! Say in one word--Yes or No!"

She answered him, humbly and sadly, "Yes."

"You have done what that woman accused you of doing? Am I to believe
that?"

"You are to believe it, sir."

All the weakness of Horace's character disclosed itself when she made
that reply.

"Infamous!" he exclaimed. "What excuse can you make for the cruel
deception you have practiced on me? Too bad! too bad! There can be no
excuse for you!"

She accepted his reproaches with unshaken resignation. "I have deserved
it!" was all she said to herself, "I have deserved it!"

Julian interposed once more in Mercy's defense.

"Wait till you are sure there is no excuse for her, Horace," he said,
quietly. "Grant her justice, if you can grant no more. I leave you
together."

He advanced toward the door of the dining-room. Horace's weakness
disclosed itself once more.

"Don't leave me alone with her!" he burst out. "The misery of it is more
than I can bear!"

Julian looked at Mercy. Her face brightened faintly. That momentary
expression of relief told him how truly he would be befriending her if
he consented to remain in the room. A position of retirement was offered
to him by a recess formed by the central bay-window of the library. If
he occupied this place, they could see or not see that he was present,
as their own inclinations might decide them.

"I will stay with you, Horace, as long as you wish me to be here."
Having answered in those terms, he stopped as he passed Mercy, on his
way to the window. His quick and kindly insight told him that he might
still be of some service to her. A hint from him might show her the
shortest and the easiest way of making her confession. Delicately and
briefly he gave her the hint. "The first time I met you," he said, "I
saw that your life had had its troubles. Let us hear how those troubles
began."

He withdrew to his place in the recess. For the first time, since
the fatal evening when she and Grace Roseberry had met in the French
cottage, Mercy Merrick looked back into the purgatory on earth of her
past life, and told her sad story simply and truly in these words.

CHAPTER XXVII. MAGDALEN'S APPRENTICESHIP.

"MR. JULIAN GRAY has asked me to tell him, and to tell you, Mr.
Holmcroft, how my troubles began. They began before my recollection.
They began with my birth.

"My mother (as I have heard her say) ruined her prospects, when she was
quite a young girl, by a marriage with one of her father'