stood irresolute close to the billiard-room, hesitating what
to do next.

After an interval the second voice made itself heard again, advancing
nearer to the dining-room: "Are you there, aunt?" it asked cautiously.
There was a moment's pause. Then the voice spoke for the third time,
sounding louder and nearer. "Are you there?" it reiterated; "I have
something to tell you." Mercy summoned her resolution and answered:
"Lady Janet is not here." She turned as she spoke toward the
conservatory door, and confronted on the threshold Julian Gray.

They looked at one another without exchanging a word on either side.
The situation--for widely different reasons--was equally embarrassing to
both of them.

There--as Julian saw _her_--was the woman forbidden to him, the woman
whom he loved.

There--as Mercy saw _him_--was the man whom she dreaded, the man whose
actions (as she interpreted them) proved that he suspected her.

On the surface of it, the incidents which had marked their first meeting
were now exactly repeated, with the one difference that the impulse
to withdraw this time appeared to be on the man's side and not on the
woman's. It was Mercy who spoke first.

"Did you expect to find Lady Janet here?" she asked, constrainedly. He
answered, on his part, more constrainedly still.

"It doesn't matter," he said. "Another time will do."

He drew back as he made the reply. She advanced desperately, with the
deliberate intention of detaining him by speaking again.

The attempt which he had made to withdraw, the constraint in his
manner when he had answered, had instantly confirmed her in the false
conviction that he, and he alone, had guessed the truth! If she was
right--if he had secretly made discoveries abroad which placed her
entirely at his mercy--the attempt to induce Grace to consent to a
compromise with her would be manifestly useless. Her first and foremost
interest now was to find out how she really stood in the estimation of
Julian Gray. In a terror of suspense, that turned her cold from head to
foot, she stopped him on his way out, and spoke to him with the piteous
counterfeit of a smile.

"Lady Janet is receiving some visitors," she said. "If you will wait
here, she will be back directly."

The effort of hiding her agitation from him had brought a passing color
into her cheeks. Worn and wasted as she was, the spell of her beauty was
strong enough to hold him against his own will. All he had to tell Lady