The old longing to associate
with the hard trial of the confession the one man who had felt for her,
and believed in her, revived under another form. If she could only
know, while she was saying the fatal words to Horace, that Julian was
listening too, she would be encouraged to meet the worst that could
happen! As the idea crossed her mind, she observed that Julian was
looking toward the door through which they had lately passed. In an
instant she saw the means to her end. Hardly waiting to hear the few
kind expressions of sympathy and approval which he addressed to her, she
hinted timidly at the proposal which she had now to make to him.
"Are you going back into the next room?" she asked.
"Not if you object to it," he replied.
"I don't object. I want you to be there."
"After Horace has joined you?"
"Yes. After Horace has joined me."
"Do you wish to see me when it is over?"
She summoned her resolution, and told him frankly what she had in her
mind.
"I want you to be near me while I am speaking to Horace," she said. "It
will give me courage if I can feel that I am speaking to you as well as
to him. I can count on _your_ sympathy--and sympathy is so precious to
me now! Am I asking too much, if I ask you to leave the door unclosed
when you go back to the dining-room? Think of the dreadful trial--to him
as well as to me! I am only a woman; I am afraid I may sink under it, if
I have no friend near me. And I have no friend but you."
In those simple words she tried her powers of persuasion on him for the
first time.
Between perplexity and distress Julian was, for the moment, at a loss
how to answer her. The love for Mercy which he dared not acknowledge was
as vital a feeling in him as the faith in her which he had been free to
avow. To refuse anything that she asked of him in her sore need--and,
more even than that, to refuse to hear the confession which it had been
her first impulse to make to _him_--these were cruel sacrifices to his
sense of what was due to Horace and of what was due to himself. But
shrink as he might, even from the appearance of deserting her, it was
impossible for him (except under a reserve which was almost equivalent
to a denial) to grant her request.