"
"Has nobody told you what Lady Janet did after you left us? Has
nobody told you that she politely placed her own boudoir at the
disposal of the very woman whom she had ordered half an hour
before to leave the house? Do you really not know that Mr. Julian
Gray has himself conducted this suddenly-honored guest to her
place of retirement? and that I am left alone in the midst of
these changes, contradictions, and mysteries--the only person who
is kept out in the dark?"
"It is surely needless to ask me these questions," said Mercy,
gently. "Who could possibly have told me what was going on below
stairs before you knocked at my door?"
He looked at her with an ironical affectation of surprise.
"You are strangely forgetful to-day," he said. "Surely your
friend Mr. Julian Gray might have told you? I am astonished to
hear that he has not had his private interview yet."
"I don't understand you, Horace."
"I don't want you to understand me," he retorted, irritably. "The
proper person to understand me is Julian Gray. I look to _him_ to
account to me for the confidential relations which seem to have
been established between you behind my back.
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