Grace listened with a hard smile of incredulity and a hard look of contempt.
"You are not far from the bell," she said; "ring it."
Mercy looked at her in speechless surprise.
"You are a perfect picture of repentance--you are dying to own the truth," pursued the other, satirically. "Own it before everybody, and own it at once. Call in Lady Janet--call in Mr. Gray and Mr. Holmcroft--call in the servants. Go down on your knees and acknowledge yourself an impostor before them all. Then I will believe you--not before."
"Don't, don't turn me against you!" cried Mercy, entreatingly.
"What do I care whether you are against me or not?"
"Don't--for your own sake, don't go on provoking me much longer!"
"For my own sake? You insolent creature! Do you mean to threaten me?"
With a last desperate effort, her heart beating faster and faster, the blood burning hotter and hotter in her cheeks, Mercy still controlled herself.
"Have some compassion on me!" she pleaded. "Badly as I have behaved to you, I am still a woman like yourself. I can't face the shame of acknowledging what I have done before the whole house. Lady Janet treats me like a daughter; Mr. Holmcroft has engaged himself to marry me. I can't tell Lady Janet and Mr. Holmcroft to their faces that I have cheated them out of their love. But they shall know it, for all that. I can, and will, before I rest to-night, tell the whole truth to Mr. Julian Gray."
Grace burst out laughing. "Aha!" she exclaimed, with a cynical outburst of gayety. "Now we have come to it at last!"
"Take care!" said Mercy. "Take care!"
"Mr. Julian Gray! I was behind the billiard-room door--I saw you coax Mr. Julian Gray to come in! confession loses all its horrors, and becomes quite a luxury, with Mr. Julian Gray!"
"No more, Miss Roseberry! no more! For God's sake, don't put me beside myself! You have tortured me enough already."
"You haven't been on the streets for nothing. You are a woman with resources; you know the value of having two strings to your bow. If Mr. Holmcroft fails you, you have got Mr. Julian Gray. