What was it Lady Janet had said on going into the library?
She had said she was coming back to speak about Horace.
Mercy guessed what the object was; she knew but too well what Horace wanted of her.

How was she to meet the emergency?
In the name of Heaven, what was to be done?
Could she let the man who loved her--the man whom she loved--drift blindfold into marriage with such a woman as she had been?
No! it was her duty to warn him.

How?
Could she break his heart, could she lay his life waste by speaking the cruel words which might part them forever?
"I can't tell him! I won't tell him!" she burst out, passionately.

"The disgrace of it would kill me!" Her varying mood changed as the words escaped her.

A reckless defiance of her own better nature--that saddest of all the forms in which a woman's misery can express itself--filled her heart with its poisoning bitterness.