I
expect to see him in a few minutes."

"Could you give me those few minutes?" Julian asked. "I have something
on my side to say to you which I think you ought to know before you see
any one--Horace himself included."

He spoke with a certain depression of tone which was not associated
with her previous experience of him. His face looked prematurely old and
careworn in the red light of the fire. Something had plainly happened to
sadden and to disappoint him since they had last met.

"I willingly offer you all the time that I have at my own command,"
Mercy replied. "Does what you have to tell me relate to Lady Janet?"

He gave her no direct reply. "What I have to tell you of Lady Janet,"
he said, gravely, "is soon told. So far as she is concerned you have
nothing more to dread. Lady Janet knows all."

Even the heavy weight of oppression caused by the impending interview
with Horace failed to hold its place in Mercy's mind when Julian
answered her in those words.

"Come into the lighted room," she said, faintly. "It is too terrible to
hear you say that in the dark."

Julian followed her into the library. Her limbs trembled under her.
She dropped into a chair, and shrank under his great bright eyes, as he
stood by her side looking sadly down on her.

"Lady Janet knows all!" she repeated, with her head on her breast, and
the tears falling slowly over her cheeks. "Have you told her?"

"I have said nothing to Lady Janet or to any one. Your confidence is a
sacred confidence to me, until you have spoken first."

"Has Lady Janet said anything to you?"

"Not a word. She has looked at you with the vigilant eyes of love; she
has listened to you with the quick hearing of love--and she has found
her own way to the truth. She will not speak of it to me--she will not
speak of it to any living creature. I only know now how dearly she loved
you. In spite of herself she clings to you still. Her life, poor soul,
has been a barren one; unworthy, miserably unworthy, of such a nature as
hers. Her marriage was loveless and childless. She has had admirers, but
never, in the higher sense of the word, a friend. All the best years of
her life have been wasted in the unsatisfied longing for something to
love. At the end of her life You have filled the void. Her heart has
found its youth again, through You. At her age--at any age--is such a
tie as this to be rudely broken at the mere bidding of circumstances?
No! She will suffer anythi