The last allusion was too plain to be misunderstood. Mercy’s head drooped. She began to tremble again. Lady Janet looked at her in blank amazement.
“Is there anything wrong between Horace and you?” she asked.
“No.”
“You know your own heart, my dear child? You have surely not encouraged Horace without loving him?”
“Oh no!”
“And yet—”
For the first time in their experience of each other Mercy ventured to interrupt her benefactress. “Dear Lady Janet,” she interposed, gently, “I am in no hurry to be married. There will be plenty of time in the future to talk of that. You had something you wished to say to me. What is it?”
It was no easy matter to disconcert Lady Janet Roy. But that last question fairly reduced her to silence. After all that had passed, there sat her young companion, innocent of the faintest suspicion of the subject that was to be discussed between them! “What are the young women of the present time made of?” thought the old lady, utterly at a loss to know what to say next. Mercy waited, on her side, with an impenetrable patience which only aggravated the difficulties of the position. The silence was fast threatening to bring the interview to a sudden and untimely end, when the door from the library opened, and a man-servant, bearing a little silver salver, entered the room.
Lady Janet’s rising sense of annoyance instantly seized on the servant as a victim. “What do you want?” she asked, sharply. “I never rang for you.”
“A letter, my lady. The messenger waits for an answer.”