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The New Magdalen

by Wilkie Collins · English · Gutenberg #1623 · 584,071 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The New Magdalen

Author: Wilkie Collins


        
Release date: February 1, 1999 [eBook #1623]
                Most recently updated: October 21, 2025

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1623

Credits: Produced by James Rusk, and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NEW MAGDALEN ***




THE NEW MAGDALEN

by Wilkie Collins




TO THE MEMORY OF CHARLES ALLSTON COLLINS. (9th April, 1873.)




FIRST SCENE.--The Cottage on the Frontier.


PREAMBLE.

THE place is France.

The time is autumn, in the year eighteen hundred and seventy--the year
of the war between France and Germany.

The persons are, Captain Arnault, of the French army; Surgeon Surville,
of the French ambulance; Surgeon Wetzel, of the German army; Mercy
Merrick, attached as nurse to the French ambulance; and Grace Roseberry,
a traveling lady on her way to England.



CHAPTER I. THE TWO WOMEN.


IT was a dark night. The rain was pouring in torrents.

Late in the evening a skirmishing party of the French and a skirmishing
party of the Germans had met, by accident, near the little village of
Lagrange, close to the German frontier. In the struggle that followed,
the French had (for once) got the better of the enemy. For the time, at
least, a few hundreds out of the host of the invaders had been forced
back over the frontier. It was a trifling affair, occurring not long
after the great German victory of Weissenbourg, and the newspapers took
little or no notice of it.

Captain Arnault, commanding on the French side, sat alone in one of the
cottages of the village, inhabited by the miller of the district. The
Captain was reading, by the light of a solitary tallow-candle, some
intercepted dispatches taken from the Germans. He had suffered the wood
fire, scattered over the large open grate, to burn low; the red embers
only faintly illuminated a part of the room. On the floor behind him lay
some of the miller’s empty sacks. In a corner opposite to him was the
miller’s solid walnut-wood bed. On the walls all around him were the
miller’s colored prints, representing a happy mixture of devotional and
domestic subjects. A door of communication leading into the kitchen of
the cottage had been torn from its hinges, and used to carry the men
wounded in the skirmish from the field. They were now comfortably laid
at rest in the kitchen, under the care of the French surgeon and the
English nurse attached to the ambulance. A piece of coarse canvas
screened the opening between the two rooms in place of the door. A
second door, leading from the bed-chamber into the yard, was locked; and
the wooden shutter protecting the one window of the room was carefully
barred. Sentinels, doubled in number, were placed at all the outposts.
The French commander had neglected no precaution which could reasonably
insure for himself and for his men a quiet and comfortable night.

Still absorbed in his perusal of the dispatches, and now and then making
notes of what he read by the help of writing materials placed at his
side, Captain Arnault was interrupted by the appearance of an intruder
in the room. Surgeon Surville, entering from the kitchen, drew aside
the canvas screen, and approached the little round table at which his
superior officer was sitting.

“What is it?” said the captain, sharply.

“A question to ask,” replied the surgeon. “Are we safe for the night?”

“Why do you want to know?” inquired the captain, suspiciously.

The surgeon pointed to the kitchen, now the hospital devoted to the
wounded men.

“The poor fellows are anxious about the next few hours,” he replied.
“They dread a surprise, and they ask me if there is any reasonable hope
of their having one night’s rest. What do you think of the chances?”

The captain shrugged his shoulders. The surgeon persisted.

“Surely you ought to know?” he said.

“I know that we are in possession of the village for the present,”
 retorted Captain Arnault, “and I know no more. Here are the papers of
the enemy.” He held them up and shook them impatiently as he spoke.
“They give me no information that I can rely on. For all I can tell to
the contrary, the main body of the Germans, outnumbering us ten to one,
may be nearer this cottage than the main body of the French. Draw your
own conclusions. I have nothing more to say.”

Having answered in those discouraging terms, Captain Arnault got on his
feet, drew the hood of his great-coat over his head, and lit a cigar at
the candle.

“Where are you going?” asked the surgeon.

“To visit the outposts.”

“Do you want this room for a little while?”

“Not for some hours to come. Are you thinking of moving any of your
wounded men in here?”

“I was thinking of the English lady,” answered the surgeon. “The kitchen
is not quite the place for her. She would be more comfortable here; and
the English nurse might keep her company.”

Captain Arnault smiled, not very pleasantly. “They are two fine women,”
 he said, “and Surgeon Surville is a ladies’ man. Let them come in, if
they are rash enough to trust themselves here with you.” He checked
himself on the point of going out, and looked back distrustfully at the
lighted candle. “Caution the women,” he said, “to limit the exercise of
their curiosity to the inside of this room.”

“What do you mean?”

The captain’s forefinger pointed significantly to the closed
window-shutter.

“Did you ever know a woman who could resist looking out of window?” he
asked. “Dark as it is, sooner or later these ladies of yours will feel
tempted to open that shutter. Tell them I don’t want the light of
the candle to betray my headquarters to the German scouts. How is the
weather? Still raining?”

“Pouring.”

“So much the better. The Germans won’t see us.” With that consolatory
remark he unlocked the door leading into the yard, and walked out.

The surgeon lifted the canvas screen and called into the kitchen:

“Miss Merrick, have you time to take a little rest?”

“Plenty of time,” answered a soft voice with an underlying melancholy in
it, plainly distinguishable though it had only spoken three words.

“Come in, then,” continued the surgeon, “and bring the English lady with
you. Here is a quiet room all to yourselves.”

He held back the canvas, and the two women appeared.

The nurse led the way--tall, lithe, graceful--attired in her uniform
dress of neat black stuff, with plain linen collar and cuffs, and with
the scarlet cross of the Geneva Convention embroidered on her left
shoulder. Pale and sad, her expression and manner both eloquently
suggestive of suppressed suffering and sorrow, there was an innate
nobility in the carriage of this woman’s head, an innate grandeur in the
gaze of her large gray eyes and in the lines of her finely proportioned
face, which made her irresistibly striking and beautiful, seen under any
circumstances and clad in any dress. Her companion, darker in complexion
and smaller in stature, possessed attractions which were quite marked
enough to account for the surgeon’s polite anxiety to shelter her in the
captain’s room. The common consent of mankind would have declared her to
be an unusually pretty woman. She wore the large gray cloak that covered
her from head to foot with a grace that lent its own attractions to a
plain and even a shabby article of dress. The languor in her movements,
and the uncertainty of tone in her voice as she thanked the surgeon
suggested that she was suffering from fatigue. Her dark eyes searched
the dimly-lighted room timidly, and she held fast by the nurse’s arm
with the air of a woman whose nerves had been severely shaken by some
recent alarm.

“You have one thing to remember, ladies,” said the surgeon. “Beware
of opening the shutter, for fear of the light being seen through the
window. For the rest, we are free to make ourselves as comfortable here
as we can. Compose yourself, dear madam, and rely on the protection of a
Frenchman who is devoted to you!” He gallantly emphasized his last words
by raising the hand of the English lady to his lips. At the moment when
he kissed it the canvas screen was again drawn aside. A person in
the service of the ambulance appeared, announcing that a bandage had
slipped, and that one of the wounded men was to all appearance bleeding
to death. The surgeon, submitting to destiny with the worst possible
grace, dropped the charming Englishwoman’s hand, and returned to his
duties in the kitchen. The two ladies were left together in the room.

“Will you take a chair, madam?” asked the nurse.

“Don’t call me ‘madam,’” returned the young lady, cordially. “My name is
Grace Roseberry. What is your name?”

The nurse hesitated. “Not a pretty name, like yours,” she said, and
hesitated again. “Call me ‘Mercy Merrick,’” she added, after a moment’s
consideration.

Had she given an assumed name? Was there some unhappy celebrity attached
to her own name? Miss Roseberry did not wait to ask herself these
questions. “How can I thank you,” she exclaimed, gratefully, “for your
sisterly kindness to a stranger like me?”

“I have only done my duty,” said Mercy Merrick, a little coldly. “Don’t
speak of it.”

“I must speak of it. What a situation you found me in when the French
soldiers had driven the Germans away! My traveling-carriage stopped; the
horses seized; I myself in a strange country at nightfall, robbed of my
money and my luggage, and drenched to the skin by the pouring rain! I am
indebted to you for shelter in this place--I am wearing your clothes--I
should have died of the fright and the exposure but for you. What return
can I make for such services as these?”

Mercy placed a chair for her guest near the captain’s table, and seated
herself, at some little distance, on an old chest in a corner of the
room. “May I ask you a question?” she said, abruptly.

“A hundred questions,” cried Grace, “if you like.” She looked at the
expiring fire, and at the dimly visible figure of her companion seated
in the obscurest corner of the room. “That wretched candle hardly gives
any light,” she said, impatiently. “It won’t last much longer. Can’t
we make the place more cheerful? Come out of your corner. Call for more
wood and more lights.”

Mercy remained in her corner and shook her head. “Candles and wood are
scarce things here,” she answered. “We must be patient, even if we
are left in the dark. Tell me,” she went on, raising her quiet voice a
little, “how came you to risk crossing the frontier in wartime?”

Grace’s voice dropped when she answered the question. Grace’s momentary
gayety of manner suddenly left her.

“I had urgent reasons,” she said, “for returning to England.”

“Alone?” rejoined the other. “Without any one to protect you?”

Grace’s head sank on her bosom. “I have left my only protector--my
father--in the English burial-ground at Rome,” she answered simply. “My
mother died, years since, in Canada.”

The shadowy figure of the nurse suddenly changed its position on the
chest. She had started as the last word passed Miss Roseberry’s lips.

“Do you know Canada?” asked Grace.

“Well,” was the brief answer--reluctantly given, short as it was.

“Were you ever near Port Logan?”

“I once lived within a few miles of Port Logan.”

“When?”

“Some time since.” With those words Mercy Merrick shrank back into her
corner and changed the subject. “Your relatives in England must be very
anxious about you,” she said.

Grace sighed. “I have no relatives in England. You can hardly imagine
a person more friendless than I am. We went away from Canada, when my
father’s health failed, to try the climate of Italy, by the doctor’s
advice. His death has left me not only friendless but poor.” She paused,
and took a leather letter-case from the pocket of the large gray cloak
which the nurse had lent to her. “My prospects in life,” she resumed,
“are all contained in this little case. Here is the one treasure I
contrived to conceal when I was robbed of my other things.”

Mercy could just see the letter-case as Grace held it up in the
deepening obscurity of the room. “Have you got money in it?” she asked.

“No; only a few family papers, and a letter from my father, introducing
me to an elderly lady in England--a connection of his by marriage, whom
I have never seen. The lady has consented to receive me as her companion
and reader. If I don’t return to England soon, some other person may get
the place.”

“Have you no other resource?”

“None. My education has been neglected--we led a wild life in the
far West. I am quite unfit to go out as a governess. I am absolutely
dependent on this stranger, who receives me for my father’s sake.”
 She put the letter-case back in the pocket of her cloak, and ended her
little narrative as unaffectedly as she had begun it. “Mine is a sad
story, is it not?” she said.

The voice of the nurse answered her suddenly and bitterly in these
strange words:

“There are sadder stories than yours. There are thousands of miserable
women who would ask for no greater blessing than to change places with
you.”

Grace started. “What can there possibly be to envy in such a lot as
mine?”

“Your unblemished character, and your prospect of being established
honorably in a respectable house.”

Grace turned in her chair, and looked wonderingly into the dim corner of
the room.

“How strangely you say that!” she exclaimed. There was no answer; the
shadowy figure on the chest never moved. Grace rose impulsively, and
drawing her chair after her, approached the nurse. “Is there some
romance in your life?” she asked. “Why have you sacrificed yourself to
the terrible duties which I find you performing here? You interest me
indescribably. Give me your hand.”

Mercy shrank back, and refused the offered hand.

“Are we not friends?” Grace asked, in astonishment.

“We can never be friends.”

“Why not?”

The nurse was dumb. Grace called to mind the hesitation that she had
shown when she had mentioned her name, and drew a new conclusion from
it. “Should I be guessing right,” she asked, eagerly, “if I guessed you
to be some great lady in disguise?”

Mercy laughed to herself--low and bitterly. “I a great lady!” she said,
contemptuously. “For Heaven’s sake, let us talk of something else!”

Grace’s curiosity was thoroughly roused. She persisted. “Once more,” she
whispered, persuasively, “let us be friends.” She gently laid her hand
as she spoke on Mercy’s shoulder. Mercy roughly shook it off. There
was a rudeness in the action which would have offended the most patient
woman living. Grace drew back indignantly. “Ah!” she cried, “you are
cruel.”

“I am kind,” answered the nurse, speaking more sternly than ever.

“Is it kind to keep me at a distance? I have told you my story.”

The nurse’s voice rose excitedly. “Don’t tempt me to speak out,” she
said; “you will regret it.”

Grace declined to accept the warning. “I have placed confidence in you,”
 she went on. “It is ungenerous to lay me under an obligation, and then
to shut me out of your confidence in return.”

“You _will_ have it?” said Mercy Merrick. “You _shall_ have it! Sit down
again.” Grace’s heart began to quicken its beat in expectation of the
disclosure that was to come. She drew her chair closer to the chest on
which the nurse was sitting. With a firm hand Mercy put the chair back
to a distance from her. “Not so near me!” she said, harshly.

“Why not?”

“Not so near,” repeated the sternly resolute voice. “Wait till you have
heard what I have to say.”

Grace obeyed without a word more. There was a momentary silence. A faint
flash of light leaped up from the expiring candle, and showed Mercy
crouching on the chest, with her elbows on her knees, and her face
hidden in her hands. The next instant the room was buried in obscurity.
As the darkness fell on the two women the nurse spoke.



CHAPTER II. MAGDALEN--IN MODERN TIMES.

“WHEN your mother was alive were you ever out with her after nightfall
in the streets of a great city?”

In those extraordinary terms Mercy Merrick opened the confidential
interview which Grace Roseberry had forced on her. Grace answered,
simply, “I don’t understand you.”

“I will put it in another way,” said the nurse. Its unnatural hardness
and sternness of tone passed away from her voice, and its native
gentleness and sadness returned, as she made that reply. “You read the
newspapers like the rest of the world,” she went on; “have you ever
read of your unhappy fellow-creatures (the starving outcasts of the
population) whom Want has driven into Sin?”

Still wondering, Grace answered that she had read of such things often,
in newspapers and in books.

“Have you heard--when those starving and sinning fellow-creatures
happened to be women--of Refuges established to protect and reclaim
them?”

The wonder in Grace’s mind passed away, and a vague suspicion of
something painful to come took its place. “These are extraordinary
questions,” she said, nervously. “What do you mean?”

“Answer me,” the nurse insisted. “Have you heard of the Refuges? Have
you heard of the Women?”

“Yes.”

“Move your chair a little further away from me.” She paused. Her voice,
without losing its steadiness, fell to its lowest tones. “_I_ was once
of those women,” she said, quietly.

Grace sprang to her feet with a faint cry. She stood petrified--
incapable of uttering a word.

“_I_ have been in a Refuge,” pursued the sweet, sad voice of the other
woman. “_I_ have been in a Prison. Do you still wish to be my friend? Do
you still insist on sitting close by me and taking my hand?” She waited
for a reply, and no reply came. “You see you were wrong,” she went on,
gently, “when you called me cruel--and I was right when I told you I was
kind.”

At that appeal Grace composed herself, and spoke. “I don’t wish to
offend you--” she began, confusedly.

Mercy Merrick stopped her there.

“You don’t offend me,” she said, without the faintest note of
displeasure in her tone. “I am accustomed to stand in the pillory of
my own past life. I sometimes ask myself if it was all my fault. I
sometimes wonder if Society had no duties toward me when I was a child
selling matches in the street--when I was a hard-working girl fainting
at my needle for want of food.” Her voice faltered a little for the
first time as it pronounced those words; she waited a moment, and
recovered herself. “It’s too late to dwell on these things now,” she
said, resignedly. “Society can subscribe to reclaim me; but Society
can’t take me back. You see me here in a place of trust--patiently,
humbly, doing all the good I can. It doesn’t matter! Here, or elsewhere,
what I _am_ can never alter what I _was_. For three years past all that
a sincerely penitent woman can do I have done. It doesn’t matter! Once
let my past story be known, and the shadow of it covers me; the kindest
people shrink.”

She waited again. Would a word of sympathy come to comfort her from the
other woman’s lips? No! Miss Roseberry was shocked; Miss Roseberry was
confused. “I am very sorry for you,” was all that Miss Roseberry could
say.

“Everybody is sorry for me,” answered the nurse, as patiently as ever;
“everybody is kind to me. But the lost place is not to be regained. I
can’t get back! I can’t get back?” she cried, with a passionate outburst
of despair--checked instantly the moment it had escaped her. “Shall I
tell you what my experience has been?” she resumed. “Will you hear the
story of Magdalen--in modern times?”

Grace drew back a step; Mercy instantly understood her.

“I am going to tell you nothing that you need shrink from hearing,” she
said. “A lady in your position would not understand the trials and
the struggles that I have passed through. My story shall begin at the
Refuge. The matron sent me out to service with the character that I had
honestly earned--the character of a reclaimed woman. I justified the
confidence placed in me; I was a faithful servant. One day my mistress
sent for me--a kind mistress, if ever there was one yet. ‘Mercy, I am
sorry for you; it has come out that I took you from a Refuge; I shall
lose every servant in the house; you must go.’ I went back to the
matron--another kind woman. She received me like a mother. ‘We will try
again, Mercy; don’t be cast down.’ I told you I had been in Canada?”

Grace began to feel interested in spite of herself. She answered with
something like warmth in her tone. She returned to her chair--placed at
its safe and significant distance from the chest.

The nurse went on:

“My next place was in Canada, with an officer’s wife: gentlefolks who
had emigrated. More kindness; and, this time, a pleasant, peaceful life
for me. I said to myself, ‘Is the lost place regained? _Have_ I got
back?’ My mistress died. New people came into our neighborhood. There
was a young lady among them--my master began to think of another wife.
I have the misfortune (in my situation) to be what is called a handsome
woman; I rouse the curiosity of strangers. The new people asked
questions about me; my master’s answers did not satisfy them. In a word,
they found me out. The old story again! ‘Mercy, I am very sorry; scandal
is busy with you and with me; we are innocent, but there is no help for
it--we must part.’ I left the place; having gained one advantage during
my stay in Canada, which I find of use to me here.”

“What is it?”

“Our nearest neighbors were French-Canadians. I learned to speak the
French language.”

“Did you return to London?”

“Where else could I go, without a character?” said Mercy, sadly. “I went
back again to the matron. Sickness had broken out in the Refuge; I made
myself useful as a nurse. One of the doctors was struck with me--‘fell
in love’ with me, as the phrase is. He would have married me. The nurse,
as an honest woman, was bound to tell him the truth. He never appeared
again. The old story! I began to be weary of saying to myself, ‘I can’t
get back! I can’t get back!’ Despair got hold of me, the despair that
hardens the heart. I might have committed suicide; I might even have
drifted back into my old life--but for one man.”

At those last words her voice--quiet and even through the earlier part
of her sad story--began to falter once more. She stopped, following
silently the memories and associations roused in her by what she had
just said. Had she forgotten the presence of another person in the room?
Grace’s curiosity left Grace no resource but to say a word on her side.

“Who was the man?” she asked. “How did he befriend you?”

“Befriend me? He doesn’t even know that such a person as I am is in
existence.”

That strange answer, naturally enough, only strengthened the anxiety of
Grace to hear more. “You said just now--” she began.

“I said just now that he saved me. He did save me; you shall hear
how. One Sunday our regular clergyman at the Refuge was not able to
officiate. His place was taken by a stranger, quite a young man. The
matron told us the stranger’s name was Julian Gray. I sat in the back
row of seats, under the shadow of the gallery, where I could see him
without his seeing me. His text was from the words, ‘Joy shall be in
heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine
just persons, which need no repentance. ‘What happier women might have
thought of his sermon I cannot say; there was not a dry eye among us
at the Refuge. As for me, he touched my heart as no man has touched
it before or since. The hard despair melted in me at the sound of his
voice; the weary round of my life showed its nobler side again while he
spoke. From that time I have accepted my hard lot, I have been a patient
woman. I might have been something more, I might have been a happy
woman, if I could have prevailed on myself to speak to Julian Gray.”

“What hindered you from speaking to him?”

“I was afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“Afraid of making my hard life harder still.”

A woman who could have sympathized with her would perhaps have guessed
what those words meant. Grace was simply embarrassed by her; and Grace
failed to guess.

“I don’t understand you,” she said.

There was no alternative for Mercy but to own the truth in plain words.
She sighed, and said the words. “I was afraid I might interest him in my
sorrows, and might set my heart on him in return.” The utter absence
of any fellow-feeling with her on Grace’s side expressed itself
unconsciously in the plainest terms.

“You!” she exclaimed, in a tone of blank astonishment.

