r 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 _here!_"

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 ch