The Guardian Angel

"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."

His eyes, his voice, his manner, all told her that those words came from
the heart. She contrasted his generous confidence in her (the confidence
of which she was unworthy) with her ungracious distrust of him. Not only
had she wronged Grace Roseberry--she had wronged Julian Gray. Could she
deceive him as she had deceived the others? Could she meanly accept
that implicit trust, that devoted belief? Never had she felt the base
submissions which her own imposture condemned her to undergo with a
loathing of them so overwhelming as the loathing that she felt now. In
horror of herself, she turned her head aside in silence and shrank from
meeting his eye. He noticed the movement, placing his own interpretation
on it. Advancing closer, he asked anxiously if he had offended her.