The nurse rose slowly to her feet. Grace’s expression of surprise told
her plainly--almost brutally--that her confession had gone far enough.

“I astonish you?” she said. “Ah, my young lady, you don’t know what
rough usage a woman’s heart can bear, and still beat truly! Before I saw
Julian Gray I only knew men as objects of horror to me. Let us drop
the subject. The preacher at the Refuge is nothing but a remembrance
now--the one welcome remembrance of my life! I have nothing more to tell
you. You insisted on hearing my story--you have heard it.”

“I have not heard how you found employment here,” said Grace, continuing
the conversation with uneasy politeness, as she best might.

Mercy crossed the room, and slowly raked together the last living embers
of the fire.

“The matron has friends in France,” she answered, “who are connected
with the military hospitals. It was not difficult to get me the place,
under those circumstances. Society can find a use for me here. My hand
is as light, my words of comfort are as welcome, among those suffering
wretches” (she pointed to the room in which the wounded men were lying)
“as if I was the most reputable woman breathing. And if a stray shot
comes my way before the war is over--well! Society will be rid of me on
easy terms.”

She stood looking thoughtfully into the wreck of the fire--as if she
saw in it the wreck of her own life. Common humanity made it an act of
necessity to say something to her. Grace considered--advanced a step
toward her--stopped--and took refuge in the most trivial of all the
common phrases which one human being can address to another.

“If there is anything I can do for you--” she began. The sentence,
halting there, was never finished. Miss Roseberry was just merciful
enough toward the lost woman who had rescued and sheltered her to feel
that it was needless to say more.

The nurse lifted her noble head and advanced slowly toward the canvas
screen to return to her duties. “Miss Roseberry might have taken my
hand!” she thought to herself, bitterly. No! Miss Roseberry stood there
at a distance, at a loss what to say next. “What can you do for
me?” Mercy asked, stung by the cold courtesy of her companion into a
momentary outbreak of contempt. “Can you change my identity? Can you
give me the name and the place of an innocent woman? If I only had your
chance! If I only had your reputation and your prospects!” She laid one
hand over her bosom, and controlled herself. “Stay here,” she resumed,
“while I go back to my work. I will see that your clothes are dried. You
shall wear my clothes as short a time as possible.”

With those melancholy words--touchingly, not bitterly spoken--she moved
to pass into the kitchen, when she noticed that the pattering sound of
the rain against the window was audible no more. Dropping the canvas for
the moment, she retraced her steps, and, unfastening the wooden shutter,
looked out.

The moon was rising dimly in the watery sky; the rain had ceased; the
friendly darkness which had hidden the French position from the German
scouts was lessening every moment. In a few hours more (if nothing
happened) the English lady might resume her journey. In a few hours more
the morning would dawn.

Mercy lifted her hand to close the shutter. Before she could fasten it
the report of a rifle-shot reached the cottage from one of the distant
posts. It was followed almost instantly by a second report, nearer and
louder than the first. Mercy paused, with the shutter in her hand, and
listened intently for the next sound.



CHAPTER III. THE GERMAN SHELL.

A THIRD rifle-shot rang through the night air, close to the cottage.
Grace started and approached the window in alarm.

“What does that firing mean?” she asked.

“Signals from the outposts,” the nurse quietly replied.

“Is there any danger? Have the Germans come back?”

Surgeon Surville answered the question. He lifted the canvas screen, and
looked into the room as Miss Roseberry spoke.

“The Germans are advancing on us,” he said. “Their vanguard is in
sight.”

Grace sank on the chair near her, trembling from head to foot. Mercy
advanced to the surgeon, and put the decisive question to him.

“Do we defend the position?” she inquired.

Surgeon Surville ominously shook his head.

“Impossible! We are outnumbered as usual--ten to one.”

The shrill roll of the French drums was heard outside.

“There is the retreat sounded!” said the surgeon. “The captain is not
a man to think twice about what he does. We are left to take care of
ourselves. In five minutes we must be out of this place.”

A volley of rifle-shots rang out as he spoke. The German vanguard
was attacking the French at the outposts. Grace caught the surgeon
entreatingly by the arm. “Take me with you,” she cried. “Oh, sir, I have
suffered from the Germans already! Don’t forsake me, if they come back!”
 The surgeon was equal to the occasion; he placed the hand of the pretty
Englishwoman on his breast. “Fear nothing, madam,” he said, looking
as if he could have annihilated the whole German force with his
own invincible arm. “A Frenchman’s heart beats under your hand. A
Frenchman’s devotion protects you.” Grace’s head sank on his shoulder.
Monsieur Surville felt that he had asserted himself; he looked round
invitingly at Mercy. She, too, was an attractive woman. The Frenchman
had another shoulder at _her_ service. Unhappily the room was dark--the
look was lost on Mercy. She was thinking of the helpless men in the
inner chamber, and she quietly recalled the surgeon to a sense of his
professional duties.

“What is to become of the sick and wounded?” she asked.

Monsieur Surville shrugged one shoulder--the shoulder that was free.

“The strongest among them we can take away with us,” he said. “The
others must be left here. Fear nothing for yourself, dear lady. There
will be a place for you in the baggage-wagon.”

“And for me, too?” Grace pleaded, eagerly.

The surgeon’s invincible arm stole round the young lady’s waist, and
answered mutely with a squeeze.

“Take her with you,” said Mercy. “My place is with the men whom you
leave behind.”

Grace listened in amazement. “Think what you risk,” she said “if you
stop here.”

Mercy pointed to her left shoulder.

“Don’t alarm yourself on my account,” she answered; “the red cross will
protect me.”

Another roll of the drum warned the susceptible surgeon to take his
place as director-general of the ambulance without any further delay. He
conducted Grace to a chair, and placed both her hands on his heart this
time, to reconcile her to the misfortune of his absence. “Wait here till
I return for you,” he whispered. “Fear nothing, my charming friend.
Say to yourself, ‘Surville is the soul of honor! Surville is devoted to
me!’” He struck his breast; he again forgot the obscurity in the room,
and cast one look of unutterable homage at his charming friend. “A
_bientot!_” he cried, and kissed his hand and disappeared.

As the canvas screen fell over him the sharp report of the rifle-firing
was suddenly and grandly dominated by the roar of cannon. The instant
after a shell exploded in the garden outside, within a few yards of the
window.

Grace sank on her knees with a shriek of terror. Mercy, without losing
her self-possession, advanced to the window and looked out.

“The moon has risen,” she said. “The Germans are shelling the village.”

Grace rose, and ran to her for protection.

“Take me away!” she cried. “We shall be killed if we stay here.” She
stopped, looking in astonishment at the tall black figure of the nurse,
standing immovably by the window. “Are you made of iron?” she exclaimed.
“Will nothing frighten you?”

Mercy smiled sadly. “Why should I be afraid of losing my life?” she
answered. “I have nothing worth living for!”

The roar of the cannon shook the cottage for the second time. A second
shell exploded in the courtyard, on the opposite side of the building.

Bewildered by the noise, panic-stricken as the danger from the shells
threatened the cottage more and more nearly, Grace threw her arms round
the nurse, and clung, in the abject familiarity of terror, to the woman
whose hand she had shrunk from touching not five minutes since. “Where
is it safest?” she cried. “Where can I hide myself?”

“How can I tell where the next shell will fall?” Mercy answered,
quietly.

The steady composure of the one woman seemed to madden the other.
Releasing the nurse, Grace looked wildly round for a way of escape from
the cottage. Making first for the kitchen, she was driven back by the
clamor and confusion attending the removal of those among the wounded
who were strong enough to be placed in the wagon. A second look round
showed her the door leading into the yard. She rushed to it with a cry
of relief. She had just laid her hand on the lock when the third report
of cannon burst over the place.

Starting back a step, Grace lifted her hands mechanically to her
ears. At the same moment the third shell burst through the roof of the
cottage, and exploded in the room, just inside the door. Mercy sprang
forward, unhurt, from her place at the window. The burning fragments of
the shell were already firing the dry wooden floor, and in the midst
of them, dimly seen through the smoke, lay the insensible body of her
companion in the room. Even at that dreadful moment the nurse’s presence
of mind did not fail her. Hurrying back to the place that she had just
left, near which she had already noticed the miller’s empty sacks lying
in a heap, she seized two of them, and, throwing them on the smoldering
floor, trampled out the fire. That done, she knelt by the senseless
woman, and lifted her head.

Was she wounded? or dead?

Mercy raised one helpless hand, and laid her fingers on the wrist.
While she was still vainly trying to feel for the beating of the pulse,
Surgeon Surville (alarmed for the ladies) hurried in to inquire if any
harm had been done.

Mercy called to him to approach. “I am afraid the shell has struck her,”
 she said, yielding her place to him. “See if she is badly hurt.”

The surgeon’s anxiety for his charming patient expressed itself briefly
in an oath, with a prodigious emphasis laid on one of the letters in
it--the letter R. “Take off her cloak,” he cried, raising his hand to
her neck. “Poor angel! She has turned in falling; the string is twisted
round her throat.”

Mercy removed the cloak. It dropped on the floor as the surgeon lifted
Grace in his arms. “Get a candle,” he said, impatiently; “they will give
you one in the kitchen.” He tried to feel the pulse: his hand trembled,
the noise and confusion in the kitchen bewildered him. “Just Heaven!”
 he exclaimed. “My emotions overpower me!” Mercy approached him with the
candle. The light disclosed the frightful injury which a fragment of
the shell had inflicted on the Englishwoman’s head. Surgeon Surville’s
manner altered on the instant. The expression of anxiety left his face;
its professional composure covered it suddenly like a mask. What was the
object of his admiration now? An inert burden in his arms--nothing more.

The change in his face was not lost on Mercy. Her large gray eyes
watched him attentively. “Is the lady seriously wounded?” she asked.

“Don’t trouble yourself to hold the light any longer,” was the cool
reply. “It’s all over--I can do nothing for her.”

“Dead?”

Surgeon Surville nodded and shook his fist in the direction of the
outposts. “Accursed Germans!” he cried, and looked down at the dead face
on his arm, and shrugged his shoulders resignedly. “The fortune of war!”
 he said as he lifted the body and placed it on the bed in one corner of
the room. “Next time, nurse, it may be you or me. Who knows? Bah! the
problem of human destiny disgusts me.” He turned from the bed, and
illustrated his disgust by spitting on the fragments of the exploded
shell. “We must leave her there,” he resumed. “She was once a charming
person--she is nothing now. Come away, Miss Mercy, before it is too
late.”

He offered his arm to the nurse; the creaking of the baggage-wagon,
starting on its journey, was heard outside, and the shrill roll of the
drums was renewed in the distance. The retreat had begun.

Mercy drew aside the canvas, and saw the badly wounded men, left
helpless at the mercy of the enemy, on their straw beds. She refused the
offer of Monsieur Surville’s arm.

“I have already told you that I shall stay here,” she answered.

Monsieur Surville lifted his hands in polite remonstrance. Mercy held
back the curtain, and pointed to the cottage door.

“Go,” she said. “My mind is made up.”

Even at that final moment the Frenchman asserted himself. He made his
exit with unimpaired grace and dignity. “Madam,” he said, “you are
sublime!” With that parting compliment the man of gallantry--true to the
last to his admiration of the sex--bowed, with his hand on his heart,
and left the cottage.

Mercy dropped the canvas over the doorway. She was alone with the dead
woman.

The last tramp of footsteps, the last rumbling of the wagon wheels, died
away in the distance. No renewal of firing from the position occupied by
the enemy disturbed the silence that followed. The Germans knew that
the French were in retreat. A few minutes more and they would take
possession of the abandoned village: the tumult of their approach
should become audible at the cottage. In the meantime the stillness was
terrible. Even the wounded wretches who were left in the kitchen waited
their fate in silence.

Alone in the room, Mercy’s first look was directed to the bed.

The two women had met in the confusion of the first skirmish at the
close of twilight. Separated, on their arrival at the cottage, by the
duties required of the nurse, they had only met again in the captain’s
room. The acquaintance between them had been a short one; and it had
given no promise of ripening into friendship. But the fatal accident
had roused Mercy’s interest in the stranger. She took the candle, and
approached the corpse of the woman who had been literally killed at her
side.

She stood by the bed, looking down in the silence of the night at the
stillness of the dead face.

It was a striking face--once seen (in life or in death) not to be
forgotten afterward. The forehead was unusually low and broad; the eyes
unusually far apart; the mouth and chin remarkably small. With tender
hands Mercy smoothed the disheveled hair and arranged the crumpled
dress. “Not five minutes since,” she thought to herself, “I was longing
to change places with _you!_” She turned from the bed with a sigh. “I
wish I could change places now!”

The silence began to oppress her. She walked slowly to the other end of
the room.

The cloak on the floor--her own cloak, which she had lent to Miss
Roseberry--attracted her attention as she passed it. She picked it up
and brushed the dust from it, and laid it across a chair. This done, she
put the light back on the table, and going to the window, listened for
the first sounds of the German advance. The faint passage of the wind
through some trees near at hand was the only sound that caught her ears.
She turned from the window, and seated herself at the table, thinking.
Was there any duty still left undone that Christian charity owed to the
dead? Was there any further service that pressed for performance in the
interval before the Germans appeared?

Mercy recalled the conversation that had passed between her ill-fated
companion and herself. Miss Roseberry had spoken of her object in
returning to England. She had mentioned a lady--a connection by
marriage, to whom she was personally a stranger--who was waiting to
receive her. Some one capable of stating how the poor creature had met
with her death ought to write to her only friend. Who was to do it?
There was nobody to do it but the one witness of the catastrophe now
left in the cottage--Mercy herself.

She lifted the cloak from the chair on which she had placed it, and took
from the pocket the leather letter-case which Grace had shown to her.
The only way of discovering the address to write to in England was to
open the case and examine the papers inside. Mercy opened the case--and
stopped, feeling a strange reluctance to carry the investigation any
farther.

A moment’s consideration satisfied her that her scruples were misplaced.
If she respected the case as inviolable, the Germans would certainly not
hesitate to examine it, and the Germans would hardly trouble themselves
to write to England. Which were the fittest eyes to inspect the papers
of the deceased lady--the eyes of men and foreigners, or the eyes of her
own countrywoman? Mercy’s hesitation left her. She emptied the contents
of the case on the table.

That trifling action decided the whole future course of her life.



CHAPTER IV. THE TEMPTATION.

Some letters, tied together with a ribbon, attracted Mercy’s attention
first. The ink in which the addresses were written had faded with
age. The letters, directed alternately to Colonel Roseberry and to the
Honorable Mrs. Roseberry, contained a correspondence between the husband
and wife at a time when the Colonel’s military duties had obliged him to
be absent from home. Mercy tied the letters up again, and passed on to
the papers that lay next in order under her hand.

These consisted of a few leaves pinned together, and headed (in a
woman’s handwriting) “My Journal at Rome.” A brief examination showed
that the journal had been written by Miss Roseberry, and that it was
mainly devoted to a record of the last days of her father’s life.

After replacing the journal and the correspondence in the case, the one
paper left on the table was a letter. The envelope, which was unclosed,
bore this address: “Lady Janet Roy, Mablethorpe House, Kensington,
London.” Mercy took the inclosure from the open envelope. The first
lines she read informed her that she had found the Colonel’s letter of
introduction, presenting his daughter to her protectress on her arrival
in England.

Mercy read the letter through. It was described by the writer as the
last efforts of a dying man. Colonel Roseberry wrote affectionately
of his daughter’s merits, and regretfully of her neglected
education--ascribing the latter to the pecuniary losses which had
forced him to emigrate to Canada in the character of a poor man. Fervent
expressions of gratitude followed, addressed to Lady Janet. “I owe it to
you,” the letter concluded, “that I am dying with my mind at ease about
the future of my darling girl. To your generous protection I commit the
one treasure I have left to me on earth. Through your long lifetime
you have nobly used your high rank and your great fortune as a means
of doing good. I believe it will not be counted among the least of your
virtues hereafter that you comforted the last hours of an old soldier by
opening your heart and your home to his friendless child.”

So the letter ended. Mercy laid it down with a heavy heart. What a
chance the poor girl had lost! A woman of rank and fortune waiting to
receive her--a woman so merciful and so generous that the father’s mind
had been easy about the daughter on his deathbed--and there the daughter
lay, beyond the reach of Lady Janet’s kindness, beyond the need of Lady
Janet’s help!

The French captain’s writing-materials were left on the table. Mercy
turned the letter over so that she might write the news of Miss
Roseberry’s death on the blank page at the end. She was still
considering what expressions she should use, when the sound of
complaining voices from the next room caught her ear. The wounded men
left behind were moaning for help--the deserted soldiers were losing
their fortitude at last.

She entered the kitchen. A cry of delight welcomed her appearance--the
mere sight of her composed the men. From one straw bed to another she
passed with comforting words that gave them hope, with skilled and
tender hands that soothed their pain. They kissed the hem of her black
dress, they called her their guardian angel, as the beautiful creature
moved among them, and bent over their hard pillows her gentle,
compassionate face. “I will be with you when the Germans come,” she
said, as she left them to return to her unwritten letter. “Courage, my
poor fellows! you are not deserted by your nurse.”

“Courage, madam!” the men replied; “and God bless you!”

If the firing had been resumed at that moment--if a shell had struck
her dead in the act of succoring the afflicted, what Christian judgment
would have hesitated to declare that there was a place for this woman
in heaven? But if the war ended and left her still living, where was the
place for her on earth? Where were her prospects? Where was her home?

She returned to the letter. Instead, however, of seating herself to
write, she stood by the table, absently looking down at the morsel of
paper.

A strange fancy had sprung to life in her mind on re-entering the room;
she herself smiled faintly at the extravagance of it. What if she were
to ask Lady Janet Roy to let her supply Miss Roseberry’s place? She had
met with Miss Roseberry under critical circumstances, and she had done
for her all that one woman could do to help another. There was in this
circumstance some little claim to notice, perhaps, if Lady Janet had no
other companion and reader in view. Suppose she ventured to plead her
own cause--what would the noble and merciful lady do? She would write
back, and say, “Send me references to your character, and I will
see what can be done.” Her character! Her references! Mercy laughed
bitterly, and sat down to write in the fewest words all that was needed
from her--a plain statement of the facts.

No! Not a line could she put on the paper. That fancy of hers was not
to be dismissed at will. Her mind was perversely busy now with an
imaginative picture of the beauty of Mablethorpe House and the comfort
and elegance of the life that was led there. Once more she thought of
the chance which Miss Roseberry had lost. Unhappy creature! what a home
would have been open to her if the shell had only fallen on the side of
the window, instead of on the side of the yard!

Mercy pushed the letter away from her, and walked impatiently to and fro
in the room.

The perversity in her thoughts was not to be mastered in that way. Her
mind only abandoned one useless train of reflection to occupy itself
with another. She was now looking by anticipation at her own future.
What were her prospects (if she lived through it) when the war was over?
The experience of the past delineated with pitiless fidelity the dreary
scene. Go where she might, do what she might, it would always end in the
same way. Curiosity and admiration excited by her beauty; inquiries made
about her; the story of the past discovered; Society charitably sorry
for her; Society generously subscribing for her; and still, through all
the years of her life, the same result in the end--the shadow of the old
disgrace surrounding her as with a pestilence, isolating her among other
women, branding her, even when she had earned her pardon in the sight of
God, with the mark of an indelible disgrace in the sight of man: there
was the prospect! And she was only five-and-twenty last birthday; she
was in the prime of her health and her strength; she might live, in the
course of nature, fifty years more!

She stopped again at the bedside; she looked again at the face of the
corpse.

To what end had the shell struck the woman who had some hope in her
life, and spared the woman who had none? The words she had herself
spoken to Grace Roseberry came back to her as she thought of it. “If I
only had your chance! If I only had your reputation and your prospects!”
 And there was the chance wasted! there were the enviable prospects
thrown away! It was almost maddening to contemplate that result, feeling
her own position as she felt it. In the bitter mockery of despair she
bent over the lifeless figure, and spoke to it as if it had ears to hear
her. “Oh!” she said, longingly, “if you could be Mercy Merrick, and if I
could be Grace Roseberry, _now!_”

The instant the words passed her lips she started into an erect
position. She stood by the bed with her eyes staring wildly into empty
space; with her brain in a flame; with her heart beating as if it would
stifle her. “If you could be Mercy Merrick, and if I could be Grace
Roseberry, now!” In one breathless moment the thought assumed a new
development in her mind. In one breathless moment the conviction struck
her like an electric shock. _She might be Grace Roseberry if she dared!_
There was absolutely nothing to stop her from presenting herself to Lady
Janet Roy under Grace’s name and in Grace’s place!

What were the risks? Where was the weak point in the scheme?

