His infatuated jealousy of Julian (fatally misinterpreting her agitation) distrusted her at the very outset. She had limited herself to clearing up the one question of her interference with the officer of justice. The other question of her relations with Julian she had deliberately passed over. Horace instantly drew his own ungenerous conclusion. “Let us not misunderstand one another,” he said. “The explanation of your conduct in the other room is only one of the explanations which you owe me. You have something else to account for. Let us begin with _that_, if you please.” She looked at him in unaffected surprise. “What else have I to account for?” she asked. He again repeated his reply to Lady Janet. “I have told you already,” he said. “I don’t understand your confidential relations with Julian Gray.” Mercy’s color rose; Mercy’s eyes began to brighten. “Don’t return to that!” she cried, with an irrepressible outbreak of disgust. “Don’t, for God’s sake, make me despise you at such a moment as this!” His obstinacy only gathered fresh encouragement from that appeal to his better sense. “I insist on returning to it.” She had resolved to bear anything from him--as her fit punishment for the deception of which she had been guilty. But it was not in womanhood (at the moment when the first words of her confession were trembling on her lips) to endure Horace’s unworthy suspicion of her. She rose from her seat and met his eye firmly. “I refuse to degrade myself, and to degrade Mr. Julian Gray, by answering you,” she said. “Consider what you are doing,” he rejoined. “Change your mind, before it is too late!” “You have had my reply.” Those resolute words, that steady resistance, seemed to infuriate him. He caught her roughly by the arm. “You are as false as hell!” he cried. “It’s all over between you and me!” The loud threatening tone in which he had spoken penetrated through the closed door of the dining-room. The door instantly opened. Julian returned to the library. He had just set foot in the room, when there was a knock at the other door--the door that opened on the hall. One of the men-servants appeared, with a telegraphic message in his hand. Mercy was the first to see it. It was the Matron’s answer to the letter which she had sent to the Refuge. “For Mr. Julian Gray?” she asked. “Yes, miss.” “Give it to me.” She signed to the man to withdraw, and herself gave the telegram to Julian. “It is addressed to you, at my request,” she said. “You will recognize the name of the person who sends it, and you will find a message in it for me.” Horace interfered before Julian could open the telegram. “Another private understanding between you!” he said. “Give me that telegram.” Julian looked at him with quiet contempt. “It is directed to Me,” he answered--and opened the envelope.