The New Magdalen

Julian started.

"Has Horace himself asked it of you?" he inquired. "_He_, at least, has

no suspicion of the truth."

"Horace has appealed to my duty to him as his betrothed wife," she

answered. "He has the first claim to my confidence--he resents my

silence, and he has a right to resent it. Terrible as it will be to open

_his_ eyes to the truth, I must do it if he asks me."

She was looking at Julian while she spoke. The old longing to associate

with the hard trial of the confession the one man who had felt for her,

and believed in her, revived under another form. If she could only

know, while she was saying the fatal words to Horace, that Julian was

listening too, she would be encouraged to meet the worst that could

happen! As the idea crossed her mind, she observed that Julian was

looking toward the door through which they had lately passed. In an

instant she saw the means to her end. Hardly waiting to hear the few

kind expressions of sympathy and approval which he addressed to her, she

hinted timidly at the proposal which she had now to make to him.

"Are you going back into the next room?" she asked.

"Not if you object to it," he replied.

"I don't object. I want you to be there."

"After Horace has joined you?"

"Yes. After Horace has joined me."

"Do you wish to see me when it is over?"

She summoned her resolution, and told him frankly what she had in her

mind.

"I want you to be near me while I am speaking to Horace," she said. "It

will give me courage if I can feel that I am speaking to you as well as

to him. I can count on _your_ sympathy--and sympathy is so precious to

me now! Am I asking too much, if I ask you to leave the door unclosed

when you go back to the dining-room? Think of the dreadful trial--to him

as well as to me! I am only a woman; I am afraid I may sink under it, if

I have no friend near me. And I have no friend but you."

In those simple words she tried her powers of persuasion on him for the

first time.

Between perplexity and distress Julian was, for the moment, at a loss

how to answer her. The love for Mercy which he dared not acknowledge was

as vital a feeling in him as the faith in her which he had been free to

avow. To refuse anything that she asked of him in her sore need--and,

more even than that, to refuse to hear the confession which it had been

her first impulse to make to _him_--these were cruel sacrifices to his

sense of what was due to Horace and of what was due to himself. But

shrink as he might, even from the appearance of deserting her, it was

impossible for him (except under a reserve which was almost equivalent

to a denial) to grant her request.