Grace had said it herself in so many words--she and Lady Janet had never
seen each other. Her friends were in Canada; her relations in England
were dead. Mercy knew the place in which she had lived--the place called
Port Logan--as well as she had known it herself. Mercy had only to read
the manuscript journal to be able to answer any questions relating to
the visit to Rome and to Colonel Roseberry’s death. She had no
accomplished lady to personate: Grace had spoken herself--her father’s
letter spoke also in the plainest terms--of her neglected education.
Everything, literally everything, was in the lost woman’s favor. The
people with whom she had been connected in the ambulance had gone,
to return no more. Her own clothes were on Miss Roseberry at that
moment--marked with her own name. Miss Roseberry’s clothes, marked with
_her_ name, were drying, at Mercy’s disposal, in the next room. The way
of escape from the unendurable humiliation of her present life lay open
before her at last. What a prospect it was! A new identity, which she
might own anywhere! a new name, which was beyond reproach! a new past
life, into which all the world might search, and be welcome! Her color
rose, her eyes sparkled; she had never been so irresistibly beautiful as
she looked at the moment when the new future disclosed itself, radiant
with new hope.

She waited a minute, until she could look at her own daring project from
another point of view. Where was the harm of it? what did her conscience
say?

As to Grace, in the first place. What injury was she doing to a woman
who was dead? The question answered itself. No injury to the woman. No
injury to her relations. Her relations were dead also.

As to Lady Janet, in the second place. If she served her new mistress
faithfully, if she filled her new sphere honorably, if she was diligent
under instruction and grateful for kindness--if, in one word, she was
all that she might be and would be in the heavenly peace and security
of that new life--what injury was she doing to Lady Janet? Once more the
question answered itself. She might, and would, give Lady Janet cause to
bless the day when she first entered the house.

She snatched up Colonel Roseberry’s letter, and put it into the case
with the other papers. The opportunity was before her; the chances were
all in her favor; her conscience said nothing against trying the daring
scheme. She decided then and there--“I’ll do it!”

Something jarred on her finer sense, something offended her better
nature, as she put the case into the pocket of her dress. She had
decided, and yet she was not at ease; she was not quite sure of having
fairly questioned her conscience yet. What if she laid the letter-case
on the table again, and waited until her excitement had all cooled down,
and then put the contemplated project soberly on its trial before her
own sense of right and wrong?

She thought once--and hesitated. Before she could think twice, the
distant tramp of marching footsteps and the distant clatter of horses’
hoofs were wafted to her on the night air. The Germans were entering the
village! In a few minutes more they would appear in the cottage; they
would summon her to give an account of herself. There was no time for
waiting until she was composed again. Which should it be--the new life,
as Grace Roseberry? or the old life, as Mercy Merrick?

She looked for the last time at the bed. Grace’s course was run; Grace’s
future was at her disposal. Her resolute nature, forced to a choice
on the instant, held by the daring alternative. She persisted in the
determination to take Grace’s place.

The tramping footsteps of the Germans came nearer and nearer. The voices
of the officers were audible, giving the words of command.

She seated herself at the table, waiting steadily for what was to come.

The ineradicable instinct of the sex directed her eyes to her dress,
before the Germans appeared. Looking it over to see that it was in
perfect order, her eyes fell upon the red cross on her left shoulder. In
a moment it struck her that her nurse’s costume might involve her in a
needless risk. It associated her with a public position; it might lead
to inquiries at a later time, and those inquiries might betray her.

She looked round. The gray cloak which she had lent to Grace attracted
her attention. She took it up, and covered herself with it from head to
foot.

The cloak was just arranged round her when she heard the outer door
thrust open, and voices speaking in a strange tongue, and arms grounded
in the room behind her. Should she wait to be discovered? or should she
show herself of her own accord? It was less trying to such a nature as
hers to show herself than to wait. She advanced to enter the kitchen.
The canvas curtain, as she stretched out her hand to it, was suddenly
drawn back from the other side, and three men confronted her in the open
doorway.



CHAPTER V. THE GERMAN SURGEON.

THE youngest of the three strangers--judging by features, complexion,
and manner--was apparently an Englishman. He wore a military cap and
military boots, but was otherwise dressed as a civilian. Next to him
stood an officer in Prussian uniform, and next to the officer was the
third and the oldest of the party. He also was dressed in uniform, but
his appearance was far from being suggestive of the appearance of a
military man. He halted on one foot, he stooped at the shoulders, and
instead of a sword at his side he carried a stick in his hand. After
looking sharply through a large pair of tortoise-shell spectacles, first
at Mercy, then at the bed, then all round the room, he turned with
a cynical composure of manner to the Prussian officer, and broke the
silence in these words:

“A woman ill on the bed; another woman in attendance on her, and no one
else in the room. Any necessity, major, for setting a guard here?”

“No necessity,” answered the major. He wheeled round on his heel and
returned to the kitchen. The German surgeon advanced a little, led by
his professional instinct, in the direction of the bedside. The young
Englishman, whose eyes had remained riveted in admiration on Mercy, drew
the canvas screen over the doorway and respectfully addressed her in the
French language.

“May I ask if I am speaking to a French lady?” he said.

“I am an Englishwoman,” Mercy replied.

The surgeon heard the answer. Stopping short on his way to the bed,
he pointed to the recumbent figure on it, and said to Mercy, in good
English, spoken with a strong German accent.

“Can I be of any use there?”

His manner was ironically courteous, his harsh voice was pitched in one
sardonic monotony of tone. Mercy took an instantaneous dislike to
this hobbling, ugly old man, staring at her rudely through his great
tortoiseshell spectacles.

“You can be of no use, sir,” she said, shortly. “The lady was killed
when your troops shelled this cottage.”

The Englishman started, and looked compassionately toward the bed.
The German refreshed himself with a pinch of snuff, and put another
question.

“Has the body been examined by a medical man?” he asked.

Mercy ungraciously limited her reply to the one necessary word “Yes.”

The present surgeon was not a man to be daunted by a lady’s disapproval
of him. He went on with his questions.

“Who has examined the body?” he inquired next.

Mercy answered, “The doctor attached to the French ambulance.”

The German grunted in contemptuous disapproval of all Frenchmen, and
all French institutions. The Englishman seized his first opportunity of
addressing himself to Mercy once more.

“Is the lady a countrywoman of ours?” he asked, gently.

Mercy considered before she answered him. With the object she had in
view, there might be serious reasons for speaking with extreme caution
when she spoke of Grace.

“I believe so,” she said. “We met here by accident. I know nothing of
her.”

“Not even her name?” inquired the German surgeon.

Mercy’s resolution was hardly equal yet to giving her own name openly as
the name of Grace. She took refuge in flat denial.

“Not even her name,” she repeated obstinately.

The old man stared at her more rudely than ever, considered with
himself, and took the candle from the table. He hobbled back to the bed
and examined the figure laid on it in silence. The Englishman continued
the conversation, no longer concealing the interest that he felt in the
beautiful woman who stood before him.

“Pardon me,” he said, “you are very young to be alone in war-time in
such a place as this.”

The sudden outbreak of a disturbance in the kitchen relieved Mercy from
any immediate necessity for answering him. She heard the voices of the
wounded men raised in feeble remonstrance, and the harsh command of the
foreign officers bidding them be silent. The generous instincts of the
woman instantly prevailed over every personal consideration imposed on
her by the position which she had assumed. Reckless whether she betrayed
herself or not as nurse in the French ambulance, she instantly drew
aside the canvas to enter the kitchen. A German sentinel barred the
way to her, and announced, in his own language, that no strangers were
admitted. The Englishman politely interposing, asked if she had any
special object in wishing to enter the room.

“The poor Frenchmen!” she said, earnestly, her heart upbraiding her for
having forgotten them. “The poor wounded Frenchmen!”

The German surgeon advanced from the bedside, and took the matter up
before the Englishman could say a word more.

“You have nothing to do with the wounded Frenchmen,” he croaked, in the
harshest notes of his voice. “The wounded Frenchmen are my business, and
not yours. They are _our_ prisoners, and they are being moved to _our_
ambulance. I am Ingatius Wetzel, chief of the medical staff--and I tell
you this. Hold your tongue.” He turned to the sentinel and added in
German, “Draw the curtain again; and if the woman persists, put her back
into this room with your own hand.”

Mercy attempted to remonstrate. The Englishman respectfully took her
arm, and drew her out of the sentinel’s reach.

“It is useless to resist,” he said. “The German discipline never gives
way. There is not the least need to be uneasy about the Frenchmen. The
ambulance under Surgeon Wetzel is admirably administered. I answer for
it, the men will be well treated.” He saw the tears in her eyes as he
spoke; his admiration for her rose higher and higher. “Kind as well as
beautiful,” he thought. “What a charming creature!”

“Well!” said Ignatius Wetzel, eying Mercy sternly through his
spectacles. “Are you satisfied? And will you hold your tongue?”

She yielded: it was plainly useless to resist. But for the surgeon’s
resistance, her devotion to the wounded men might have stopped her
on the downward way that she was going. If she could only have been
absorbed again, mind and body, in her good work as a nurse, the
temptation might even yet have found her strong enough to resist it. The
fatal severity of the German discipline had snapped asunder the last tie
that bound her to her better self. Her face hardened as she walked away
proudly from Surgeon Wetzel, and took a chair.

The Englishman followed her, and reverted to the question of her present
situation in the cottage.

“Don’t suppose that I want to alarm you,” he said. “There is, I repeat,
no need to be anxious about the Frenchmen, but there is serious reason
for anxiety on your own account. The action will be renewed round this
village by daylight; you ought really to be in a place of safety. I am
an officer in the English army--my name is Horace Holmcroft. I shall be
delighted to be of use to you, and I _can_ be of use, if you will let
me. May I ask if you are traveling?”

Mercy gathered the cloak which concealed her nurse’s dress more closely
round her, and committed herself silently to her first overt act of
deception. She bowed her head in the affirmative.

“Are you on your way to England?”

“Yes.”

“In that case I can pass you through the German lines, and forward you
at once on your journey.”

Mercy looked at him in unconcealed surprise. His strongly-felt interest
in her was restrained within the strictest limits of good-breeding: he
was unmistakably a gentleman. Did he really mean what he had just said?

“You can pass me through the German lines?” she repeated. “You must
possess extraordinary influence, sir, to be able to do that.”

Mr. Horace Holmcroft smiled.

“I possess the influence that no one can resist,” he answered--“the
influence of the Press. I am serving here as war correspondent of one of
our great English newspapers. If I ask him, the commanding officer will
grant you a pass. He is close to this cottage. What do you say?”

She summoned her resolution--not without difficulty, even now--and took
him at his word.

“I gratefully accept your offer, sir.”

He advanced a step toward the kitchen, and stopped.

“It may be well to make the application as privately as possible,” he
said. “I shall be questioned if I pass through that room. Is there no
other way out of the cottage?”

Mercy showed him the door leading into the yard. He bowed--and left her.

She looked furtively toward the German surgeon. Ignatius Wetzel was
still at the bed, bending over the body, and apparently absorbed in
examining the wound which had been inflicted by the shell. Mercy’s
instinctive aversion to the old man increased tenfold, now that she was
left alone with him. She withdrew uneasily to the window, and looked out
at the moonlight.

Had she committed herself to the fraud? Hardly, yet. She had committed
herself to returning to England--nothing more. There was no necessity,
thus far, which forced her to present herself at Mablethorpe House, in
Grace’s place. There was still time to reconsider her resolution--still
time to write the account of the accident, as she had proposed, and
to send it with the letter-case to Lady Janet Roy. Suppose she finally
decided on taking this course, what was to become of her when she found
herself in England again? There was no alternative open but to apply
once more to her friend the matron. There was nothing for her to do but
to return to the Refuge!

The Refuge! The matron! What past association with these two was now
presenting itself uninvited, and taking the foremost place in her mind?
Of whom was she now thinking, in that strange place, and at that crisis
in her life? Of the man whose words had found their way to her heart,
whose influence had strengthened and comforted her, in the chapel of
the Refuge. One of the finest passages in his sermon had been especially
devoted by Julian Gray to warning the congregation whom he addressed
against the degrading influences of falsehood and deceit. The terms
in which he had appealed to the miserable women round him--terms of
sympathy and encouragement never addressed to them before--came back to
Mercy Merrick as if she had heard them an hour since. She turned deadly
pale as they now pleaded with her once more. “Oh!” she whispered to
herself, as she thought of what she had proposed and planned, “what have
I done? what have I done?”

She turned from the window with some vague idea in her mind of following
Mr. Holmcroft and calling him back. As she faced the bed again she also
confronted Ignatius Wetzel. He was just stepping forward to speak to
her, with a white handkerchief--the handkerchief which she had lent to
Grace--held up in his hand.

“I have found this in her pocket,” he said. “Here is her name written on
it. She must be a countrywoman of yours.” He read the letters marked on
the handkerchief with some difficulty. “Her name is--Mercy Merrick.”

_His_ lips had said it--not hers! _He_ had given her the name.

“‘Mercy Merrick’ is an English name?” pursued Ignatius Wetzel, with his
eyes steadily fixed on her. “Is it not so?”

The hold on her mind of the past association with Julian Gray began to
relax. One present and pressing question now possessed itself of the
foremost place in her thoughts. Should she correct the error into which
the German had fallen? The time had come--to speak, and assert her own
identity; or to be silent, and commit herself to the fraud.

Horace Holmcroft entered the room again at the moment when Surgeon
Wetzel’s staring eyes were still fastened on her, waiting for her reply.

“I have not overrated my interest,” he said, pointing to a little slip
of paper in his hand. “Here is the pass. Have you got pen and ink? I
must fill up the form.”

Mercy pointed to the writing materials on the table. Horace seated
himself, and dipped the pen in the ink.

“Pray don’t think that I wish to intrude myself into your affairs,” he
said. “I am obliged to ask you one or two plain questions. What is your
name?”

A sudden trembling seized her. She supported herself against the foot
of the bed. Her whole future existence depended on her answer. She was
incapable of uttering a word.

Ignatius Wetzel stood her friend for once. His croaking voice filled
the empty gap of silence exactly at the right time. He doggedly held the
handkerchief under her eyes. He obstinately repeated: “Mercy Merrick is
an English name. Is it not so?”

Horace Holmcroft looked up from the table. “Mercy Merrick?” he said.
“Who is Mercy Merrick?”

Surgeon Wetzel pointed to the corpse on the bed.

“I have found the name on the handkerchief,” he said. “This lady,
it seems, had not curiosity enough to look for the name of her own
countrywoman.” He made that mocking allusion to Mercy with a tone which
was almost a tone of suspicion, and a look which was almost a look of
contempt. Her quick temper instantly resented the discourtesy of which
she had been made the object. The irritation of the moment--so often
do the most trifling motives determine the most serious human
actions--decided her on the course that she should pursue. She turned
her back scornfully on the rude old man, and left him in the delusion
that he had discovered the dead woman’s name.

Horace returned to the business of filling up the form. “Pardon me for
pressing the question,” he said. “You know what German discipline is by
this time. What is your name?”

She answered him recklessly, defiantly, without fairly realizing what
she was doing until it was done.

“Grace Roseberry,” she said.

The words were hardly out of her mouth before she would have given
everything she possessed in the world to recall them.

“Miss?” asked Horace, smiling.

She could only answer him by bowing her head.

He wrote: “Miss Grace Roseberry”--reflected for a moment--and then
added, interrogatively, “Returning to her friends in England?” Her
friends in England? Mercy’s heart swelled: she silently replied by
another sign. He wrote the words after the name, and shook the sandbox
over the wet ink. “That will be enough,” he said, rising and presenting
the pass to Mercy; “I will see you through the lines myself, and arrange
for your being sent on by the railway. Where is your luggage?”

Mercy pointed toward the front door of the building. “In a shed outside
the cottage,” she answered. “It is not much; I can do everything for
myself if the sentinel will let me pass through the kitchen.”

Horace pointed to the paper in her hand. “You can go where you like
now,” he said. “Shall I wait for you here or outside?”

Mercy glanced distrustfully at Ignatius Wetzel. He was again absorbed
in his endless examination of the body on the bed. If she left him alone
with Mr. Holmcroft, there was no knowing what the hateful old man might
not say of her. She answered:

“Wait for me outside, if you please.”

The sentinel drew back with a military salute at the sight of the pass.
All the French prisoners had been removed; there were not more than
half-a-dozen Germans in the kitchen, and the greater part of them were
asleep. Mercy took Grace Roseberry’s clothes from the corner in which
they had been left to dry, and made for the shed--a rough structure of
wood, built out from the cottage wall. At the front door she encountered
a second sentinel, and showed her pass for the second time. She spoke
to this man, asking him if he understood French. He answered that he
understood a little. Mercy gave him a piece of money, and said: “I am
going to pack up my luggage in the shed. Be kind enough to see that
nobody disturbs me.” The sentinel saluted, in token that he understood.
Mercy disappeared in the dark interior of the shed.

Left alone with Surgeon Wetzel, Horace noticed the strange old man still
bending intently over the English lady who had been killed by the shell.

“Anything remarkable,” he asked, “in the manner of that poor creature’s
death?”

“Nothing to put in a newspaper,” retorted the cynic, pursuing his
investigations as attentively as ever.

“Interesting to a doctor--eh?” said Horace.

“Yes. Interesting to a doctor,” was the gruff reply.

Horace good-humoredly accepted the hint implied in those words. He
quitted the room by the door leading into the yard, and waited for the
charming Englishwoman, as he had been instructed, outside the cottage.

Left by himself, Ignatius Wetzel, after a first cautious look all round
him, opened the upper part of Grace’s dress, and laid his left hand on
her heart. Taking a little steel instrument from his waistcoat pocket
with the other hand, he applied it carefully to the wound, raised a
morsel of the broken and depressed bone of the skull, and waited for the
result. “Aha!” he cried, addressing with a terrible gayety the
senseless creature under his hands. “The Frenchman says you are dead,
my dear--does he? The Frenchman is a Quack! The Frenchman is an Ass!”
 He lifted his head, and called into the kitchen. “Max!” A sleepy young
German, covered with a dresser’s apron from his chin to his feet, drew
the curtain, and waited for his instructions. “Bring me my black bag,”
 said Ignatius Wetzel. Having given that order, he rubbed his hands
cheerfully, and shook himself like a dog. “Now I am quite happy,”
 croaked the terrible old man, with his fierce eyes leering sidelong
at the bed. “My dear, dead Englishwoman, I would not have missed this
meeting with you for all the money I have in the world. Ha! you infernal
French Quack, you call it death, do you? I call it suspended animation
from pressure on the brain!”

Max appeared with the black bag.

Ignatius Wetzel selected two fearful instruments, bright and new, and
hugged them to his bosom. “My little boys,” he said, tenderly, as if
they were his children; “my blessed little boys, come to work!” He
turned to the assistant. “Do you remember the battle of Solferino,
Max--and the Austrian soldier I operated on for a wound on the head?”

The assistant’s sleepy eyes opened wide; he was evidently interested. “I
remember,” he said. “I held the candle.”

The master led the way to the bed.

“I am not satisfied with the result of that operation at Solferino,” he
said; “I have wanted to try again ever since. It’s true that I saved the
man’s life, but I failed to give him back his reason along with it. It
might have been something wrong in the operation, or it might have been
something wrong in the man. Whichever it was, he will live and die mad.
Now look here, my little Max, at this dear young lady on the bed. She
gives me just what I wanted; here is the case at Solferino once more.
You shall hold the candle again, my good boy; stand there, and look with
all your eyes. I am going to try if I can save the life and the reason
too this time.”

He tucked up the cuffs of his coat and began the operation. As his
fearful instruments touched Grace’s head, the voice of the sentinel at
the nearest outpost was heard, giving the word in German which permitted
Mercy to take the first step on her journey to England:

“Pass the English lady!”

The operation proceeded. The voice of the sentinel at the next post was
heard more faintly, in its turn: “Pass the English lady!”

The operation ended. Ignatius Wetzel held up his hand for silence and
put his ear close to the patient’s mouth.

The first trembling breath of returning life fluttered over Grace
Roseberry’s lips and touched the old man’s wrinkled cheek. “Aha!” he
cried. “Good girl! you breathe--you live!” As he spoke, the voice of the
sentinel at the final limit of the German lines (barely audible in the
distance) gave the word for the last time:

“Pass the English lady!”




SECOND SCENE.--Mablethorpe House.

PREAMBLE.

THE place is England.

The time is winter, in the year eighteen hundred and seventy.

The persons are, Julian Gray, Horace Holmcroft, Lady Janet Roy, Grace
Roseberry, and Mercy Merrick.



CHAPTER VI. LADY JANET’S COMPANION.

IT is a glorious winter’s day. The sky is clear, the frost is hard, the
ice bears for skating.

