"This lady," he resumed, "has something to say to me in private which she has not said yet.

That is my reason and my apology for not immediately leaving the house." Still under the impression of what she had seen on entering the room, Lady Janet looked at him in angry amazement.

Was Julian actually ignoring Horace Holmcroft's claims, in the presence of Horace Holmcroft's betrothed wife?
She appealed to her adopted daughter.
"Grace!" she exclaimed, "have you heard him?
Have you nothing to say?
Must I remind you--" She stopped.

For the first time in Lady Janet's experience of her young companion, she found herself speaking to ears that were deaf to her.
Mercy was incapable of listening.

Julian's eyes had told her that Julian understood her at last! Lady Janet turned to her nephew once more, and addressed him in the hardest words that she had ever spoken to her sister's son.
"If you have any sense of decency," she said--"I say nothing of a sense of honor--you will leave this house, and your acquaintance with that lady will end here.