“Let me go!” she said. “What do you mean?”
He dropped her arm as suddenly as he had taken it.
“You shall know what I mean,” he replied. “A woman who has grossly outraged and insulted you—whose only excuse is that she is mad—is detained in the house at your desire, I might almost say at your command, when the police officer is waiting to take her away. I have a right to know what this means. I am engaged to marry you. If you won’t trust other people, you are bound to explain yourself to Me. I refuse to wait for Lady Janet’s convenience. I insist (if you force me to say so)—I insist on knowing the real nature of your connection with this affair. You have obliged me to follow you here; it is my only opportunity of speaking to you. You avoid me; you shut yourself up from me in your own room. I am not your husband yet—I have no right to follow you in. But there are other rooms open to us. The library is at our disposal, and I will take care that we are not interrupted. I am now going there, and I have a last question to ask. You are to be my wife in a week’s time: will you take me into your confidence or not?”
To hesitate was, in this case, literally to be lost. Mercy’s sense of justice told her that Horace had claimed no more than his due. She answered instantly:
“I will follow you to the library, Horace, in five minutes.”
Her prompt and frank compliance with his wishes surprised and touched him. He took her hand.
She had endured all that his angry sense of injury could say. His gratitude wounded her to the quick. The bitterest moment she had felt yet was the moment in which he raised her hand to his lips, and murmured tenderly, “My own true Grace!” She could only sign to him to leave her, and hurry back into her own room.
Her first feeling, when she found herself alone again, was wonder—wonder that it should never have occurred to her, until he had himself suggested it, that her betrothed husband had the foremost right to her confession. Her horror at owning to either of them that she had cheated them out of their love had hitherto placed Horace and Lady Janet on the same level. She now saw for the first time that there was no comparison between the claims which they respectively had on her. She owned an allegiance to Horace to which Lady Janet could assert no right. Cost her what it might to avow the truth to him with her own lips, the cruel sacrifice must be made.
Without a moment’s hesitation she put away her writing materials. It amazed her that she should ever have thought of using Julian Gray as an interpreter between the man to whom she was betrothed and herself. Julian’s sympathy (she thought) must have made a strong impression on her indeed to blind her to a duty which was beyond all compromise, which admitted of no dispute!
She had asked for five minutes of delay before she followed Horace. It was too long a time.