The dining-room of the ancient mansion called Mablethorpe House,
situated in the London suburb of Kensington, is famous among artists
and other persons of taste for the carved wood-work, of Italian origin,
which covers the walls on three sides. On the fourth side the march of
modern improvement has broken in, and has va ried and brightened the
scene by means of a conservatory, forming an entrance to the room
through a winter-garden of rare plants and flowers. On your right hand,
as you stand fronting the conservatory, the monotony of the paneled wall
is relieved by a quaintly patterned door of old inlaid wood, leading
into the library, and thence, across the great hall, to the other
reception-rooms of the house. A corresponding door on the left hand
gives access to the billiard-room, to the smoking-room next to it,
and to a smaller hall commanding one of the secondary entrances to the
building. On the left side also is the ample fireplace, surmounted by
its marble mantelpiece, carved in the profusely and confusedly ornate
style of eighty years since. To the educated eye the dining-room, with
its modern furniture and conservatory, its ancient walls and doors,
and its lofty mantelpiece (neither very old nor very new), presents a
startling, almost a revolutionary, mixture of the decorative workmanship
of widely differing schools. To the ignorant eye the one result
produced is an impression of perfect luxury and comfort, united in the
friendliest combination, and developed on the largest scale.

The clock has just struck two. The table is spread for luncheon.

The persons seated at the table are three in number. First, Lady Janet
Roy. Second, a young lady who is her reader and companion. Third, a
guest staying in the house, who has already appeared in these pages
under the name of Horace Holmcroft--attached to the German army as war
correspondent of an English newspaper.

Lady Janet Roy needs but little introduction. Everybody with the
slightest pretension to experience in London society knows Lady Janet
Roy.

Who has not heard of her old lace and her priceless rubies? Who has not
admired her commanding figure, her beautifully dressed white hair, her
wonderful black eyes, which still preserve their youthful brightness,
after first opening on the world seventy years since? Who has not felt
the charm of her frank, easily flowing talk, her inexhaustible spirits,
her good-humored, gracious sociability of manner? Where is the modern
hermit who is not familiarly acquainted, by hearsay at least, with
the fantastic novelty and humor of her opinions; with her generous
encouragement of rising merit of any sort, in all ranks, high or low;
with her charities, which know no distinction between abroad and at
home; with her large indulgence, which no ingratitude can discourage,
and no servility pervert? Everybody has heard of the popular old
lady--the childless widow of a long-forgotten lord. Everybody knows Lady
Janet Roy.

But who knows the handsome young woman sitting on her right hand,
playing with her luncheon instead of eating it? Nobody really knows her.

She is prettily dressed in gray poplin, trimmed with gray velvet, and
set off by a ribbon of deep red tied in a bow at the throat. She is
nearly as tall as Lady Janet herself, and possesses a grace and beauty
of figure not always seen in women who rise above the medium height.
Judging by a certain innate grandeur in the carriage of her head and in
the expression of her large melancholy gray eyes, believers in blood and
breeding will be apt to guess that this is another noble lady. Alas! she
is nothing but Lady Janet’s companion and reader. Her head, crowned with
its lovely light brown hair, bends with a gentle respect when Lady Janet
speaks. Her fine firm hand is easily and incessantly watchful to supply
Lady Janet’s slightest wants. The old lady--affectionately familiar
with her--speaks to her as she might speak to an adopted child. But the
gratitude of the beautiful companion has always the same restraint in
its acknowledgment of kindness; the smile of the beautiful companion
has always the same underlying sadness when it responds to Lady Janet’s
hearty laugh. Is there something wrong here, under the surface? Is she
suffering in mind, or suffering in body? What is the matter with her?

The matter with her is secret remorse. This delicate and beautiful
creature pines under the slow torment of constant self-reproach.

To the mistress of the house, and to all who inhabit it or enter it,
she is known as Grace Roseberry, the orphan relative by marriage of Lady
Janet Roy. To herself alone she is known as the outcast of the London
streets; the inmate of the London Refuge; the lost woman who has stolen
her way back--after vainly trying to fight her way back--to Home and
Name. There she sits in the grim shadow of her own terrible secret,
disguised in another person’s identity, and established in another
person’s place. Mercy Merrick had only to dare, and to become Grace
Roseberry if she pleased. She has dared, and she has been Grace
Roseberry for nearly four months past.

At this moment, while Lady Janet is talking to Horace Holmcroft,
something that has passed between them has set her thinking of the day
when she took the first fatal step which committed her to the fraud.

How marvelously easy of accomplishment the act of personation had been!
At first sight Lady Janet had yielded to the fascination of the noble
and interesting face. No need to present the stolen letter; no need
to repeat the ready-made story. The old lady had put the letter aside
unopened, and had stopped the story at the first words. “Your face is
your introduction, my dear; your father can say nothing for you which
you have not already said for yourself.” There was the welcome which
established her firmly in her false identity at the outset. Thanks
to her own experience, and thanks to the “Journal” of events at
Rome, questions about her life in Canada and questions about Colonel
Roseberry’s illness found her ready with answers which (even if
suspicion had existed) would have disarmed suspicion on the spot. While
the true Grace was slowly and painfully winning her way back to life
on her bed in a German hospital, the false Grace was presented to
Lady Janet’s friends as the relative by marriage of the Mistress of
Mablethorpe House. From that time forward nothing had happened to rouse
in her the faintest suspicion that Grace Roseberry was other than a
dead-and-buried woman. So far as she now knew--so far as any one now
knew--she might live out her life in perfect security (if her conscience
would let her), respected, distinguished, and beloved, in the position
which she had usurped.



She rose abruptly from the table. The effort of her life was to shake
herself free of the remembrances which haunted her perpetually as they
were haunting her now. Her memory was her worst enemy; her one refuge
from it was in change of occupation and change of scene.

“May I go into the conservatory, Lady Janet?” she asked.

“Certainly, my dear.”

She bent her head to her protectress, looked for a moment with a steady,
compassionate attention at Horace Holmcroft, and, slowly crossing the
room, entered the winter-garden. The eyes of Horace followed her, as
long as she was in view, with a curious contradictory expression
of admiration and disapproval. When she had passed out of sight the
admiration vanished, but the disapproval remained. The face of the young
man contracted into a frown: he sat silent, with his fork in his hand,
playing absently with the fragments on his plate.

“Take some French pie, Horace,” said Lady Janet.

“No, thank you.”

“Some more chicken, then?”

“No more chicken.”

“Will nothing tempt you?”

“I will take some more wine, if you will allow me.”

He filled his glass (for the fifth or sixth time) with claret, and
emptied it sullenly at a draught. Lady Janet’s bright eyes watched him
with sardonic attention; Lady Janet’s ready tongue spoke out as freely
as usual what was passing in her mind at the time.

“The air of Kensington doesn’t seem to suit you, my young friend,” she
said. “The longer you have been my guest, the oftener you fill your
glass and empty your cigar-case. Those are bad signs in a young man.
When you first came here you arrived invalided by a wound. In your
place, I should not have exposed myself to be shot, with no other
object in view than describing a battle in a newspaper. I suppose tastes
differ. Are you ill? Does your wound still plague you?”

“Not in the least.”

“Are you out of spirits?”

Horace Holmcroft dropped his fork, rested his elbows on the table, and
answered:

“Awfully.”

Even Lady Janet’s large toleration had its limits. It embraced every
human offense except a breach of good manners. She snatched up the
nearest weapon of correction at hand--a tablespoon--and rapped her young
friend smartly with it on the arm that was nearest to her.

“My table is not the club table,” said the old lady. “Hold up your head.
Don’t look at your fork--look at me. I allow nobody to be out of spirits
in My house. I consider it to be a reflection on Me. If our quiet life
here doesn’t suit you, say so plainly, and find something else to do.
There is employment to be had, I suppose--if you choose to apply for it?
You needn’t smile. I don’t want to see your teeth--I want an answer.”

Horace admitted, with all needful gravity, that there was employment to
be had. The war between France and Germany, he remarked, was still going
on: the newspaper had offered to employ him again in the capacity of
correspondent.

“Don’t speak of the newspapers and the war!” cried Lady Janet, with a
sudden explosion of anger, which was genuine anger this time. “I detest
the newspapers! I won’t allow the newspapers to enter this house. I lay
the whole blame of the blood shed between France and Germany at their
door.”

Horace’s eyes opened wide in amazement. The old lady was evidently in
earnest. “What can you possibly mean?” he asked. “Are the newspapers
responsible for the war?”

“Entirely responsible,” answered Lady Janet. “Why, you don’t understand
the age you live in! Does anybody do anything nowadays (fighting
included) without wishing to see it in the newspapers? _I_ subscribe
to a charity; _thou_ art presented with a testimonial; _he_ preaches a
sermon; _we_ suffer a grievance; _you_ make a discovery; _they_ go to
church and get married. And I, thou, he; we, you, they, all want one and
the same thing--we want to see it in the papers. Are kings, soldiers,
and diplomatists exceptions to the general rule of humanity? Not they! I
tell you seriously, if the newspapers of Europe had one and all decided
not to take the smallest notice in print of the war between France and
Germany, it is my firm conviction the war would have come to an end for
want of encouragement long since. Let the pen cease to advertise the
sword, and I, for one, can see the result. No report--no fighting.”

“Your views have the merit of perfect novelty, ma’am,” said Horace.
“Would you object to see them in the newspapers?”

Lady Janet worsted her young friend with his own weapons.

“Don’t I live in the latter part of the nineteenth century?” she asked.
“In the newspapers, did you say? In large type, Horace, if you love me!”

Horace changed the subject.

“You blame me for being out of spirits,” he said; “and you seem to think
it is because I am tired of my pleasant life at Mablethorpe House. I am
not in the least tired, Lady Janet.” He looked toward the conservatory:
the frown showed itself on his face once more. “The truth is,” he
resumed, “I am not satisfied with Grace Roseberry.”

“What has Grace done?”

“She persists in prolonging our engagement. Nothing will persuade her to
fix the day for our marriage.”

It was true! Mercy had been mad enough to listen to him, and to
love him. But Mercy was not vile enough to marry him under her false
character, and in her false name. Between three and four months had
elapsed since Horace had been sent home from the war, wounded, and
had found the beautiful Englishwoman whom he had befriended in France
established at Mablethorpe House. Invited to become Lady Janet’s
guest (he had passed his holidays as a school-boy under Lady Janet’s
roof)--free to spend the idle time of his convalescence from morning to
night in Mercy’s society--the impression originally produced on him in
a French cottage soon strengthened into love. Before the month was out
Horace had declared himself, and had discovered that he spoke to willing
ears. From that moment it was only a question of persisting long
enough in the resolution to gain his point. The marriage engagement was
ratified--most reluctantly on the lady’s side--and there the further
progress of Horace Holmcroft’s suit came to an end. Try as he might, he
failed to persuade his betrothed wife to fix the day for the marriage.
There were no obstacles in her way. She had no near relations of her own
to consult. As a connection of Lady Janet’s by marriage, Horace’s mother
and sisters were ready to receive her with all the honors due to a new
member of the family. No pecuniary considerations made it necessary, in
this case, to wait for a favorable time. Horace was an only son; and he
had succeeded to his father’s estate with an ample income to support
it. On both sides alike there was absolutely nothing to prevent the
two young people from being married as soon as the settlements could
be drawn. And yet, to all appearance, here was a long engagement
in prospect, with no better reason than the lady’s incomprehensible
perversity to explain the delay. “Can you account for Grace’s conduct?”
 asked Lady Janet. Her manner changed as she put the question. She looked
and spoke like a person who was perplexed and annoyed.

“I hardly like to own it,” Horace answered, “but I am afraid she has
some motive for deferring our marriage which she cannot confide either
to you or to me.”

Lady Janet started.

“What makes you think that?” she asked.

“I have once or twice caught her in tears. Every now and then--sometimes
when she is talking quite gayly--she suddenly changes color and becomes
silent and depressed. Just now, when she left the table (didn’t you
notice it?), she looked at me in the strangest way--almost as if she was
sorry for me. What do these things mean?”

Horace’s reply, instead of increasing Lady Janet’s anxiety, seemed to
relieve it. He had observed nothing which she had not noticed herself.
“You foolish boy!” she said, “the meaning is plain enough. Grace has
been out of health for some time past. The doctor recommends change of
air. I shall take her away with me.”

“It would be more to the purpose,” Horace rejoined, “if I took her away
with me. She might consent, if you would only use your influence. Is
it asking too much to ask you to persuade her? My mother and my sisters
have written to her, and have produced no effect. Do me the greatest of
all kindnesses--speak to her to-day!” He paused, and possessing himself
of Lady Janet’s hand, pressed it entreatingly. “You have always been so
good to me,” he said, softly, and pressed it again.

The old lady looked at him. It was impossible to dispute that there were
attractions in Horace Holmcroft’s face which made it well worth looking
at. Many a woman might have envied him his clear complexion, his
bright blue eyes, and the warm amber tint in his light Saxon hair.
Men--especially men skilled in observing physiognomy--might have noticed
in the shape of his forehead and in the line of his upper lip the signs
indicative of a moral nature deficient in largeness and breadth--of
a mind easily accessible to strong prejudices, and obstinate in
maintaining those prejudices in the face of conviction itself.

To the observation of women these remote defects were too far below
the surface to be visible. He charmed the sex in general by his rare
personal advantages, and by the graceful deference of his manner. To
Lady Janet he was endeared, not by his own merits only, but by old
associations that were connected with him. His father had been one of
her many admirers in her young days. Circumstances had parted them. Her
marriage to another man had been a childless marriage. In past times,
when the boy Horace had come to her from school, she had cherished a
secret fancy (too absurd to be communicated to any living creature) that
he ought to have been _her_ son, and might have been her son, if she had
married his father! She smiled charmingly, old as she was--she yielded
as his mother might have yielded--when the young man took her hand and
entreated her to interest herself in his marriage. “Must I really speak
to Grace?” she asked, with a gentleness of tone and manner far from
characteristic, on ordinary occasions, of the lady of Mablethorpe House.
Horace saw that he had gained his point. He sprang to his feet; his eyes
turned eagerly in the direction of the conservatory; his handsome face
was radiant with hope. Lady Janet (with her mind full of his father)
stole a last look at him, sighed as she thought of the vanished days,
and recovered herself.

“Go to the smoking-room,” she said, giving him a push toward the door.
“Away with you, and cultivate the favorite vice of the nineteenth
century.” Horace attempted to express his gratitude. “Go and smoke!” was
all she said, pushing him out. “Go and smoke!”

Left by herself, Lady Janet took a turn in the room, and considered a
little.

Horace’s discontent was not unreasonable. There was really no excuse for
the delay of which he complained. Whether the young lady had a special
motive for hanging back, or whether she was merely fretting because she
did not know her own mind, it was, in either case, necessary to come to
a distinct understanding, sooner or later, on the serious question of
the marriage. The difficulty was, how to approach the subject without
giving offense. “I don’t understand the young women of the present
generation,” thought Lady Janet. “In my time, when we were fond of a
man, we were ready to marry him at a moment’s notice. And this is an age
of progress! They ought to be readier still.”

Arriving, by her own process of induction, at this inevitable
conclusion, she decided to try what her influence could accomplish, and
to trust to the inspiration of the moment for exerting it in the right
way. “Grace!” she called out, approaching the conservatory door.
The tall, lithe figure in its gray dress glided into view, and stood
relieved against the green background of the winter-garden.

“Did your ladyship call me?”

“Yes; I want to speak to you. Come and sit down by me.”

With those words Lady Janet led the way to a sofa, and placed her
companion by her side.



CHAPTER VII. THE MAN IS COMING.

“You look very pale this morning, my child.”

Mercy sighed wearily. “I am not well,” she answered. “The slightest
noises startle me. I feel tired if I only walk across the room.”

Lady Janet patted her kindly on the shoulder. “We must try what a change
will do for you. Which shall it be? the Continent or the sea-side?”

“Your ladyship is too kind to me.”

“It is impossible to be too kind to you.”

Mercy started. The color flowed charmingly over her pale face. “Oh!” she
exclaimed, impulsively. “Say that again!”

“Say it again?” repeated Lady Janet, with a look of surprise.

“Yes! Don’t think me presuming; only think me vain. I can’t hear you say
too often that you have learned to like me. Is it really a pleasure to
you to have me in the house? Have I always behaved well since I have
been with you?”

(The one excuse for the act of personation--if excuse there could
be--lay in the affirmative answer to those questions. It would be
something, surely, to say of the false Grace that the true Grace could
not have been worthier of her welcome, if the true Grace had been
received at Mablethorpe House!)

Lady Janet was partly touched, partly amused, by the extraordinary
earnestness of the appeal that had been made to her.

“Have you behaved well?” she repeated. “My dear, you talk as if you were
a child!” She laid her hand caressingly on Mercy’s arm, and continued,
in a graver tone: “It is hardly too much to say, Grace, that I bless the
day when you first came to me. I do believe I could be hardly fonder of
you if you were my own daughter.”

Mercy suddenly turned her head aside, so as to hide her face. Lady
Janet, still touching her arm, felt it tremble. “What is the matter with
you?” she asked, in her abrupt, downright manner.

“I am only very grateful to your ladyship--that is all.” The words were
spoken faintly, in broken tones. The face was still averted from Lady
Janet’s view. “What have I said to provoke this?” wondered the old lady.
“Is she in the melting mood to-day? If she is, now is the time to say
a word for Horace!” Keeping that excellent object in view, Lady Janet
approached the delicate topic with all needful caution at starting.

“We have got on so well together,” she resumed, “that it will not be
easy for either of us to feel reconciled to a change in our lives. At
my age, it will fall hardest on me. What shall I do, Grace, when the day
comes for parting with my adopted daughter?”

Mercy started, and showed her face again. The traces of tears were in
her eyes. “Why should I leave you?” she asked, in a tone of alarm.

“Surely you know!” exclaimed Lady Janet.

“Indeed I don’t. Tell me why.”

“Ask Horace to tell you.”

The last allusion was too plain to be misunderstood. Mercy’s head
drooped. She began to tremble again. Lady Janet looked at her in blank
amazement.

“Is there anything wrong between Horace and you?” she asked.

“No.”

“You know your own heart, my dear child? You have surely not encouraged
Horace without loving him?”

“Oh no!”

“And yet--”

For the first time in their experience of each other Mercy ventured to
interrupt her benefactress. “Dear Lady Janet,” she interposed, gently,
“I am in no hurry to be married. There will be plenty of time in the
future to talk of that. You had something you wished to say to me. What
is it?”

It was no easy matter to disconcert Lady Janet Roy. But that last
question fairly reduced her to silence. After all that had passed,
there sat her young companion, innocent of the faintest suspicion of the
subject that was to be discussed between them! “What are the young women
of the present time made of?” thought the old lady, utterly at a loss to
know what to say next. Mercy waited, on her side, with an impenetrable
patience which only aggravated the difficulties of the position. The
silence was fast threatening to bring the interview to a sudden and
untimely end, when the door from the library opened, and a man-servant,
bearing a little silver salver, entered the room.

Lady Janet’s rising sense of annoyance instantly seized on the servant
as a victim. “What do you want?” she asked, sharply. “I never rang for
you.”

“A letter, my lady. The messenger waits for an answer.”

The man presented his salver with the letter on it, and withdrew.

Lady Janet recognized the handwriting on the address with a look
of surprise. “Excuse me, my dear,” she said, pausing, with her
old-fashioned courtesy, before she opened the envelope. Mercy made the
necessary acknowledgment, and moved away to the other end of the room,
little thinking that the arrival of the letter marked a crisis in her
life. Lady Janet put on her spectacles. “Odd that he should have come
back already!” she said to herself, as she threw the empty envelope on
the table.

The letter contained these lines, the writer of them being no other than
the man who had preached in the chapel of the Refuge:

“DEAR AUNT--I am back again in London before my time. My friend the
rector has shortened his holiday, and has resumed his duties in the
country. I am afraid you will blame me when you hear of the reasons
which have hastened his return. The sooner I make my confession, the
easier I shall feel. Besides, I have a special object in wishing to see
you as soon as possible. May I follow my letter to Mablethorpe House?
And may I present a lady to you--a perfect stranger--in whom I am
interested? Pray say Yes, by the bearer, and oblige your affectionate
nephew,

“JULIAN GRAY.”


Lady Janet referred again suspiciously to the sentence in the letter
which alluded to the “lady.”

Julian Gray was her only surviving nephew, the son of a favorite sister
whom she had lost. He would have held no very exalted position in the
estimation of his aunt--who regarded his views in politics and religion
with the strongest aversion--but for his marked resemblance to his
mother. This pleaded for him with the old lady, aided as it was by the
pride that she secretly felt in the early celebrity which the young
clergyman had achieved as a writer and a preacher. Thanks to these
mitigating circumstances, and to Julian’s inexhaustible good-humor, the
aunt and the nephew generally met on friendly terms. Apart from what
she called “his detestable opinions,” Lady Janet was sufficiently
interested in Julian to feel some curiosity about the mysterious “lady”
 mentioned in the letter. Had he determined to settle in life? Was his
choice already made? And if so, would it prove to be a choice acceptable
to the family? Lady Janet’s bright face showed signs of doubt as she
asked herself that last question. Julian’s liberal views were capable of
leading him to dangerous extremes. His aunt shook her head ominously as
she rose from the sofa and advanced to the library door.

