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............