woman's instinct whispered to her, 'Find courage in his touch!' She said to him, simply and artlessly said to him, 'Give me encouragement. Give me strength. Let me take your hand.' He neither answered nor moved. His mind seemed to have become suddenly preoccupied; his eyes rested on her vacantly. He was on the brink of discovering her secret; in another instant he would have found his way to the truth. In that instant, innocently as his sister might have taken it, she took his hand. The soft clasp of her fingers, clinging round his, roused his senses, fired his passion for her, swept out of his mind the pure aspirations which had filled it but the moment before, paralyzed his perception when it was just penetrating the mystery of her disturbed manner and her strange words. All the man in him trembled under the rapture of her touch. But the thought of Horace was still present to him: his hand lay passive in hers; his eyes looked uneasily away from her.
She innocently strengthened her clasp of his hand. She innocently said to him, 'Don't look away from me. Your eyes give me courage.'
His hand returned the pressure of hers. He tasted to the full the delicious joy of looking at her. She had broken down his last reserves of self-control. The thought of Horace, the sense of honor, became obscured in him. In a moment more he might have said the words which he would have deplored for the rest of his life, if she had not stopped him by speaking first. 'I have more to say to you,' she resumed abruptly, feeling the animating resolution to lay her heart bare before him at last; 'more, far more, than I have said yet. Generous, merciful friend, let me say it
She attempted to throw herself on her knees at his feet. He sprung from his seat and checked her, holding her with both his hands, raising her as he rose himself. In the words which had just escaped her, in the startling action which had accompanied them, the truth burst on him. The guilty woman she had spoken of was herself!
While she was almost in his arms, while her bosom was just touching his, before a word more had passed his lips or hers, the library door opened.
Lady Janet Roy entered the room.
CHAPTER XVIII. THE SEARCH IN THE GROUNDS.
GRACE ROSEBERRY, still listening in the conservatory, saw the door open, and recognized the mistress of the house. She softly drew back, and placed herself in safer hiding, beyond the range of view from the dining- room.
Lady Janet advanced no further than the threshold. She stood there and looked at her nephew and her adopted daughter in stern silence.
Mercy dropped into the chair at her side. Julian kept his place by her. His mind was still stunned by the discovery that had burst on it; his eyes still rested on her in mute terror of inquiry. He was as completely absorbed in the one act of looking at her as if they had been still alone together in the room.
Lady Janet was the first of the three who spoke. She addressed herself to her nephew.
'You were right, Mr. Julian Gray,' she said, with her bitterest emphasis of tone and manner. 'You ought to have found nobody in this room on your return but
Julian looked round at his aunt. She was pointing to the door. In the excited state of his sensibilities at that moment the action stung him to the quick. He answered without his customary consideration for his aunt's age and his aunt's position toward him.
'You apparently forget, Lady Janet, that you are not speaking to one of your footmen,' he said. 'There are serious reasons (of which you know nothing) for my remaining in your house a little longer. You may rely upon my trespassing on your hospitality as short a time as possible.'
He turned again to Mercy as he said those words, and surprised her timidly looking up at him. In the instant when their eyes met, the tumult of emotions struggling in him became suddenly stilled. Sorrow for her— compassionating sorrow—rose in the new calm and filled his heart. Now, and now only, he could read in the wasted and noble face how she had suffered. The pity which he had felt for the unnamed woman grew to a tenfold pity for
Still under the impression of what she had seen on entering the room, Lady Janet looked at him in angry amazement. Was Julian actually ignoring Horace Holmcroft's claims, in the presence of Horace Holmcroft's betrothed wife? She appealed to her adopted daughter. 'Grace!' she exclaimed, 'have you heard him? Have you nothing to say? Must I remind you—'
She stopped. For the first time in Lady Janet's experience of her young companion, she found herself speaking to ears that were deaf to her. Mercy was incapable of listening. Julian's eyes had told her that Julian understood her at last!
Lady Janet turned to her nephew once more, and addressed him in the hardest words that she had ever spoken to her sister's son.
'If you have any sense of decency,' she said—'I say nothing of a sense of honor—you will leave this house, and your acquaintance with that lady will end here. Spare me your protests and excuses; I can place but one interpretation on what I saw when I opened that door.'
'You entirely misunderstand what you saw when you opened that door,' Julian answered, quietly.
'Perhaps I misunderstand the confession which you made to me not an hour ago?' retorted Lady Janet.
Julian cast a look of alarm at Mercy. 'Don't speak of it!' he said, in a whisper. 'She might hear you.'
'Do you mean to say she doesn't know you are in love with her?'
'Thank God, she has not the faintest suspicion of it!'
There was no mistaking the earnestness with which he made that reply. It proved his innocence as nothing else could have proved it. Lady Janet drew back a step—utterly bewildered; completely at a loss what to say or what to do next.
The silence that followed was broken by a knock at the library door. The man-servant—with news, and bad
