The New Magdalen

"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."