“Don’t return to that!” she said. “We know enough about Mercy Merrick already.”
“Pardon me—your ladyship does not know. I am the only person who can inform you.”
“You?”
She bent her head respectfully.
“I have begged you, Lady Janet, to give me half an hour,” she went on. “In half an hour I solemnly engage myself to produce Mercy Merrick in this room. Lady Janet Roy, Mr. Horace Holmcroft, you are to wait for that.”
Steadily pledging herself in those terms to make her confession, she unclasped the pearls from her neck, put them away in their cases and placed it in Horace’s hand. “Keep it,” she said, with a momentary faltering in her voice, “until we meet again.”
Horace took the case in silence; he looked and acted like a man whose mind was paralyzed by surprise. His hand moved mechanically. His eyes followed Mercy with a vacant, questioning look. Lady Janet seemed, in her different way, to share the strange oppression that had fallen on him. A vague sense of dread and distress hung like a cloud over her mind. At that memorable moment she felt her age, she looked her age, as she had never felt it or looked it yet.
“Have I your ladyship’s leave,” said Mercy, respectfully, “to go to my room?”
Lady Janet mutely granted the request. Mercy’s last look, before she went out, was a look at Grace. “Are you satisfied now?” the grand gray eyes seemed to say, mournfully. Grace turned her head aside, with a quick, petulant action. Even her narrow nature opened for a moment unwillingly, and let pity in a little way, in spite of itself.
Mercy’s parting words recommended Grace to Julian’s care: