Lady Janet made her first bid. 'I think so too.'
'More, perhaps, than two hundred?'
Lady Janet made her second bid. 'Probably.'
'More than three hundred? Four hundred? Five hundred?'
Lady Janet made her highest bid. 'Five hundred pounds will do,' she said.
In spite of herself, Grace's rising color betrayed her ungovernable excitement. From her earliest childhood she had been accustomed to see shillings and sixpences carefully considered before they were parted with. She had never known her father to possess so much as five golden sovereigns at his own disposal (unencumbered by debt) in all her experience of him. The atmosphere in which she had lived and breathed was the all-stifling one of genteel poverty. There was something horrible in the greedy eagerness of her eyes as they watched Lady Janet, to see if she was really sufficiently in earnest to give away five hundred pounds sterling with a stroke of her pen.
Lady Janet wrote t he check in a few seconds, and pushed it across the table.
Grace's hungry eyes devoured the golden line, 'Pay to myself or bearer five hundred pounds,' and verified the signature beneath, 'Janet Roy.' Once sure of the money whenever she chose to take it, the native meanness of her nature instantly asserted itself. She tossed her head, and let the check lie on the table, with an overacted appearance of caring very little whether she took it or not.
'Your ladyship is not to suppose that I snap at your check,' she said.
Lady Janet leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. The very sight of Grace Roseberry sickened her. Her mind filled suddenly with the image of Mercy. She longed to feast her eyes again on that grand beauty, to fill her ears again with the melody of that gentle voice.
'I require time to consider—in justice to my own self-respect,' Grace went on.
Lady Janet wearily made a sign, granting time to consider.
'Your ladyship's boudoir is, I presume, still at my disposal?'
Lady Janet silently granted the boudoir.
'And your ladyship's servants are at my orders, if I have occasion to employ them?'
Lady Janet suddenly opened her eyes. 'The whole household is at your orders,' she cried, furiously. 'Leave me!'
Grace was far from being offended. If anything, she was gratified—there was a certain triumph in having stung Lady Janet into an open outbreak of temper. She insisted forthwith on another condition.
'In the event of my deciding to receive the check,' she said, 'I cannot, consistently with my own self-respect, permit it to be delivered to me otherwise than inclosed. Your ladyship will (if necessary) be so kind as to inclose it. Good-evening.'
She sauntered to the door, looking from side to side, with an air of supreme disparagement, at the priceless treasures of art which adorned the walls. Her eyes dropped superciliously on the carpet (the design of a famous French painter), as if her feet condescended in walking over it. The audacity with which she had entered the room had been marked enough; it shrank to nothing before the infinitely superior proportions of the insolence with which she left it.
The instant the door was closed Lady Janet rose from her chair. Reckless of the wintry chill in the outer air, she threw open one of the windows. 'Pah!' she exclaimed, with a shudder of disgust, 'the very air of the room is tainted by her!'
She returned to her chair. Her mood changed as she sat down again—her heart was with Mercy once more. 'Oh, my love!' she murmured 'how low I have stooped, how miserably I have degraded myself—and all for You!' The bitterness of the retrospect was unendurable. The inbred force of the woman's nature took refuge from it in an outburst of defiance and despair. 'Whatever she has done, that wretch deserves it! Not a living creature in this house shall say she has deceived me. She has
She took up the sheet of paper again, and wrote her second message to Mercy. This time the note began fondly with a familiar form of address.
'MY DEAR CHILD—I have had time to think and compose myself a little, since I last wrote, requesting you to defer the explanation which you had promised me. I already understand (and appreciate) the motives which led you to interfere as you did downstairs, and I now ask you to entirely abandon the explanation. It will, I am sure, be painful to you (for reasons of your own into which I have no wish to inquire) to produce the person of whom you spoke, and as you know already, I myself am weary of hearing of her. Besides, there is really no need now for you to explain anything. The stranger whose visits here have caused us so much pain and anxiety will trouble us no more. She leaves England of her own free will, after a conversation with me which has perfectly succeeded in composing and satisfying her. Not a word more, my dear, to me, or to my nephew, or to any other human creature, of what has happened in the dining-room to-day. When we next meet, let it be understood between us that the past is henceforth and forever
'JANET ROY.
'P.S.—I shall find opportunities (before you leave your room) of speaking separately to my nephew and to Horace Holmcroft. You need dread no embarrassment, when you next meet them. I will not ask you to answer my note in writing. Say yes to the maid who will bring it to you, and I shall know we understand each other.'
After sealing the envelope which inclosed these lines, Lady Janet addressed it, as usual, to 'Miss Grace Roseberry.' She was just rising to ring the bell, when the maid appeared with a message from the boudoir. The woman's tones and looks showed plainly that she had been made the object of Grace's insolent self-assertion as well as her mistress.
'If you please, my lady, the person downstairs wishes—'
