“Has nobody told you what Lady Janet did after you left us? Has nobody told you that she politely placed her own boudoir at the disposal of the very woman whom she had ordered half an hour before to leave the house? Do you really not know that Mr. Julian Gray has himself conducted this suddenly-honored guest to her place of retirement? and that I am left alone in the midst of these changes, contradictions, and mysteries—the only person who is kept out in the dark?”
“It is surely needless to ask me these questions,” said Mercy, gently. “Who could possibly have told me what was going on below stairs before you knocked at my door?”
He looked at her with an ironical affectation of surprise.
“You are strangely forgetful to-day,” he said. “Surely your friend Mr. Julian Gray might have told you? I am astonished to hear that he has not had his private interview yet.”
“I don’t understand you, Horace.”
“I don’t want you to understand me,” he retorted, irritably. “The proper person to understand me is Julian Gray. I look to him to account to me for the confidential relations which seem to have been established between you behind my back. He has avoided me thus far, but I shall find my way to him yet.”
His manner threatened more than his words expressed. In Mercy’s nervous condition at the moment, it suggested to her that he might attempt to fasten a quarrel on Julian Gray.
“You are entirely mistaken,” she said, warmly. “You are ungratefully doubting your best and truest friend. I say nothing of myself. You will soon discover why I patiently submit to suspicions which other women would resent as an insult.”
“Let me discover it at once. Now! Without wasting a moment more!”
There had hitherto been some little distance between them. Mercy had listened, waiting on the threshold of her door; Horace had spoken, standing against the opposite wall of the corridor. When he said his last words he suddenly stepped forward, and (with something imperative in the gesture) laid his hand on her arm. The strong grasp of it almost hurt her. She struggled to release herself.