“Grace,” she said, pausing and turning round, “I have a note to write to
my nephew. I shall be back directly.”

Mercy approached her, from the opposite extremity of the room, with an
exclamation of surprise.

“Your nephew?” she repeated. “Your ladyship never told me you had a
nephew.”

Lady Janet laughed. “I must have had it on the tip of my tongue to tell
you, over and over again,” she said. “But we have had so many things to
talk about--and, to own the truth, my nephew is not one of my favorite
subjects of conversation. I don’t mean that I dislike him; I detest
his principles, my dear, that’s all. However, you shall form your own
opinion of him; he is coming to see me to-day. Wait here till I return;
I have something more to say about Horace.”

Mercy opened the library door for her, closed it again, and walked
slowly to and fro alone in the room, thinking.

Was her mind running on Lady Janet’s nephew? No. Lady Janet’s brief
allusion to her relative had not led her into alluding to him by his
name. Mercy was still as ignorant as ever that the preacher at the
Refuge and the nephew of her benefactress were one and the same man. Her
memory was busy now with the tribute which Lady Janet had paid to her at
the outset of the interview between them: “It is hardly too much to say,
Grace, that I bless the day when you first came to me.” For the moment
there was balm for her wounded spirit in the remembrance of those words.
Grace Roseberry herself could surely have earned no sweeter praise than
the praise that she had won. The next instant she was seized with a
sudden horror of her own successful fraud. The sense of her degradation
had never been so bitterly present to her as at that moment. If she
could only confess the truth--if she could innocently enjoy her harmless
life at Mablethorpe House--what a grateful, happy woman she might be!
Was it possible (if she made the confession) to trust to her own good
conduct to plead her excuse? No! Her calmer sense warned her that it
was hopeless. The place she had won--honestly won--in Lady Janet’s
estimation had been obtained by a trick. Nothing could alter, nothing
could excuse, _that_. She took out her handkerchief and dashed away
the useless tears that had gathered in her eyes, and tried to turn her
thoughts some other way. 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. She sat
down again on the sofa with eyes that glittered and cheeks suffused with
an angry red. “I am no worse than another woman!” she thought. “Another
woman might have married him for his money.” The next moment the
miserable insufficiency of her own excuse for deceiving him showed its
hollowness, self-exposed. She covered her face with her hands, and
found refuge--where she had often found refuge before--in the helpless
resignation of despair. “Oh, that I had died before I entered this
house! Oh, that I could die and have done with it at this moment!” So
the struggle had ended with her hundreds of times already. So it ended
now.



The door leading into the billiard-room opened softly. Horace Holmcroft
had waited to hear the result of Lady Janet’s interference in his favor
until he could wait no longer.

He looked in cautiously, ready to withdraw again unnoticed if the two
were still talking together. The absence of Lady Janet suggested that
the interview had come to an end. Was his betrothed wife waiting alone
to speak to him on his return to the room? He advanced a few steps.
She never moved; she sat heedless, absorbed in her thoughts. Were they
thoughts of _him?_ He advanced a little nearer, and called to her.

“Grace!”

She sprang to her feet, with a faint cry. “I wish you wouldn’t startle
me,” she said, irritably, sinking back on the sofa. “Any sudden alarm
sets my heart beating as if it would choke me.”

Horace pleaded for pardon with a lover’s humility. In her present state
of nervous irritation she was not to be appeased. She looked away from
him in silence. Entirely ignorant of the paroxysm of mental suffering
through which she had just passed, he seated himself by her side, and
asked her gently if she had seen Lady Janet. She made an affirmative
answer with an unreasonable impatience of tone and manner which would
have warned an older and more experienced man to give her time before
he spoke again. Horace was young, and weary of the suspense that he
had endured in the other room. He unwisely pressed her with another
question.

“Has Lady Janet said anything to you--”

She turned on him angrily before he could finish the sentence. “You have
tried to make her hurry me into marrying you,” she burst out. “I see it
in your face!”

Plain as the warning was this time, Horace still failed to interpret it
in the right way. “Don’t be angry!” he said, good-humoredly. “Is it so
very inexcusable to ask Lady Janet to intercede for me? I have tried to
persuade you in vain. My mother and my sisters have pleaded for me, and
you turn a deaf ear--”

She could endure it no longer. She stamped her foot on the door with
hysterical vehemence. “I am weary of hearing of your mother and your
sisters!” she broke in violently. “You talk of nothing else.”

It was just possible to make one more mistake in dealing with her--and
Horace made it. He took offense, on his side, and rose from the sofa.
His mother and sisters were high authorities in his estimation; they
variously represented his ideal of perfection in women. He withdrew
to the opposite extremity of the room, and administered the severest
reproof that he could think of on the spur of the moment.

“It would be well, Grace, if you followed the example set you by
my mother and my sisters,” he said. “_They_ are not in the habit of
speaking cruelly to those who love them.”

To all appearance the rebuke failed to produce the slightest effect.
She seemed to be as indifferent to it as if it had not reached her ears.
There was a spirit in her--a miserable spirit, born of her own bitter
experience--which rose in revolt against Horace’s habitual glorification
of the ladies of his family. “It sickens me,” she thought to herself,
“to hear of the virtues of women who have never been tempted! Where
is the merit of living reputably, when your life is one course of
prosperity and enjoyment? Has his mother known starvation? Have his
sisters been left forsaken in the street?” It hardened her heart--it
almost reconciled her to deceiving him--when he set his relatives up as
patterns for her. Would he never understand that women detested having
other women exhibited as examples to them? She looked round at him with
a sense of impatient wonder. He was sitting at the luncheon-table, with
his back turned on her, and his head resting on his hand. If he had
attempted to rejoin her, she would have repelled him; if he had spoken,
she would have met him with a sharp reply. He sat apart from her,
without uttering a word. In a man’s hands silence is the most terrible
of all protests to the woman who loves him. Violence she can endure.
Words she is always ready to meet by words on her side. Silence conquers
her. After a moment’s hesitation, Mercy left the sofa and advanced
submissively toward the table. She had offended him--and she alone
was in fault. How should he know it, poor fellow, when he innocently
mortified her? Step by step she drew closer and closer. He never looked
round; he never moved. She laid her hand timidly on his shoulder.
“Forgive me, Horace,” she whispered in his ear. “I am suffering this
morning; I am not myself. I didn’t mean what I said. Pray forgive me.”
 There was no resisting the caressing tenderness of voice and manner
which accompanied those words. He looked up; he took her hand. She bent
over him, and touched his forehead with her lips. “Am I forgiven?” she
asked.

“Oh, my darling,” he said, “if you only knew how I loved you!”

“I do know it,” she answered, gently, twining his hair round her finger,
and arranging it over his forehead where his hand had ruffled it.

They were completely absorbed in each other, or they must, at that
moment, have heard the library door open at the other end of the room.

Lady Janet had written the necessary reply to her nephew, and had
returned, faithful to her engagement, to plead the cause of Horace. The
first object that met her view was her client pleading, with conspicuous
success, for himself! “I am not wanted, evidently,” thought the old
lady. She noiselessly closed the door again and left the lovers by
themselves.

Horace returned, with unwise persistency, to the question of the
deferred marriage. At the first words that he spoke she drew back
directly--sadly, not angrily.

“Don’t press me to-day,” she said; “I am not well to-day.”

He rose and looked at her anxiously. “May I speak about it to-morrow?”

“Yes, to-morrow.” She returned to the sofa, and changed the subject.
“What a time Lady Janet is away!” she said. “What can be keeping her so
long?”

Horace did his best to appear interested in the question of Lady Janet’s
prolonged absence. “What made her leave you?” he asked, standing at the
back of the sofa and leaning over her.

“She went into the library to write a note to her nephew. By-the-by, who
is her nephew?”

“Is it possible you don’t know?”

“Indeed, I don’t.”

“You have heard of him, no doubt,” said Horace. “Lady Janet’s nephew
is a celebrated man.” He paused, and stooping nearer to her, lifted a
love-lock that lay over her shoulder and pressed it to his lips. “Lady
Janet’s nephew,” he resumed, “is Julian Gray.”

She started off her seat, and looked round at him in blank, bewildered
terror, as if she doubted the evidence of her own senses.

Horace was completely taken by surprise. “My dear Grace!” he exclaimed;
“what have I said or done to startle you this time?”

She held up her hand for silence. “Lady Janet’s nephew is Julian Gray,”
 she repeated; “and I only know it now!”

Horace’s perplexity increased. “My darling, now you do know it, what is
there to alarm you?” he asked.

(There was enough to alarm the boldest woman living--in such a position,
and with such a temperament as hers. To her mind the personation of
Grace Roseberry had suddenly assumed a new aspect: the aspect of a
fatality. It had led her blindfold to the house in which she and the
preacher at the Refuge were to meet. He was coming--the man who had
reached her inmost heart, who had influenced her whole life! Was the day
of reckoning coming with him?)

“Don’t notice me,” she said, faintly. “I have been ill all the morning.
You saw it yourself when you came in here; even the sound of your voice
alarmed me. I shall be better directly. I am afraid I startled you?”

“My dear Grace, it almost looked as if you were terrified at the sound
of Julian’s name! He is a public celebrity, I know; and I have seen
ladies start and stare at him when he entered a room. But _you_ looked
perfectly panic-stricken.”

She rallied her courage by a desperate effort; she laughed--a harsh,
uneasy laugh--and stopped him by putting her hand over his mouth.
“Absurd!” she said, lightly. “As if Mr. Julian Gray had anything to do
with my looks! I am better already. See for yourself!” She looked round
at him again with a ghastly gayety; and returned, with a desperate
assumption of indifference, to the subject of Lady Janet’s nephew. “Of
course I have heard of him,” she said. “Do you know that he is expected
here to-day? Don’t stand there behind me--it’s so hard to talk to you.
Come and sit down.”

He obeyed--but she had not quite satisfied him yet. His face had not
lost its expression of anxiety and surprise. She persisted in playing
her part, determined to set at rest in him any possible suspicion that
she had reasons of her own for being afraid of Julian Gray. “Tell me
about this famous man of yours,” she said, putting her arm familiarly
through his arm. “What is he like?”

The caressing action and the easy tone had their effect on Horace. His
face began to clear; he answered her lightly on his side.

“Prepare yourself to meet the most unclerical of clergymen,” he said.
“Julian is a lost sheep among the parsons, and a thorn in the side of
his bishop. Preaches, if they ask him, in Dissenters’ chapels. Declines
to set up any pretensions to priestly authority and priestly power. Goes
about doing good on a plan of his own. Is quite resigned never to rise
to the high places in his profession. Says it’s rising high enough for
_him_ to be the Archdeacon of the afflicted, the Dean of the hungry, and
the Bishop of the poor. With all his oddities, as good a fellow as ever
lived. Immensely popular with the women. They all go to him for advice.
I wish you would go, too.”

Mercy changed color. “What do you mean?” she asked, sharply.

“Julian is famous for his powers of persuasion,” said Horace, smiling.
“If _he_ spoke to you, Grace, he would prevail on you to fix the day.
Suppose I ask Julian to plead for me?”

He made the proposal in jest. Mercy’s unquiet mind accepted it as
addressed to her in earnest. “He will do it,” she thought, with a sense
of indescribable terror, “if I don’t stop him!” There is but one chance
for her. The only certain way to prevent Horace from appealing to his
friend was to grant what Horace wished for before his friend entered the
house. She laid her hand on his shoulder; she hid the terrible anxieties
that were devouring her under an assumption of coquetry painful and
pitiable to see.

“Don’t talk nonsense!” she said, gayly. “What were we saying just
now--before we began to speak of Mr. Julian Gray?”

“We were wondering what had become of Lady Janet,” Horace replied.

She tapped him impatiently on the shoulder. “No! no! It was something
you said before that.”

Her eyes completed what her words had left unsaid. Horace’s arm stole
round her waist.

“I was saying that I loved you,” he answered, in a whisper.

“Only that?”

“Are you tired of hearing it?”

She smiled charmingly. “Are you so very much in earnest about--about--”
 She stopped, and looked away from him.

“About our marriage?”

“Yes.”

“It is the one dearest wish of my life.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

There was a pause. Mercy’s fingers toyed nervously with the trinkets at
her watch-chain. “When would you like it to be?” she said, very softly,
with her whole attention fixed on the watch-chain.

She had never spoken, she had never looked, as she spoke and looked now.
Horace was afraid to believe in his own good fortune. “Oh, Grace!” he
exclaimed, “you are not trifling with me?”

“What makes you think I am trifling with you?”

Horace was innocent enough to answer her seriously. “You would not even
let me speak of our marriage just now,” he said.

“Never mind what I did just now,” she retorted, petulantly. “They say
women are changeable. It is one of the defects of the sex.”

“Heaven be praised for the defects of the sex!” cried Horace, with
devout sincerity. “Do you really leave me to decide?”

“If you insist on it.”

Horace considered for a moment--the subject being the law of marriage.
“We may be married by license in a fortnight,” he said. “I fix this day
fortnight.”

She held up her hands in protest.

“Why not? My lawyer is ready. There are no preparations to make. You
said when you accepted me that it was to be a private marriage.”

Mercy was obliged to own that she had certainly said that.

“We might be married at once--if the law would only let us. This day
fortnight! Say--Yes!” He drew her closer to him. There was a pause. The
mask of coquetry--badly worn from the first--dropped from her. Her
sad gray eyes rested compassionately on his eager face. “Don’t look so
serious!” he said. “Only one little word, Grace! Only Yes.”

She sighed, and said it. He kissed her passionately. It was only by a
resolute effort that she released herself.

“Leave me!” she said, faintly. “Pray leave me by myself!”

She was in earnest--strangely in earnest. She was trembling from head
to foot. Horace rose to leave her. “I will find Lady Janet,” he said; “I
long to show the dear old lady that I have recovered my spirits, and to
tell her why.” He turned round at the library door. “You won’t go away?
You will let me see you again when you are more composed?”

“I will wait here,” said Mercy.

Satisfied with that reply, he left the room.

Her hands dropped on her lap; her head sank back wearily on the cushions
at the head of the sofa. There was a dazed sensation in her: her mind
felt stunned. She wondered vacantly whether she was awake or dreaming.
Had she really said the word which pledged her to marry Horace Holmcroft
in a fortnight? A fortnight! Something might happen in that time to
prevent it: she might find her way in a fortnight out of the terrible
position in which she stood. Anyway, come what might of it, she had
chosen the preferable alternative to a private interview with Julian
Gray. She raised herself from her recumbent position with a start, as
the idea of the interview--dismissed for the last few minutes--possessed
itself again of her mind. Her excited imagination figured Julian Gray
as present in the room at that moment, speaking to her as Horace had
proposed. She saw him seated close at her side--this man who had shaken
her to the soul when he was in the pulpit, and when she was listening to
him (unseen) at the other end of the chapel--she saw him close by her,
looking her searchingly in the face; seeing her shameful secret in
her eyes; hearing it in her voice; feeling it in her trembling hands;
forcing it out of her word by word, till she fell prostrate at his
feet with the confession of the fraud. Her head dropped again on the
cushions; she hid her face in horror of the scene which her excited
fancy had conjured up. Even now, when she had made that dreaded
interview needless, could she feel sure (meeting him only on the most
distant terms) of not betraying herself? She could _not_ feel sure.
Something in her shuddered and shrank at the bare idea of finding
herself in the same room with him. She felt it, she knew it: her guilty
conscience owned and feared its master in Julian Gray!

The minutes passed. The violence of her agitation began to tell
physically on her weakened frame.

She found herself crying silently without knowing why. A weight was
on her head, a weariness was in all her limbs. She sank lower on the
cushions--her eyes closed--the monotonous ticking of the clock on the
mantelpiece grew drowsily fainter and fainter on her ear. Little by
little she dropped into slumber--slumber so light that she started when
a morsel of coal fell into the grate, or when the birds chirped and
twittered in their aviary in the winter-garden.

Lady Janet and Horace came in. She was faintly conscious of persons in
the room. After an interval she opened her eyes, and half rose to speak
to them. The room was empty again. They had stolen out softly and left
her to repose. Her eyes closed once more. She dropped back into slumber,
and from slumber, in the favoring warmth and quiet of the place, into
deep and dreamless sleep.



CHAPTER VIII. THE MAN APPEARS.

After an interval of rest Mercy was aroused by the shutting of a glass
door at the far end of the conservatory. This door, leading into the
garden, was used only by the inmates of the house, or by old friends
privileged to enter the reception-rooms by that way. Assuming that
either Horace or Lady Janet was returning to the dining-room, Mercy
raised herself a little on the’ sofa and listened.

The voice of one of the men-servants caught her ear. It was answered by
another voice, which instantly set her trembling in every limb.

She started up, and listened again in speechless terror. Yes! there
was no mistaking it. The voice that was answering the servant was the
unforgotten voice which she had heard at the Refuge. The visitor who had
come in by the glass door was--Julian Gray!

His rapid footsteps advanced nearer and nearer to the dining-room. She
recovered herself sufficiently to hurry to the library door. Her hand
shook so that she failed at first to open it. She had just succeeded
when she heard him again--speaking to her.

“Pray don’t run away! I am nothing very formidable. Only Lady Janet’s
nephew--Julian Gray.”

She turned slowly, spell-bound by his voice, and confronted him in
silence.

He was standing, hat in hand, at the entrance to the conservatory,
dressed in black, and wearing a white cravat, but with a studious
avoidance of anything specially clerical in the make and form of his
clothes. Young as he was, there were marks of care already on his face,
and the hair was prematurely thin and scanty over his forehead. His
slight, active figure was of no more than the middle height. His
complexion was pale. The lower part of his face, without beard or
whiskers, was in no way remarkable. An average observer would have
passed him by without notice but for his eyes. These alone made a marked
man of him. The unusual size of the orbits in which they were set was
enough of itself to attract attention; it gave a grandeur to his head,
which the head, broad and firm as it was, did not possess. As to the
eyes themselves, the soft, lustrous brightness of them defied analysis
No two people could agree about their color; divided opinion declaring
alternately that they were dark gray or black. Painters had tried to
reproduce them, and had given up the effort, in despair of seizing any
one expression in the bewildering variety of expressions which they
presented to view. They were eyes that could charm at one moment and
terrify at another; eyes that could set people laughing or crying almost
at will. In action and in repose they were irresistible alike. When they
first descried Mercy running to the door, they brightened gayly with
the merriment of a child. When she turned and faced him, they changed
instantly, softening and glowing as they mutely owned the interest and
the admiration which the first sight of her had roused in him. His tone
and manner altered at the same time. He addressed her with the deepest
respect when he spoke his next words.

“Let me entreat you to favor me by resuming your seat,” he said. “And
let me ask your pardon if I have thoughtlessly intruded on you.”

He paused, waiting for her reply before he advanced into the room. Still
spell-bound by his voice, she recovered self-control enough to bow to
him and to resume her place on the sofa. It was impossible to leave
him now. After looking at her for a moment, he entered the room without
speaking to her again. She was beginning to perplex as well as to
interest him. “No common sorrow,” he thought, “has set its mark on that
woman’s face; no common heart beats in that woman’s breast. Who can she
be?”

Mercy rallied her courage, and forced herself to speak to him.

“Lady Janet is in the library, I believe,” she said, timidly. “Shall I
tell her you are here?”

“Don’t disturb Lady Janet, and don’t disturb yourself.” With that answer
he approached the luncheon-table, delicately giving her time to feel
more at her ease. He took up what Horace had left of the bottle of
claret, and poured it into a glass. “My aunt’s claret shall represent
my aunt for the present,” he said, smiling, as he turned toward her once
more. “I have had a long walk, and I may venture to help myself in this
house without invitation. Is it useless to offer you anything?”

Mercy made the necessary reply. She was beginning already, after her
remarkable experience of him, to wonder at his easy manners and his
light way of talking.

He emptied his glass with the air of a man who thoroughly understood
and enjoyed good wine. “My aunt’s claret is worthy of my aunt,” he said,
with comic gravity, as he set down the glass. “Both are the genuine
products of Nature.” He seated himself at the table and looked
critically at the different dishes left on it. One dish especially
attracted his attention. “What is this?” he went on. “A French pie! It
seems grossly unfair to taste French wine and to pass over French pie
without notice.” He took up a knife and fork, and enjoyed the pie as
critically as he had enjoyed the wine. “Worthy of the Great Nation!” he
exclaimed, with enthusiasm. “_Vive la France!_”

Mercy listened and looked, in inexpressible astonishment. He was utterly
unlike the picture which her fancy had drawn of him in everyday life.
Take off his white cravat, and nobody would have discovered that this
famous preacher was a clergyman!

He helped himself to another plateful of the pie, and spoke more
directly to Mercy, alternately eating and talking as composedly and
pleasantly as if they had known each other for years.

