"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 co nservatory) 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.