"You were here when I fainted, were you not?" Mercy began. "You must
think me a sad coward, even for a woman."
He shook his head. "I am far from thinking that," he replied. "No
courage could have sustained the shock which fell on you. I don't wonder
that you fainted. I don't wonder that you have been ill."
She paused in rolling up the ball of wool. What did those words of
unexpected sympathy mean? Was he laying a trap for her? Urged by that
serious doubt, she questioned him more boldly.
"Horace tells me you have been abroad," she said. "Did you enjoy your
holiday?"
"It was no holiday. I went abroad because I thought it right to make
certain inquiries--" He stopped there, unwilling to return to a subject
that was painful to her.
Her voice sank, her fingers trembled round the ball of wool; but she
managed to go on.
"Did you arrive at any results?" she asked.
"At no results worth mentioning."
The caution of that reply renewed her worst suspicions of him. In sheer
despair, she spoke out plainly.
"I want to know your opinion--" she began.
"Gently!" said Julian. "You are entangling the wool again."
"I want to know your opinion of the person who so terribly frightened
me. Do you think her--"
"Do I think her--what?"
"Do you think her an adventuress?"
(As she said those words the branches of a shrub in the conservatory
were noiselessly parted by a hand in a black glove. The face of Grace
Roseberry appeared dimly behind the leaves. Undiscovered, she had
escaped from the billiard-room, and had stolen her way into the
conservatory as the safer hiding-place of the two. Behind the shrub she
could see as well as listen. Behind the shrub she waited as patiently as
ever.) "I take a more merciful view," Julian answered. "I believe she is acting
under a delusion. I don't blame her: I pity her."
"You pity her?" As Mercy repeated the words, she tore off Julian's hands
the last few lengths of wool left, and threw the imperfectly wound skein
back into the basket. "Does that mean," she resumed, abruptly, "that you
believe her?"
Julian rose from his seat, and looked at Mercy in astonishment.
"Good heavens, Miss Roseberry! what put such an idea as that into your
head?"
"I am little better than a stranger to you," she rejoined, with an
effort to assume a jesting tone. "You met that person before you met
with me. It is not so very far from pitying her to believing her. How
could I feel sure that you might not suspect me?"
"Suspect _you!_" he exclaimed. "You don't know how you distress, how you
shock me. Suspect _you!_ The bare idea of it never entered my mind. The
man doesn't live who trusts you more implicitly, who believes in you
more devotedly, than I do."