“I came here by way of Kensington Gardens,” he said. “For some time past
I have been living in a flat, ugly, barren, agricultural district. You
can’t think how pleasant I found the picture presented by the Gardens,
as a contrast. The ladies in their rich winter dresses, the smart
nursery maids, the lovely children, the ever moving crowd skating on the
ice of the Round Pond; it was all so exhilarating after what I have been
used to, that I actually caught myself whistling as I walked through the
brilliant scene! (In my time boys used always to whistle when they were
in good spirits, and I have not got over the habit yet.) Who do you
think I met when I was in full song?”

As well as her amazement would let her, Mercy excused herself from
guessing. She had never in all her life before spoken to any living
being so confusedly and so unintelligently as she now spoke to Julian
Gray!

He went on more gayly than ever, without appearing to notice the effect
that he had produced on her.

“Whom did I meet,” he repeated, “when I was in full song? My bishop! If
I had been whistling a sacred melody, his lordship might perhaps have
excused my vulgarity out of consideration for my music. Unfortunately,
the composition I was executing at the moment (I am one of the loudest
of living whistlers) was by Verdi--“La Donna e Mobile”--familiar, no
doubt, to his lordship on the street organs. He recognized the tune,
poor man, and when I took off my hat to him he looked the other way.
Strange, in a world that is bursting with sin and sorrow, to treat such
a trifle seriously as a cheerful clergyman whistling a tune!” He
pushed away his plate as he said the last words, and went on simply and
earnestly in an altered tone. “I have never been able,” he said, “to
see why we should assert ourselves among other men as belonging to a
particular caste, and as being forbidden, in any harmless thing, to do
as other people do. The disciples of old set us no such example; they
were wiser and better than we are. I venture to say that one of the
worst obstacles in the way of our doing good among our fellow-creatures
is raised by the mere assumption of the clerical manner and the clerical
voice. For my part, I set up no claim to be more sacred and more
reverend than any other Christian man who does what good he can.” He
glanced brightly at Mercy, looking at him in helpless perplexity. The
spirit of fun took possession of him again. “Are you a Radical?” he
asked, with a humorous twinkle in his large lustrous eyes. “I am!”

Mercy tried hard to understand him, and tried in vain. Could this be the
preacher whose words had charmed, purified, ennobled her? Was this the
man whose sermon had drawn tears from women about her whom she knew to
be shameless and hardened in crime? Yes! The eyes that now rested on her
humorously were the beautiful eyes which had once looked into her soul.
The voice that had just addressed a jesting question to her was the deep
and mellow voice which had once thrilled her to the heart. In the pulpit
he was an angel of mercy; out of the pulpit he was a boy let loose from
school.

“Don’t let me startle you,” he said, good-naturedly, noticing her
confusion. “Public opinion has called me by harder names than the name
of ‘Radical.’ I have been spending my time lately--as I told you just
now--in an agricultural district. My business there was to perform the
duty for the rector of the place, who wanted a holiday. How do you think
the experiment has ended? The Squire of the parish calls me a Communist;
the farmers denounce me as an Incendiary; my friend the rector has been
recalled in a hurry, and I have now the honor of speaking to you in the
character of a banished man who has made a respectable neighborhood too
hot to hold him.”

With that frank avowal he left the luncheon table, and took a chair near
Mercy.

“You will naturally be anxious,” he went on, “to know what my offense
was. Do you understand Political Economy and the Laws of Supply and
Demand?”

Mercy owned that she did _not_ understand them.

“No more do I--in a Christian country,” he said. “That was my offense.
You shall hear my confession (just as my aunt will hear it) in two
words.” He paused for a little while; his variable manner changed
again. Mercy, shyly looking at him, saw a new expression in his eyes--an
expression which recalled her first remembrance of him as nothing had
recalled it yet. “I had no idea,” he resumed, “of what the life of a
farm-laborer really was, in some parts of England, until I undertook the
rector’s duties. Never before had I seen such dire wretchedness as I saw
in the cottages. Never before had I met with such noble patience under
suffering as I found among the people. The martyrs of old could endure,
and die. I asked myself if they could endure, and _live_, like the
martyrs whom I saw round me?--live, week after week, month after month,
year after year, on the brink of starvation; live, and see their pining
children growing up round them, to work and want in their turn; live,
with the poor man’s parish prison to look to as the end, when hunger and
labor have done their worst! Was God’s beautiful earth made to hold such
misery as this? I can hardly think of it, I can hardly speak of it, even
now, with dry eyes!”

His head sank on his breast. He waited--mastering his emotion before he
spoke again. Now, at last, she knew him once more. Now he was the man,
indeed, whom she had expected to see. Unconsciously she sat listening,
with her eyes fixed on his face, with his heart hanging on his words,
in the very attitude of the by-gone day when she had heard him for the
first time!

“I did all I could to plead for the helpless ones,” he resumed. “I went
round among the holders of the land to say a word for the tillers of the
land. ‘These patient people don’t want much’ (I said); ‘in the name of
Christ, give them enough to live on!’ Political Economy shrieked at the
horrid proposal; the Laws of Supply and Demand veiled their majestic
faces in dismay. Starvation wages were the right wages, I was told. And
why? Because the laborer was obliged to accept them! I determined, so
far as one man could do it, that the laborer should _not_ be obliged to
accept them. I collected my own resources--I wrote to my friends--and
I removed some of the poor fellows to parts of England where their work
was better paid. Such was the conduct which made the neighborhood too
hot to hold me. So let it be! I mean to go on. I am known in London; I
can raise subscriptions. The vile Laws of Supply and Demand shall find
labor scarce in that agricultural district; and pitiless Political
Economy shall spend a few extra shillings on the poor, as certainly as I
am that Radical, Communist, and Incendiary--Julian Gray!”

He rose--making a little gesture of apology for the warmth with which
he had spoken--and took a turn in the room. Fired by _his_ enthusiasm,
Mercy followed him. Her purse was in her hand, when he turned and faced
her.

“Pray let me offer my little tribute--such as it is!” she said, eagerly.

A momentary flush spread over his pale cheeks as he looked at the
beautiful compassionate face pleading with him.

“No! no!” he said, smiling; “though I am a parson, I don’t carry the
begging-box everywhere.” Mercy attempted to press the purse on him. The
quaint humor began to twinkle again in his eyes as he abruptly drew back
from it. “Don’t tempt me!” he said. “The frailest of all human creatures
is a clergyman tempted by a subscription.” Mercy persisted, and
conquered; she made him prove the truth of his own profound observation
of clerical human nature by taking a piece of money from the purse. “If
I must take it--I must!” he remarked. “Thank you for setting the good
example! thank you for giving the timely help! What name shall I put
down on my list?”

Mercy’s eyes looked confusedly away from him. “No name,” she said, in a
low voice. “My subscription is anonymous.”

As she replied, the library door opened. To her infinite relief--to
Julian’s secret disappointment--Lady Janet Roy and Horace Holmcroft
entered the room together.

“Julian!” exclaimed Lady Janet, holding up her hands in astonishment.

He kissed his aunt on the cheek. “Your ladyship is looking charmingly.”
 He gave his hand to Horace. Horace took it, and passed on to Mercy. They
walked away together slowly to the other end of the room. Julian seized
on the chance which left him free to speak privately to his aunt.

“I came in through the conservatory,” he said. “And I found that young
lady in the room. Who is she?”

“Are you very much interested in her?” asked Lady Janet, in her gravely
ironical way.

Julian answered in one expressive word. “Indescribably!”

Lady Janet called to Mercy to join her.

“My dear,” she said, “let me formally present my nephew to you. Julian,
this is Miss Grace Roseberry--” She suddenly checked herself. The
instant she pronounced the name, Julian started as if it was a surprise
to him. “What is it?” she asked, sharply.

“Nothing,” he answered, bowing to Mercy, with a marked absence of his
former ease of manner. She returned the courtesy a little restrainedly
on her side. She, too, had seen him start when Lady Janet mentioned the
name by which she was known. The start meant something. What could it
be? Why did he turn aside, after bowing to her, and address himself to
Horace, with an absent look in his face, as if his thoughts were far
away from his words? A complete change had come over him; and it dated
from the moment when his aunt had pronounced the name that was not _her_
name---the name that she had stolen!

Lady Janet claimed Julian’s attention, and left Horace free to return to
Mercy. “Your room is ready for you,” she said. “You will stay here, of
course?” Julian accepted the invitation---still with the air of a man
whose mind was preoccupied. Instead of looking at his aunt when he made
his reply, he looked round at Mercy with a troubled curiosity in his
face, very strange to see. Lady Janet tapped him impatiently on the
shoulder. “I expect people to look at me when people speak to me,” she
said. “What are you staring at my adopted daughter for?”

“Your adopted daughter?” Julian repeated--looking at his aunt this time,
and looking very earnestly.

“Certainly! As Colonel Roseberry’s daughter, she is connected with me by
marriage already. Did you think I had picked up a foundling?”

Julian’s face cleared; he looked relieved. “I had forgotten the
Colonel,” he answered. “Of course the young lady is related to us, as
you say.”

“Charmed, I am sure, to have satisfied you that Grace is not an
impostor,” said Lady Janet, with satirical humility. She took Julian’s
arm and drew him out of hearing of Horace and Mercy. “About that letter
of yours?” she proceeded. “There is one line in it that rouses my
curiosity. Who is the mysterious ‘lady’ whom you wish to present to me?”

Julian started, and changed color.

“I can’t tell you now,” he said, in a whisper.

“Why not?”

To Lady Janet’s unutterable astonishment, instead of replying, Julian
looked round at her adopted daughter once more.

“What has _she_ got to do with it?” asked the old lady, out of all
patience with him.

“It is impossible for me to tell you,” he answered, gravely, “while Miss
Roseberry is in the room.”



CHAPTER IX. NEWS FROM MANNHEIM.

LADY JANET’S curiosity was by this time thoroughly aroused. Summoned to
explain who the nameless lady mentioned in his letter could possibly be,
Julian had looked at her adopted daughter. Asked next to explain what
her adopted daughter had got to do with it, he had declared that he
could not answer while Miss Roseberry was in the room.

What did he mean? Lady Janet determined to find out.

“I hate all mysteries,” she said to Julian. “And as for secrets, I
consider them to be one of the forms of ill-breeding. People in our rank
of life ought to be above whispering in corners. If you _must_ have your
mystery, I can offer you a corner in the library. Come with me.”

Julian followed his aunt very reluctantly. Whatever the mystery might
be, he was plainly embarrassed by being called upon to reveal it at a
moment’s notice. Lady Janet settled herself in her chair, prepared to
question and cross-question her nephew, when an obstacle appeared at the
other end of the library, in the shape of a man-servant with a message.
One of Lady Janet’s neighbors had called by appointment to take her to
the meeting of a certain committee which assembled that day. The servant
announced that the neighbor--an elderly lady--was then waiting in her
carriage at the door.

Lady Janet’s ready invention set the obstacle aside without a
moment’s delay. She directed the servant to show her visitor into the
drawing-room, and to say that she was unexpectedly engaged, but that
Miss Roseberry would see the lady immediately. She then turned to
Julian, and said, with her most satirical emphasis of tone and manner:
“Would it be an additional convenience if Miss Roseberry was not only
out of the room before you disclose your secret, but out of the house?”

Julian gravely answered: “It may possibly be quite as well if Miss
Roseberry is out of the house.”

Lady Janet led the way back to the dining-room.

“My dear Grace,” she said, “you looked flushed and feverish when I saw
you asleep on the sofa a little while since. It will do you no harm to
have a drive in the fresh air. Our friend has called to take me to the
committee meeting. I have sent to tell her that I am engaged--and I
shall be much obliged if you will go in my place.”

Mercy looked a little alarmed. “Does your ladyship mean the committee
meeting of the Samaritan Convalescent Home? The members, as I understand
it, are to decide to-day which of the plans for the new building they
are to adopt. I cannot surely presume to vote in your place?”

“You can vote, my dear child, just as well as I can,” replied the old
lady. “Architecture is one of the lost arts. You know nothing about it;
I know nothing about it; the architects themselves know nothing about
it. One plan is, no doubt, just as bad as the other. Vote, as I should
vote, with the majority. Or as poor dear Dr. Johnson said, ‘Shout with
the loudest mob.’ Away with you--and don’t keep the committee waiting.”

Horace hastened to open the door for Mercy.

“How long shall you be away?” he whispered, confidentially. “I had a
thousand things to say to you, and they have interrupted us.”

“I shall be back in an hour.”

“We shall have the room to ourselves by that time. Come here when you
return. You will find me waiting for you.”

Mercy pressed his hand significantly and went out. Lady Janet turned
to Julian, who had thus far remained in the background, still, to all
appearance, as unwilling as ever to enlighten his aunt.

“Well?” she said. “What is tying your tongue now? Grace is out of the
room; why won’t you begin? Is Horace in the way?”

“Not in the least. I am only a little uneasy--”

“Uneasy about what?”

“I am afraid you have put that charming creature to some inconvenience
in sending her away just at this time.”

Horace looked up suddenly, with a flush on his face.

“When you say ‘that charming creature,’” he asked, sharply, “I suppose
you mean Miss Roseberry?”

“Certainly,” answered Julian. “Why not?”

Lady Janet interposed. “Gently, Julian,” she said. “Grace has only been
introduced to you hitherto in the character of my adopted daughter--”

“And it seems to be high time,” Horace added, haughtily, “that I should
present her next in the character of my engaged wife.”

Julian looked at Horace as if he could hardly credit the evidence of his
own ears. “Your wife!” he exclaimed, with an irrepressible outburst of
disappointment and surprise.

“Yes. My wife,” returned Horace. “We are to be married in a fortnight.
May I ask,” he added, with angry humility, “if you disapprove of the
marriage?”

Lady Janet interposed once more. “Nonsense, Horace,” she said. “Julian
congratulates you, of course.”

Julian coldly and absently echoed the words. “Oh, yes! I congratulate
you, of course.”

Lady Janet returned to the main object of the interview.

“Now we thoroughly understand one another,” she said, “let us speak of a
lady who has dropped out of the conversation for the last minute or two.
I mean, Julian, the mysterious lady of your letter. We are alone, as you
desired. Lift the veil, my reverend nephew, which hides her from mortal
eyes! Blush, if you like--and can. Is she the future Mrs. Julian Gray?”

“She is a perfect stranger to me,” Julian answered, quietly.

“A perfect stranger! You wrote me word you were interested in her.”

“I _am_ interested in her. And, what is more, you are interested in her,
too.”

Lady Janet’s fingers drummed impatiently on the table. “Have I not
warned you, Julian, that I hate mysteries? Will you, or will you not,
explain yourself?”

Before it was possible to answer, Horace rose from his chair. “Perhaps I
am in the way?” he said.

Julian signed to him to sit down again.

“I have already told Lady Janet that you are not in the way,” he
answered. “I now tell you--as Miss Roseberry’s future husband--that you,
too, have an interest in hearing what I have to say.”

Horace resumed his seat with an air of suspicious surprise. Julian
addressed himself to Lady Janet.

“You have often heard me speak,” he began, “of my old friend and
school-fellow, John Cressingham?”

“Yes. The English consul at Mannheim?”

“The same. When I returned from the country I found among my other
letters a long letter from the consul. I have brought it with me, and
I propose to read certain passages from it, which tell a very strange
story more plainly and more credibly than I can tell it in my own
words.”

“Will it be very long?” inquired Lady Janet, looking with some alarm at
the closely written sheets of paper which her nephew spread open before
him.

Horace followed with a question on his side.

“You are sure I am interested in it?” he asked. “The consul at Mannheim
is a total stranger to me.”

“I answer for it,” replied Julian, gravely, “neither my aunt’s patience
nor yours, Horace, will be thrown away if you will favor me by listening
attentively to what I am about to read.”

With those words he began his first extract from the consul’s letter.

* * * “‘My memory is a bad one for dates. But full three months must
have passed since information was sent to me of an English patient,
received at the hospital here, whose case I, as English consul, might
feel an interest in investigating.

“‘I went the same day to the hospital, and was taken to the bedside.

“‘The patient was a woman--young, and (when in health), I should think,
very pretty. When I first saw her she looked, to my uninstructed eye,
like a dead woman. I noticed that her head had a bandage over it, and
I asked what was the nature of the injury that she had received. The
answer informed me that the poor creature had been present, nobody knew
why or wherefore, at a skirmish or night attack between the Germans
and the French, and that the injury to her head had been inflicted by a
fragment of a German shell.’”

Horace--thus far leaning back carelessly in his chair--suddenly raised
himself and exclaimed, “Good heavens! can this be the woman I saw laid
out for dead in the French cottage?”

“It is impossible for me to say,” replied Julian. “Listen to the rest of
it. The consul’s letter may answer your question.”

He went on with his reading:

“‘The wounded woman had been reported dead, and had been left by
the French in their retreat, at the time when the German forces took
possession of the enemy’s position. She was found on a bed in a cottage
by the director of the German ambulance--”

“Ignatius Wetzel?” cried Horace.

“Ignatius Wetzel,” repeated Julian, looking at the letter.

“It _is_ the same!” said Horace. “Lady Janet, we are really interested
in this. You remember my telling you how I first met with Grace? And you
have heard more about it since, no doubt, from Grace herself?”

“She has a horror of referring to that part of her journey home,”
 replied Lady Janet. “She mentioned her having been stopped on the
frontier, and her finding herself accidentally in the company of another
Englishwoman, a perfect stranger to her. I naturally asked questions on
my side, and was shocked to hear that she had seen the woman killed by
a German shell almost close at her side. Neither she nor I have had any
relish for returning to the subject since. You were quite right, Julian,
to avoid speaking of it while she was in the room. I understand it all
now. Grace, I suppose, mentioned my name to her fellow-traveler. The
woman is, no doubt, in want of assistance, and she applies to me through
you. I will help her; but she must not come here until I have prepared
Grace for seeing her again, a living woman. For the present there is no
reason why they should meet.”

“I am not sure about that,” said Julian, in low tones, without looking
up at his aunt.

“What do you mean? Is the mystery not at an end yet?”

“The mystery has not even begun yet. Let my friend the consul proceed.”

Julian returned for the second time to his extract from the letter:

“‘After a careful examination of the supposed corpse, the German surgeon
arrived at the conclusion that a case of suspended animation had (in the
hurry of the French retreat) been mistaken for a case of death. Feeling
a professional interest in the subject, he decided on putting his
opinion to the test. He operated on the patient with complete success.
After performing the operation he kept her for some days under his own
care, and then transferred her to the nearest hospital--the hospital at
Mannheim. He was obliged to return to his duties as army surgeon, and he
left his patient in the condition in which I saw her, insensible on
the bed. Neither he nor the hospital authorities knew anything whatever
about the woman. No papers were found on her. All the doctors could do,
when I asked them for information with a view to communicating with
her friends, was to show me her linen marked with her, name. I left the
hospital after taking down the name in my pocket-book. It was “Mercy
Merrick.”’”

Lady Janet produced _her_ pocket-book. “Let me take the name down too,”
 she said. “I never heard it before, and I might otherwise forget it. Go
on, Julian.”

Julian advanced to his second extract from the consul’s letter:

“‘Under these circumstances, I could only wait to hear from the hospital
when the patient was sufficiently recovered to be able to speak to
me. Some weeks passed without my receiving any communication from the
doctors. On calling to make inquiries I was informed that fever had
set in, and that the poor creature’s condition now alternated between
exhaustion and delirium. In her delirious moments the name of your aunt,
Lady Janet Roy, frequently escaped her. Otherwise her wanderings were
for the most part quite unintelligible to the people at her bedside. I
thought once or twice of writing to you, and of begging you to speak to
Lady Janet. But as the doctors informed me that the chances of life or
death were at this time almost equally balanced, I decided to wait until
time should determine whether it was necessary to trouble you or not.’”

“You know best, Julian,” said Lady Janet. “But I own I don’t quite see
in what way I am interested in this part of the story.”

“Just what I was going to say,” added Horace. “It is very sad, no doubt.
But what have _we_ to do with it?”

“Let me read my third extract,” Julian answered, “and you will see.”

