eard 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.

He had inferred, with little difficulty, from the language which Grace
had used toward Mercy in his presence, that the injured woman must have
taken pitiless advantage of her position at the interview which he had
interrupted. Instead of appealing to Mercy's sympathies and Mercy's
sense of right--instead of accepting the expression of her sincere
contrition, and encouraging her to make the completest and the speediest
atonement--Grace had evidently outraged and insulted her. As a necessary
result, her endurance had given way--under her own sens