To all appearance the rebuke failed to produce the slightest effect.
She seemed to be as indifferent to it as if it had not reached her ears.
There was a spirit in her--a miserable spirit, born of her own bitter
experience--which rose in revolt against Horace's habitual glorification
of the ladies of his family. "It sickens me," she thought to herself,
"to hear of the virtues of women who have never been tempted! Where
is the merit of living reputably, when your life is one course of
prosperity and enjoyment? Has his mother known starvation? Have his
sisters been left forsaken in the street?" It hardened her heart--it
almost reconciled her to deceiving him--when he set his relatives up as
patterns for her. Would he never understand that women detested having
other women exhibited as examples to them? She looked round at him with
a sense of impatient wonder. He was sitting at the luncheon-table, with
his back turned on her, and his head resting on his hand. If he had
attempted to rejoin her, she would have repelled him; if he had spoken,
she would have met him with a sharp reply. He sat apart from her,
without uttering a word. In a man's hands silence is the most terrible
of all protests to the woman who loves him. Violence she can endure.
Words she is always ready to meet by words on her side. Silence conquers
her. After a moment's hesitation, Mercy left the sofa and advanced
submissively toward the table. She had offended him--and she alone
was in fault. How should he know it, poor fellow, when he innocently
mortified her? Step by step she drew closer and closer. He never looked
round; he never moved. She laid her hand timidly on his shoulder.
"Forgive me, Horace," she whispered in his ear. "I am suffering this
morning; I am not myself. I didn't mean what I said. Pray forgive me."
There was no resisting the caressing tenderness of voice and manner
which accompanied those words. He looked up; he took her hand. She bent
over him, and touched his forehead with her lips. "Am I forgiven?" she
asked.
"Oh, my darling," he said, "if you only knew how I loved you!"
"I do know it," she answered, gently, twining his hair round her finger,
and arranging it over his forehead where his hand had ruffled it.
They were completely absorbed in each other, or they must, at that
moment, have heard the library door open at the other end of the room.
Lady Janet had written the necessary reply to her nephew, and had
returned, faithful to her engagement, to plead the cause of Horace. The
first object that met her view was her client pleading, with conspicuous
success, for himself! "I am not wanted, evidently," thought the old
lady. She noiselessly closed the door again and left the lovers by
themselves.