He turned to the third extract, and read as follows:

“‘At last I received a message from the hospital informing me that Mercy
Merrick was out of danger, and that she was capable (though still very
weak) of answering any questions which I might think it desirable to
put to her. On reaching the hospital, I was requested, rather to my
surprise, to pay my first visit to the head physician in his private
room. “I think it right,” said this gentleman, “to warn you, before you
see the patient, to be very careful how you speak to her, and not to
irritate her by showing any surprise or expressing any doubts if she
talks to you in an extravagant manner. We differ in opinion about her
here. Some of us (myself among the number) doubt whether the recovery
of her mind has accompanied the recovery of her bodily powers. Without
pronouncing her to be mad--she is perfectly gentle and harmless--we are
nevertheless of opinion that she is suffering under a species of insane
delusion. Bear in mind the caution which I have given you--and now
go and judge for yourself.” I obeyed, in some little perplexity and
surprise. The sufferer, when I approached her bed, looked sadly weak and
worn; but, so far as I could judge, seemed to be in full possession of
herself. Her tone and manner were unquestionably the tone and manner of
a lady. After briefly introducing myself, I assured her that I should be
glad, both officially and personally, if I could be of any assistance
to her. In saying these trifling words I happened to address her by
the name I had seen marked on her clothes. The instant the words “Miss
Merrick” passed my lips a wild, vindictive expression appeared in her
eyes. She exclaimed angrily, “Don’t call me by that hateful name!
It’s not my name. All the people here persecute me by calling me Mercy
Merrick. And when I am angry with them they show me the clothes. Say
what I may, they persist in believing they are my clothes. Don’t you
do the same, if you want to be friends with me.” Remembering what the
physician had said to me, I made the necessary excuses and succeeded in
soothing her. Without reverting to the irritating topic of the name,
I merely inquired what her plans were, and assured her that she might
command my services if she required them. “Why do you want to know what
my plans are?” she asked, suspiciously. I reminded her in reply that
I held the position of English consul, and that my object was, if
possible, to be of some assistance to her. “You can be of the greatest
assistance to me,” she said, eagerly. “Find Mercy Merrick!” I saw the
vindictive look come back into her eyes, and an angry flush rising on
her white cheeks. Abstaining from showing any surprise, I asked her who
Mercy Merrick was. “A vile woman, by her own confession,” was the quick
reply. “How am I to find her?” I inquired next. “Look for a woman in a
black dress, with the Red Geneva Cross on her shoulder; she is a nurse
in the French ambulance.” “What has she done?” “I have lost my papers;
I have lost my own clothes; Mercy Merrick has taken them.” “How do you
know that Mercy Merrick has taken them?” “Nobody else could have taken
them--that’s how I know it. Do you believe me or not?” She was beginning
to excite herself again; I assured her that I would at once send to make
inquiries after Mercy Merrick. She turned round contented on the pillow.
“There’s a good man!” she said. “Come back and tell me when you have
caught her.” Such was my first interview with the English patient at the
hospital at Mannheim. It is needless to say that I doubted the existence
of the absent person described as a nurse. However, it was possible
to make inquiries by applying to the surgeon, Ignatius Wetzel, whose
whereabouts was known to his friends in Mannheim. I wrote to him, and
received his answer in due time. After the night attack of the Germans
had made them masters of the French position, he had entered the cottage
occupied by the French ambulance. He had found the wounded Frenchmen
left behind, but had seen no such person in attendance on them as the
nurse in the black dress with the red cross on her shoulder. The only
living woman in the place was a young English lady, in a gray traveling
cloak, who had been stopped on the frontier, and who was forwarded on
her way home by the war correspondent of an English journal.’”

“That was Grace,” said Lady Janet.

“And I was the war correspondent,” added Horace.

“A few words more,” said Julian, “and you will understand my object in
claiming your attention.”

He returned to the letter for the last time, and concluded his extracts
from it as follows:

“‘Instead of attending at the hospital myself, I communicated by letter
the failure of my attempt to discover the missing nurse. For some little
time afterward I heard no more of the sick woman, whom I shall still
call Mercy Merrick. It was only yesterday that I received another
summons to visit the patient. She had by this time sufficiently
recovered to claim her discharge, and she had announced her intention of
returning forthwith to England. The head physician, feeling a sense of
responsibility, had sent for me. It was impossible to detain her on
the ground that she was not fit to be trusted by herself at large, in
consequence of the difference of opinion among the doctors on the case.
All that could be done was to give me due notice, and to leave the
matter in my hands. On seeing her for the second time, I found her
sullen and reserved. She openly attributed my inability to find the
nurse to want of zeal for her interests on my part. I had, on my side,
no authority whatever to detain her. I could only inquire whether she
had money enough to pay her traveling expenses. Her reply informed me
that the chaplain of the hospital had mentioned her forlorn situation in
the town, and that the English residents had subscribed a small sum
of money to enable her to return to her own country. Satisfied on this
head, I asked next if she had friends to go to in England. “I have one
friend,” she answered, “who is a host in herself--Lady Janet Roy.” You
may imagine my surprise when I heard this. I found it quite useless to
make any further inquiries as to how she came to know your aunt, whether
your aunt expected her, and so on. My questions evidently offended her;
they were received in sulky silence. Under these circumstances,
well knowing that I can trust implicitly to your humane sympathy for
misfortune, I have decided (after careful reflection) to insure the poor
creature’s safety when she arrives in London by giving her a letter
to you. You will hear what she says, and you will be better able to
discover than I am whether she really has any claim on Lady Janet Roy.
One last word of information, which it may be necessary to add, and I
shall close this inordinately long letter. At my first interview with
her I abstained, as I have already told you, from irritating her by any
inquiries on the subject of her name. On this second occasion, however,
I decided on putting the question.’”

As he read those last words, Julian became aware of a sudden movement on
the part of his aunt. Lady Janet had risen softly from her chair and had
passed behind him with the purpose of reading the consul’s letter for
herself over her nephew’s shoulder. Julian detected the action just in
time to frustrate Lady Janet’s intention by placing his hand over the
last two lines of the letter.

“What do you do that for?” inquired his aunt, sharply.

“You are welcome, Lady Janet, to read the close of the letter for
yourself,” Julian replied. “But before you do so I am anxious to prepare
you for a very great surprise. Compose yourself and let me read on
slowly, with your eye on me, until I uncover the last two words which
close my friend’s letter.”

He read the end of the letter, as he had proposed, in these terms:

“‘I looked the woman straight in the face, and I said to her, “You have
denied that the name marked on the clothes which you wore when you came
here was your name. If you are not Mercy Merrick, who are you?” She
answered, instantly, “My name is ------“’”

Julian removed his hand from the page. Lady Janet looked at the next two
words, and started back with a loud cry of astonishment, which brought
Horace instantly to his feet.

“Tell me, one of you!” he cried. “What name did she give?”

Julian told him.

“GRACE ROSEBERRY.”



CHAPTER X. A COUNCIL OF THREE.

FOR a moment Horace stood thunderstruck, looking in blank astonishment
at Lady Janet. His first words, as soon as he had recovered himself,
were addressed to Julian. “Is this a joke?” he asked, sternly. “If it
is, I for one don’t see the humor of it.”

Julian pointed to the closely written pages of the consul’s letter. “A
man writes in earnest,” he said, “when he writes at such length as this.
The woman seriously gave the name of Grace Roseberry, and when she left
Mannheim she traveled to England for the express purpose of presenting
herself to Lady Janet Roy.” He turned to his aunt. “You saw me start,”
 he went on, “when you first mentioned Miss Roseberry’s name in my
hearing. Now you know why.” He addressed himself once more to Horace.
“You heard me say that you, as Miss Roseberry’s future husband, had an
interest in being present at my interview with Lady Janet. Now _you_
know why.”

“The woman is plainly mad,” said Lady Janet. “But it is certainly a
startling form of madness when one first hears of it. Of course we must
keep the matter, for the present at least, a secret from Grace.”

“There can be no doubt,” Horace agreed, “that Grace must be kept in the
dark, in her present state of health. The servants had better be warned
beforehand, in case of this adventuress or madwoman, whichever she may
be, attempting to make her way into the house.”

“It shall be done immediately,” said Lady Janet. “What surprises _me_
Julian (ring the bell, if you please), is that you should describe
yourself in your letter as feeling an interest in this person.”

Julian answered--without ringing the bell.

“I am more interested than ever,” he said, “now I find that Miss
Roseberry herself is your guest at Mablethorpe House.”

“You were always perverse, Julian, as a child, in your likings and
dislikings,” Lady Janet rejoined. “Why don’t you ring the bell?”

“For one good reason, my dear aunt. I don’t wish to hear you tell your
servants to close the door on this friendless creature.”

Lady Janet cast a look at her nephew which plainly expressed that she
thought he had taken a liberty with her.

“You don’t expect me to see the woman?” she asked, in a tone of cold
surprise.

“I hope you will not refuse to see her,” Julian answered, quietly. “I
was out when she called. I must hear what she has to say--and I should
infinitely prefer hearing it in your presence. When I got your reply
to my letter, permitting me to present her to you, I wrote to her
immediately, appointing a meeting here.”

Lady Janet lifted her bright black eyes in mute expostulation to the
carved Cupids and wreaths on the dining-room ceiling.

“When am I to have the honor of the lady’s visit?” she inquired, with
ironical resignation.

“To-day,” answered her nephew, with impenetrable patience.

“At what hour?”

Julian composedly consulted his watch. “She is ten minutes after her
time,” he said, and put his watch back in his pocket again.

At the same moment the servant appeared, and advanced to Julian,
carrying a visiting card on his little silver tray.

“A lady to see you, sir.”

Julian took the card, and, bowing, handed it to his aunt.

“Here she is,” he said, just as quietly as ever.

Lady Janet looked at the card, and tossed it indignantly back to her
nephew. “Miss Roseberry!” she exclaimed. “Printed--actually printed on
her card! Julian, even MY patience has its limits. I refuse to see her!”

The servant was still waiting--not like a human being who took an
interest in the proceedings, but (as became a perfectly bred footman)
like an article of furniture artfully constructed to come and go at
the word of command. Julian gave the word of command, addressing the
admirably constructed automaton by the name of “James.”

“Where is the lady now?” he asked.

“In the breakfast-room, sir.”

“Leave her there, if you please, and wait outside within hearing of the
bell.”

The legs of the furniture-footman acted, and took him noiselessly out of
the room. Julian turned to his aunt.

“Forgive me,” he said, “for venturing to give the man his orders in your
presence. I am very anxious that you should not decide hastily. Surely
we ought to hear what this lady has to say?”

Horace dissented widely from his friend’s opinion. “It’s an insult to
Grace,” he broke out, warmly, “to hear what she has to say!”

Lady Janet nodded her head in high approval. “I think so, too,” said her
ladyship, crossing her handsome old hands resolutely on her lap.

Julian applied himself to answering Horace first.

“Pardon me,” he said. “I have no intention of presuming to reflect on
Miss Roseberry, or of bringing her into the matter at all.--The consul’s
letter,” he went on, speaking to his aunt, “mentions, if you remember,
that the medical authorities of Mannheim were divided in opinion on
their patient’s case. Some of them--the physician-in-chief being among
the number--believe that the recovery of her mind has not accompanied
the recovery of her body.”

“In other words,” Lady Janet remarked, “a madwoman is in my house, and I
am expected to receive her!”

“Don’t let us exaggerate,” said Julian, gently. “It can serve no good
interest, in this serious matter, to exaggerate anything. The consul
assures us, on the authority of the doctor, that she is perfectly gentle
and harmless. If she is really the victim of a mental delusion, the poor
creature is surely an object of compassion, and she ought to be placed
under proper care. Ask your own kind heart, my dear aunt, if it would
not be downright cruelty to turn this forlorn woman adrift in the world
without making some inquiry first.”

Lady Janet’s inbred sense of justice admitted not over-willingly--the
reasonableness as well as the humanity of the view expressed in those
words. “There is some truth in that, Julian,” she said, shifting her
position uneasily in her chair, and looking at Horace. “Don’t you think
so, too?” she added.

“I can’t say I do,” answered Horace, in the positive tone of a man whose
obstinacy is proof against every form of appeal that can be addressed to
him.

The patience of Julian was firm enough to be a match for the obstinacy
of Horace. “At any rate,” he resumed, with undiminished good temper, “we
are all three equally interested in setting this matter at rest. I put
it to you, Lady Janet, if we are not favored, at this lucky moment, with
the very opportunity that we want? Miss Roseberry is not only out of the
room, but out of the house. If we let this chance slip, who can say what
awkward accident may not happen in the course of the next few days?”

“Let the woman come in,” cried Lady Janet, deciding headlong, with her
customary impatience of all delay. “At once, Julian--before Grace can
come back. Will you ring the bell this time?”

This time Julian rang it. “May I give the man his orders?” he
respectfully inquired of his aunt.

“Give him anything you like, and have done with it!” retorted the
irritable old lady, getting briskly on her feet, and taking a turn in
the room to compose herself.

The servant withdrew, with orders to show the visitor in.

Horace crossed the room at the same time--apparently with the intention
of leaving it by the door at the opposite end.

“You are not going away?” exclaimed Lady Janet.

“I see no use in my remaining here,” replied Horace, not very
graciously.

“In that case,” retorted Lady Janet, “remain here because I wish it.”

“Certainly--if you wish it. Only remember,” he added, more obstinately
than ever, “that I differ entirely from Julian’s view. In my opinion the
woman has no claim on us.”

A passing movement of irritation escaped Julian for the first time.
“Don’t be hard, Horace,” he said, sharply. “All women have a claim on
us.”

They had unconsciously gathered together, in the heat of the little
debate, turning their backs on the library door. At the last words
of the reproof administered by Julian to Horace, their attention was
recalled to passing events by the slight noise produced by the opening
and closing of the door. With one accord the three turned and looked in
the direction from which the sounds had come.



CHAPTER XI. THE DEAD ALIVE.

JUST inside the door there appeared the figure of a small woman dressed
in plain and poor black garments. She silently lifted her black net veil
and disclosed a dull, pale, worn, weary face. The forehead was low
and broad; the eyes were unusually far apart; the lower features were
remarkably small and delicate. In health (as the consul at Mannheim had
remarked) this woman must have possessed, if not absolute beauty,
at least rare attractions peculiarly her own. As it was now,
suffering--sullen, silent, self-contained suffering--had marred its
beauty. Attention and even curiosity it might still rouse. Admiration or
interest it could excite no longer.

The small, thin, black figure stood immovably inside the door. The dull,
worn, white face looked silently at the three persons in the room.

The three persons in the room, on their side, stood for a moment without
moving, and looked silently at the stranger on the threshold. There was
something either in the woman herself, or in the sudden and stealthy
manner of her appearance in the room, which froze, as if with the touch
of an invisible cold hand, the sympathies of all three. Accustomed to
the world, habitually at their ease in every social emergency, they
were now silenced for the first time in their lives by the first serious
sense of embarrassment which they had felt since they were children in
the presence of a stranger.

Had the appearance of the true Grace Roseberry aroused in their minds a
suspicion of the woman who had stolen her name, and taken her place in
the house?

Not so much as the shadow of a suspicion of Mercy was at the bottom of
the strange sense of uneasiness which had now deprived them alike of
their habitual courtesy and their habitual presence of mind. It was as
practically impossible for any one of the three to doubt the identity of
the adopted daughter of the house as it would be for you who read these
lines to doubt the identity of the nearest and dearest relative you have
in the world. Circumstances had fortified Mercy behind the strongest of
all natural rights--the right of first possession. Circumstances had
armed her with the most irresistible of all natural forces--the force
of previous association and previous habit. Not by so much as a
hair-breadth was the position of the false Grace Roseberry shaken by
the first appearance of the true Grace Roseberry within the doors of
Mablethorpe House. Lady Janet felt suddenly repelled, without knowing
why. Julian and Horace felt suddenly repelled, without knowing why.
Asked to describe their own sensations at the moment, they would have
shaken their heads in despair, and would have answered in those words.
The vague presentiment of some misfortune to come had entered the room
with the entrance of the woman in black. But it moved invisibly; and it
spoke as all presentiments speak, in the Unknown Tongue.

A moment passed. The crackling of the fire and the ticking of the clock
were the only sounds audible in the room.

The voice of the visitor--hard, clear, and quiet--was the first voice
that broke the silence.

“Mr. Julian Gray?” she said, looking interrogatively from one of the two
gentlemen to the other.

Julian advanced a few steps, instantly recovering his self-possession.
“I am sorry I was not at home,” he said, “when you called with your
letter from the consul. Pray take a chair.”

By way of setting the example, Lady Janet seated herself at some little
distance, with Horace in attendance standing near. She bowed to the
stranger with studious politeness, but without uttering a word, before
she settled herself in her chair. “I am obliged to listen to this
person,” thought the old lady. “But I am _not_ obliged to speak to her.
That is Julian’s business--not mine. Don’t stand, Horace! You fidget me.
Sit down.” Armed beforehand in her policy of silence, Lady Janet folded
her handsome hands as usual, and waited for the proceedings to begin,
like a judge on the bench.

“Will you take a chair?” Julian repeated, observing that the visitor
appeared neither to heed nor to hear his first words of welcome to her.

At this second appeal she spoke to him. “Is that Lady Janet Roy?” she
asked, with her eyes fixed on the mistress of the house.

Julian answered, and drew back to watch the result.

The woman in the poor black garments changed her position for the first
time. She moved slowly across the room to the place at which Lady Janet
was sitting, and addressed her respectfully with perfect self-possession
of manner. Her whole demeanor, from the moment when she had appeared at
the door, had expressed--at once plainly and becomingly--confidence in
the reception that awaited her.

“Almost the last words my father said to me on his death-bed,” she
began, “were words, madam, which told me to expect protection and
kindness from you.”

It was not Lady Janet’s business to speak. She listened with the
blandest attention. She waited with the most exasperating silence to
hear more.

Grace Roseberry drew back a step--not intimidated--only mortified and
surprised. “Was my father wrong?” she asked, with a simple dignity
of tone and manner which forced Lady Janet to abandon her policy of
silence, in spite of herself.

“Who was your father?” she asked, coldly.

Grace Roseberry answered the question in a tone of stern surprise.

“Has the servant not given you my card?” she said. “Don’t you know my
name?”

“Which of your names?” rejoined Lady Janet.

“I don’t understand your ladyship.”

“I will make myself understood. You asked me if I knew your name. I
ask you, in return, which name it is? The name on your card is ‘Miss
Roseberry.’ The name marked on your clothes, when you were in the
hospital, was ‘Mercy Merrick.’”

The self-possession which Grace had maintained from the moment when she
had entered the dining-room, seemed now, for the first time, to be on
the point of failing her. She turned, and looked appealingly at Julian,
who had thus far kept his place apart, listening attentively.

“Surely,” she said, “your friend, the consul, has told you in his letter
about the mark on the clothes?”

Something of the girlish hesitation and timidity which had marked her
demeanor at her interview with Mercy in the French cottage re-appeared
in her tone and manner as she spoke those words. The changes--mostly
changes for the worse--wrought in her by the suffering through which she
had passed since that time were now (for the moment) effaced. All that
was left of the better and simpler side of her character asserted itself
in her brief appeal to Julian. She had hitherto repelled him. He began
to feel a certain compassionate interest in her now.

“The consul has informed me of what you said to him,” he answered,
kindly. “But, if you will take my advice, I recommend you to tell your
story to Lady Janet in your own words.”

Grace again addressed herself with submissive reluctance to Lady Janet.

“The clothes your ladyship speaks of,” she said, “were the clothes of
another woman. The rain was pouring when the soldiers detained me on the
frontier. I had been exposed for hours to the weather--I was wet to the
skin. The clothes marked ‘Mercy Merrick’ were the clothes lent to me by
Mercy Merrick herself while my own things were drying. I was struck
by the shell in those clothes. I was carried away insensible in those
clothes after the operation had been performed on me.”

Lady Janet listened to perfection--and did no more. She turned
confidentially to Horace, and said to him, in her gracefully ironical
way: “She is ready with her explanation.”

Horace answered in the same tone: “A great deal too ready.”

Grace looked from one of them to the other. A faint flush of color
showed itself in her face for the first time.

“Am I to understand,” she asked, with proud composure, “that you don’t
believe me?”

Lady Janet maintained her policy of silence. She waved one hand
courteously toward Julian, as if to say, “Address your inquiries to
the gentleman who introduces you.” Julian, noticing the gesture, and
observing the rising color in Grace’s cheeks, interfered directly in the
interests of peace

“Lady Janet asked you a question just now,” he said; “Lady Janet
inquired who your father was.”

“My father was the late Colonel Roseberry.”

Lady Janet made another confidential remark to Horace. “Her assurance
amazes me!” she exclaimed.

Julian interposed before his aunt could add a word more. “Pray let us
hear her,” he said, in a tone of entreaty which had something of the
imperative in it this time. He turned to Grace. “Have you any proof to
produce,” he added, in his gentler voice, “which will satisfy us that
you are Colonel Roseberry’s daughter?”

Grace looked at him indignantly. “Proof!” she repeated. “Is my word not
enough?”

Julian kept his temper perfectly. “Pardon me,” he rejoined, “you forget
that you and Lady Janet meet now for the first time. Try to put yourself
in my aunt’s place. How is she to know that you are the late Colonel
Roseberry’s daughter?”

Grace’s head sunk on her breast; she dropped into the nearest chair. The
expression of her face changed instantly from anger to discouragement.
“Ah,” she exclaimed, bitterly, “if I only had the letters that have been
stolen from me!”

“Letters,” asked Julian, “introducing you to Lady Janet?”

“Yes.” She turned suddenly to Lady Janet. “Let me tell you how I lost
them,” she said, in the first tones of entreaty which had escaped her
yet.

Lady Janet hesitated. It was not in her generous nature to resist the
appeal that had just been made to her. The sympathies of Horace were far
less easily reached. He lightly launched a new shaft of satire--intended
for the private amusement of Lady Janet. “Another explanation!” he
exclaimed, with a look of comic resignation.

Julian overheard the words. His large lustrous eyes fixed themselves on
Horace with a look of unmeasured contempt.

“The least you can do,” he said, sternly, “is not to irritate her. It
is so easy to irritate her!” He addressed himself again to Grace,
endeavoring to help her through her difficulty in a new way. “Never mind
explaining yourself for the moment,” he said. “In the absence of your
letters, have you any one in London who can speak to your identity?”

Grace shook her head sadly. “I have no friends in London,” she answered.

It was impossible for Lady Janet--who had never in her life heard of
anybody without friends in London--to pass this over without notice. “No
friends in London!” she repeated, turning to Horace.

Horace shot another shaft of light satire. “Of course not!” he rejoined.

Grace saw them comparing notes. “My friends are in Canada,” she broke
out, impetuously. “Plenty of friends who could speak for me, if I could
only bring them here.”

As a place of reference--mentioned in the capital city of
England--Canada, there is no denying it, is open to objection on the
ground of distance. Horace was ready with another shot. “Far enough off,
certainly,” he said.

“Far enough off, as you say,” Lady Janet agreed.

Once more Julian’s inexhaustible kindness strove to obtain a hearing for
the stranger who had been confided to his care. “A little patience, Lady
Janet,” he pleaded. “A little consideration, Horace, for a friendless
woman.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Grace. “It is very kind of you to try and help
me, but it is useless. They won’t even listen to me.” She attempted to
rise from her chair as she pronounced the last words. Julian gently laid
his hand on her shoulder and obliged her to resume her seat.

“_I_ will listen to you,” he said. “You referred me just now to the
consul’s letter. The consul tells me you suspected some one of taking
your papers and your clothes.”

“I don’t suspect,” was the quick reply; “I am certain! I tell you
positively Mercy Merrick was the thief. She was alone with me when I was
struck down by the shell. She was the only person who knew that I had
letters of introduction about me. She confessed to my face that she
had been a bad woman--she had been in a prison--she had come out of a
refuge--”

Julian stopped her there with one plain question, which threw a doubt on
the whole story.

“The consul tells me you asked him to search for Mercy Merrick,” he
said. “Is it not true that he caused inquiries to be made, and that no
trace of any such person was to be heard of?”

“The consul took no pains to find her,” Grace answered, angrily. “He
was, like everybody else, in a conspiracy to neglect and misjudge me.”

Lady Janet and Horace exchanged looks. This time it was impossible for
Julian to blame them. The further the stranger’s narrative advanced, the
less worthy of serious attention he felt it to be. The longer she spoke,
the more disadvantageously she challenged comparison with the absent
woman, whose name she so obstinately and so audaciously persisted in
assuming as her own.

“Granting all that you have said,” Julian resumed, with a last effort
of patience, “what use could Mercy Merrick make of your letters and your
clothes?”

“What use?” repeated Grace, amazed at his not seeing the position as
she saw it. “My clothes were marked with my name. One of my papers was
a letter from my father, introducing me to Lady Janet. A woman out of a
refuge would be quite capable of presenting herself here in my place.”

Spoken entirely at random, spoken without so much as a fragment of
evidence to support them, those last words still had their effect.
They cast a reflection on Lady Janet’s adopted daughter which was too
outrageous to be borne. Lady Janet rose instantly. “Give me your arm,
Horace,” she said, turning to leave the room. “I have heard enough.”

Horace respectfully offered his arm. “Your ladyship is quite right,” he
answered. “A more monstrous story never was invented.”

He spoke, in the warmth of his indignation, loud enough for Grace to
hear him. “What is there monstrous in it?” she asked, advancing a step
toward him, defiantly.

Julian checked her. He too--though he had only once seen Mercy--felt
an angry sense of the insult offered to the beautiful creature who had
interested him at his first sight of her. “Silence!” he said, speaking
sternly to Grace for the first time. “You are offending--justly
offending--Lady Janet. You are talking worse than absurdly--you are
talking offensively--when you speak of another woman presenting herself
here in your place.”

Grace’s blood was up. Stung by Julian’s reproof, she turned on him a
look which was almost a look of fury.

“Are you a clergyman? Are you an educated man?” she asked. “Have you
never read of cases of false personation, in newspapers and books? I
blindly confided in Mercy Merrick before I found out what her character
really was. She left the cottage--I know it, from the surgeon who
brought me to life again--firmly persuaded that the shell had killed me.
My papers and my clothes disappeared at the same time. Is there nothing
suspicious in these circumstances? There were people at the Hospital who
thought them highly suspicious--people who warned me that I might find
an impostor in my place.” She suddenly paused. The rustling sound of
a silk dress had caught her ear. Lady Janet was leaving the room, with
Horace, by way of the conservatory. With a last desperate effort of
resolution, Grace sprung forward and placed herself in front of them.

“One word, Lady Janet, before you turn your back on me,” she said,
firmly. “One word, and I will be content. Has Colonel Roseberry’s letter
found its way to this house or not? If it has, did a woman bring it to
you?”

Lady Janet looked--as only a great lady can look, when a person of
inferior rank has presumed to fail in respect toward her.

“You are surely not aware,” she said, with icy composure, “that these
questions are an insult to Me?”

“And worse than an insult,” Horace added, warmly, “to Grace!”

The little resolute black figure (still barring the way to the
conservatory) was suddenly shaken from head to foot. The woman’s eyes
traveled backward and forward between Lady Janet and Horace with the
light of a new suspicion in them.

“Grace!” she exclaimed. “What Grace? That’s my name. Lady Janet, you
_have_ got the letter! The woman is here!”

Lady Janet dropped Horace’s arm, and retraced her steps to the place at
which her nephew was standing.

“Julian,” she said. “You force me, for the first time in my life, to
remind you of the respect that is due to me in my own house. Send that
woman away.”

Without waiting to be answered, she turned back again, and once more
took Horace’s arm.

“Stand back, if you please,” she said, quietly, to Grace.

Grace held her ground.

“The woman is here!” she repeated. “Confront me with her--and then send
me away, if you like.”

Julian advanced, and firmly took her by the arm. “You forget what is due
to Lady Janet,” he said, drawing her aside. “You forget what is due to
yourself.”

With a desperate effort, Grace broke away from him, and stopped Lady
Janet on the threshold of the conservatory door.

“Justice!” she cried, shaking her clinched hand with hysterical frenzy
in the air. “I claim my right to meet that woman face to face! Where is
she? Confront me with her! Confront me with her!”

While those wild words were pouring from her lips, the rumbling of
carriage wheels became audible on the drive in front of the house.
In the all-absorbing agitation of the moment, the sound of the wheels
(followed by the opening of the house door) passed unnoticed by the
persons in the dining-room. Horace’s voice was still raised in angry
protest against the insult offered to Lady Janet; Lady Janet herself
(leaving him for the second time) was vehemently ringing the bell to
summon the servants; Julian had once more taken the infuriated woman by
the arms and was trying vainly to compose her--when the library door
was opened quietly by a young lady wearing a mantle and a bonnet. Mercy
Merrick (true to the appointment which she had made with Horace) entered
the room.

The first eyes that discovered her presence on the scene were the eyes
of Grace Roseberry. Starting violently in Julian’s grasp, she pointed
toward the library door. “Ah!” she cried, with a shriek of vindictive
delight. “There she is!”

Mercy turned as the sound of the scream rang through the room, and
met--resting on her in savage triumph--the living gaze of the woman
whose identity she had stolen, whose body she had left laid out for
dead. On the instant of that terrible discovery--with her eyes fixed
helplessly on the fierce eyes that had found her--she dropped senseless
on the floor.



CHAPTER XII. EXIT JULIAN.

JULIAN happened to be standing nearest to Mercy. He was the first at her
side when she fell.

In the cry of alarm which burst from him, as he raised her for a
moment in his arms, in the expression of his eyes when he looked at her
death-like face, there escaped the plain--too plain--confession of the
interest which he felt in her, of the admiration which she had aroused
in him. Horace detected it. There was the quick suspicion of jealousy in
the movement by which he joined Julian; there was the ready resentment
of jealousy in the tone in which he pronounced the words, “Leave her to
me.” Julian resigned her in silence. A faint flush appeared on his pale
face as he drew back while Horace carried her to the sofa. His eyes sunk
to the ground; he seemed to be meditating self-reproachfully on the tone
in which his friend had spoken to him. After having been the first to
take an active part in meeting the calamity that had happened, he was
now, to all appearance, insensible to everything that was passing in the
room.

A touch on his shoulder roused him.

He turned and looked round. The woman who had done the mischief--the
stranger in the poor black garments--was standing behind him. She
pointed to the prostrate figure on the sofa, with a merciless smile.

“You wanted a proof just now,” she said. “There it is!”

Horace heard her. He suddenly left the sofa and joined Julian. His face,
naturally ruddy, was pale with suppressed fury.

“Take that wretch away!” he said. “Instantly! or I won’t answer for what
I may do.”

Those words recalled Julian to himself. He looked round the room. Lady
Janet and the housekeeper were together, in attendance on the swooning
woman. The startled servants were congregated in the library doorway.
One of them offered to run to the nearest doctor; another asked if he
should fetch the police. Julian silenced them by a gesture, and turned
to Horace. “Compose yourself,” he said. “Leave me to remove her quietly
from the house.” He took Grace by the hand as he spoke. She hesitated,
and tried to release herself. Julian pointed to the group at the sofa,
and to the servants looking on. “You have made an enemy of every one in
this room,” he said, “and you have not a friend in London. Do you wish
to make an enemy of _me?_ Her head drooped; she made no reply; she
waited, dumbly obedient to the firmer will than her own. Julian ordered
the servants crowding together in the doorway to withdraw. He followed
them into the library, leading Grace after him by the hand. Before
closing the door he paused, and looked back into the dining-room.

“Is she recovering?” he asked, after a moment’s hesitation.

Lady Janet’s voice answered him. “Not yet.”

“Shall I send for the nearest doctor?”

Horace interposed. He declined to let Julian associate himself, even in
that indirect manner, with Mercy’s recovery.

“If the doctor is wanted,” he said, “I will go for him myself.”

Julian closed the library door. He absently released Grace; he
mechanically pointed to a chair. She sat down in silent surprise,
following him with her eyes as he walked slowly to and fro in the room.

For the moment his mind was far away from her, and from all that had
happened since her appearance in the house. It was impossible that a
man of his fineness of perception could mistake the meaning of Horace’s
conduct toward him. He was questioning his own heart, on the subject of
Mercy, sternly and unreservedly as it was his habit to do. “After only
once seeing her,” he thought, “has she produced such an impression on me
that Horace can discover it, before I have even suspected it myself?
Can the time have come already when I owe it to my friend to see her no
more?” He stopped irritably in his walk. As a man devoted to a serious
calling in life, there was something that wounded his self-respect in
the bare suspicion that he could be guilty of the purely sentimental
extravagance called “love at first sight.”

He had paused exactly opposite to the chair in which Grace was seated.
Weary of the silence, she seized the opportunity of speaking to him.

“I have come here with you as you wished,” she said. “Are you going to
help me? Am I to count on you as my friend?”

He looked at her vacantly. It cost him an effort before he could give
her the attention that she had claimed.

“You have been hard on me,” Grace went on. “But you showed me some
kindness at first; you tried to make them give me a fair hearing. I ask
you, as a just man, do you doubt now that the woman on the sofa in
the next room is an impostor who has taken my place? Can there be any
plainer confession that she is Mercy Merrick than the confession she has
made? _You_ saw it; _they_ saw it. She fainted at the sight of me.”

Julian crossed the room--still without answering her--and rang the bell.
When the servant appeared, he told the man to fetch a cab.

Grace rose from her chair. “What is the cab for?” she asked, sharply.

“For you and for me,” Julian replied. “I am going to take you back to
your lodgings.”

“I refuse to go. My place is in this house. Neither Lady Janet nor you
can get over the plain facts. All I asked was to be confronted with
her. And what did she do when she came into the room? She fainted at the
sight of me.”

Reiterating her one triumphant assertion, she fixed her eyes on Julian
with a look which said plainly: Answer that if you can. In mercy to her,
Julian answered it on the spot.

“As far as I understand,” he said, “you appear to take it for granted
that no innocent woman would have fainted on first seeing you. I have
something to tell you which will alter your opinion. On her arrival
in England this lady informed my aunt that she had met with you
accidentally on the French frontier, and that she had seen you (so far
as she knew) struck dead at her side by a shell. Remember that, and
recall what happened just now. Without a word to warn her of your
restoration to life, she finds herself suddenly face to face with you,
a living woman--and this at a time when it is easy for any one who looks
at her to see that she is in delicate health. What is there wonderful,
what is there unaccountable, in her fainting under such circumstances as
these?”

The question was plainly put. Where was the answer to it?

There was no answer to it. Mercy’s wisely candid statement of the manner
in which she had first met with Grace, and of the accident which
had followed had served Mercy’s purpose but too well. It was simply
impossible for persons acquainted with that statement to attach a guilty
meaning to the swoon. The false Grace Roseberry was still as far beyond
the reach of suspicion as ever, and the true Grace was quick enough to
see it. She sank into the chair from which she had risen; her hands fell
in hopeless despair on her lap.

“Everything is against me,” she said. “The truth itself turns liar, and
takes _her_ side.” She paused, and rallied her sinking courage. “No!”
 she cried, resolutely, “I won’t submit to have my name and my place
taken from me by a vile adventuress! Say what you like, I insist on
exposing her; I won’t leave the house!”

The servant entered the room, and announced that the cab was at the
door.

Grace turned to Julian with a defiant wave of her hand. “Don’t let me
detain you,” she said. “I see I have neither advice nor help to expect
from Mr. Julian Gray.”

Julian beckoned to the servant to follow him into a corner of the room.

“Do you know if the doctor has been sent for?” he asked.

“I believe not, sir. It is said in the servants’ hall that the doctor is
not wanted.”

Julian was too anxious to be satisfied with a report from the servants’
hall. He hastily wrote on a slip of paper: “Has she recovered?” and gave
the note to the man, with directions to take it to Lady Janet.

“Did you hear what I said?” Grace inquired, while the messenger was
absent in the dining room.

“I will answer you directly,” said Julian.

The servant appeared again as he spoke, with some lines in pencil
written by Lady Janet on the back of Julian’s note. “Thank God, we have
revived her. In a few minutes we hope to be able to take her to her
room.”

The nearest way to Mercy’s room was through the library. Grace’s
immediate removal had now become a necessity which was not to be trifled
with. Julian addressed himself to meeting the difficulty the instant he
was left alone with Grace.

“Listen to me,” he said. “The cab is waiting, and I have my last words
to say to you. You are now (thanks to the consul’s recommendation) in my
care. Decide at once whether you will remain under my charge, or whether
you will transfer yourself to the charge of the police.”

Grace started. “What do you mean?” she asked, angrily.

“If you wish to remain under my charge,” Julian proceeded, “you will
accompany me at once to the cab. In that case I will undertake to give
you an opportunity of telling your story to my own lawyer. He will be a
fitter person to advise you than I am. Nothing will induce we to believe
that the lady whom you have accused has committed, or is capable of
committing, such a fraud as you charge her with. You will hear what
the lawyer thinks, if you come with me. If you refuse, I shall have no
choice but to send into the next room, and tell them that you are still
here. The result will be that you will find yourself in charge of the
police. Take which course you like: I will give you a minute to decide
in. And remember this--if I appear to express myself harshly, it is your
conduct which forces me to speak out. I mean kindly toward you; I am
advising you honestly for your good.”

He took out his watch to count the minute.

Grace stole one furtive glance at his steady, resolute face. She was
perfectly unmoved by the manly consideration for her which Julian’s last
words had expressed. All she understood was that he was not a man to be
trifled with. Future opportunities would offer themselves of returning
secretly to the house. She determined to yield--and deceive him.

“I am ready to go,” she said, rising with dogged submission. “Your turn
now,” she muttered to herself, as she turned to the looking-glass to
arrange her shawl. “My turn will come.”

Julian advanced toward her, as if to offer her his arm, and checked
himself. Firmly persuaded as he was that her mind was deranged--readily
as he admitted that she claimed, in virtue of her affliction, every
indulgence that he could extend to her--there was something repellent
to him at that moment in the bare idea of touching her. The image of the
beautiful creature who was the object of her monstrous accusation--the
image of Mercy as she lay helpless for a moment in his arms--was vivid
in his mind while he opened the door that led into the hall, and drew
back to let Grace pass out before him. He left the servant to help her
into the cab. The man respectfully addressed him as he took his seat
opposite to Grace.

“I am ordered to say that your room is ready, sir, and that her ladyship
expects you to dinner.”

Absorbed in the events which had followed his aunt’s invitation, Julian
had forgotten his engagement to stay at Mablethorpe House. Could he
return, knowing his own heart as he now knew it? Could he honorably
remain, perhaps for weeks together, in Mercy’s society, conscious as
he now was of the impression which she had produced on him? No. The
one honorable course that he could take was to find an excuse for
withdrawing from his engagement. “Beg her ladyship not to wait dinner
for me,” he said. “I will write and make my apologies.” The cab drove
off. The wondering servant waited on the doorstep, looking after it. “I
wouldn’t stand in Mr. Julian’s shoes for something,” he thought, with
his mind running on the difficulties of the young clergyman’s position.
“There she is along with him in the cab. What is he going to do with her
after that?”

Julian himself, if it had been put to him at the moment, could not have
answered the question.

              *****

Lady Janet’s anxiety was far from being relieved when Mercy had been
restored to her senses and conducted to her own room.

Mercy’s mind remained in a condition of unreasoning alarm, which it was
impossible to remove. Over and over again she was told that the woman
who had terrified her had left the house, and would never be permitted
to enter it more; over and over again she was assured that the
stranger’s frantic assertions were regarded by everybody about her as
unworthy of a moment’s serious attention. She persisted in doubting
whether they were telling her the truth. A shocking distrust of her
friends seemed to possess her. She shrunk when Lady Janet approached the
bedside. She shuddered when Lady Janet kissed her. She flatly refused to
let Horace see her. She asked the strangest questions about Julian Gray,
and shook her head suspiciously when they told her that he was absent
from the house. At intervals she hid her face in the bedclothes and
murmured to herself piteously, “Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?”
 At other times her one petition was to be left alone. “I want nobody in
my room”--that was her sullen cry--“nobody in my room.”

The evening advanced, and brought with it no change for the better. Lady
Janet, by the advice of Horace, sent for her own medical adviser.

The doctor shook his head. The symptoms, he said, indicated a serious
shock to the nervous system. He wrote a sedative prescription; and he
gave (with a happy choice of language) some sound and safe advice. It
amounted briefly to this: “Take her away, and try the sea-side.”
 Lady Janet’s customary energy acted on the advice, without a moment’s
needless delay. She gave the necessary directions for packing the trunks
overnight, and decided on leaving Mablethorpe House with Mercy the next
morning.

Shortly after the doctor had taken his departure a letter from Julian,
addressed to Lady Janet, was delivered by private messenger.

Beginning with the necessary apologies for the writer’s absence, the
letter proceeded in these terms:


“Before I permitted my companion to see the lawyer, I felt the necessity
of consulting him as to my present position toward her first.

“I told him--what I think it only right to repeat to you--that I do not
feel justified in acting on my own opinion that her mind is deranged.
In the case of this friendless woman I want medical authority, and, more
even than that, I want some positive proof, to satisfy my conscience as
well as to confirm my view.

“Finding me obstinate on this point, the lawyer undertook to consult a
physician accustomed to the treatment of the insane, on my behalf.

“After sending a message and receiving the answer, he said, ‘Bring
the lady here--in half an hour; she shall tell her story to the doctor
instead of telling it to me.’ The proposal rather staggered me; I asked
how it was possible to induce her to do that. He laughed, and answered,
‘I shall present the doctor as my senior partner; my senior partner will
be the very man to advise her.’ You know that I hate all deception, even
where the end in view appears to justify it. On this occasion, however,
there was no other alternative than to let the lawyer take his own
course, or to run the risk of a delay which might be followed by serious
results.

“I waited in a room by myself (feeling very uneasy, I own) until the
doctor joined me, after the interview was over.

“His opinion is, briefly, this:

“After careful examination of the unfortunate creature, he thinks that
there are unmistakably symptoms of mental aberration. But how far the
mischief has gone, and whether her case is, or is not, sufficiently
grave to render actual restraint necessary, he cannot positively say, in
our present state of ignorance as to facts.

“‘Thus far,’ he observed, ‘we know nothing of that part of her delusion
which relates to Mercy Merrick. The solution of the difficulty, in this
case, is to be found there. I entirely agree with the lady that the
inquiries of the consul at Mannheim are far from being conclusive.
Furnish me with satisfactory evidence either that there is, or is not,
such a person really in existence as Mercy Merrick, and I will give you
a positive opinion on the case whenever you choose to ask for it.’

“Those words have deci

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