'If you have not made up your mind to take my advice by the time I have walked back to that door,' she said, 'I will put it out of your power to set me at defiance. I am used to be obeyed, and I will be obeyed. You force me to use hard words. I warn you before it is too late. Go!'
She returned slowly toward the library. Julian attempted to interfere with another word of remonstrance. His aunt stopped him by a gesture which said, plainly, 'I insist on acting for myself.' He looked next at Mercy. Would she remain passive? Yes. She never lifted her head; she never moved from the place in which she was standing apart from the rest. Horace himself tried to attract her attention, and tried in vain.
Arrived at the library door, Lady Janet looked over her shoulder at the little immovable black figure in the chair.
'Will you go?' she asked, for the last time.
Grace started up angrily from her seat, and fixed her viperish eyes on Mercy.
'I won't be turned out of your ladyship's house in the presence of that impostor,' she said. 'I may yield to force, but I will yield to nothing else. I insist on my right to the place that she has stolen from me. It's no use scolding me,' she added, turning doggedly to Julian. 'As long as that woman is here under my name I can't and won't keep away from the house. I warn her, in your presence, that I have written to my friends in Canada! I dare her before you all to deny that she is the outcast and adventuress, Mercy Merrick!'
The challenge forced Mercy to take part in the proceedings in her own defense. She had pledged herself to meet and defy Grace Roseberry on her own ground. She attempted to speak—Horace stopped her.
'You degrade yourself if you answer her,' he said. 'Take my arm, and let us leave the room.'
'Yes! Take her out!' cried Grace. 'She may well be ashamed to face an honest woman. It's her place to leave the room—not mine!'
Mercy drew her hand out of Horace's arm. 'I decline to leave the room,' she said, quietly.
Horace still tried to persuade her to withdraw. 'I can't bear to hear you insulted,' he rejoined. 'The woman offends me, though I know she is not responsible for what she says.'
'Nobody's endurance will be tried much longer,' said Lady Janet. She glanced at Julian, and taking from her pocket the card which he had given to her, opened the library door.
'Go to the police station,' she said to the servant in an undertone, 'and give that card to the inspector on duty. Tell him there is not a moment to lose.'
'Stop!' said Julian, before his aunt could close the door again.
'Stop?' repeated Lady Janet, sharply. 'I have given the man his orders. What do you mean?'
'Before you send the card I wish to say a word in private to this lady,' replied Julian, indicating Grace. 'When that is done,' he continued, approaching Mercy, and pointedly addressing himself to her, 'I shall have a request to make—I shall ask you to give me an opportunity of speaking to you without interruption.'
His tone pointed the allusion. Mercy shrank from looking at him. The signs of painful agitation began to show themselves in her shifting color and her uneasy silence. Roused by Julian's significantly distant reference to what had passed between them, her better impulses were struggling already to recover their influence over her. She might, at that critical moment, have yielded to the promptings of her own nobler nature—she might have risen superior to the galling remembrance of the insults that had been heaped upon her—if Grace's malice had not seen in her hesitation a means of referring offensively once again to her interview with Julian Gray.
'Pray don't think twice about trusting him alone with me,' she said, with a sardonic affectation of politeness. '
The jealous distrust in Horace (already awakened by Julian's request) now attempted to assert itself openly. Before he could speak, Mercy's indignation had dictated Mercy's answer.
'I am much obliged to you, Mr. Gray,' she said, addressing Julian (but still not raising her eyes to his). 'I have nothing more to say. There is no need for me to trouble you again.'
In those rash words she recalled the confession to which she stood pledged. In those rash words she committed herself to keeping the position that she had usurped, in the face of the woman whom she had deprived of it!
Horace was silenced, but not satisfied. He saw Julian's eyes fixed in sad and searching attention on Mercy's face while she was speaking. He heard Julian sigh to himself when she had done. He observed Julian—after a moment's serious consideration, and a moment's glance backward at the stranger in the poor black clothes—lift his head with the air of a man who had taken a sudden resolution.
'Bring me that card directly,' he said to the servant. His tone announced that he was not to be trifled with. The man obeyed.
Without answering Lady Janet—who still peremptorily insisted on her right to act for herself—Julian took the pencil from his pocketbook and added his signature to the writing already inscribed on the card. When he had handed it back to the servant he made his apologies to his aunt.
'Pardon me for venturing to interfere,' he said 'There is a serious reason for what I have done, which I will explain to you at a fitter time. In the meanwhile I offer no further obstruction to the course which you propose taking. On the contrary, I have just assisted you in gaining the end that you have in view.'
As he said that he held up the pencil with which he had signed his name.
Lady Janet, naturally perplexed, and (with some reason, perhaps) offended as well, made no answer. She waved her hand to the servant, and sent him away with the card.
There was silence in the room. The eyes of all the persons present turned more or less anxiously on Julian. Mercy was vaguely surprised and alarmed. Horace, like Lady Janet, felt offended, without clearly knowing why. Even Grace Roseberry herself was subdued by her own presentiment of some coming interference for which she was completely unprepared. Julian's words and actions, from the moment when he had written on the card, were involved in a mystery to which not one of the persons round him held the clew.
The motive which had animated his conduct may, nevertheless, be described in two words: Julian still held to his faith in the inbred nobility of Mercy's nature.
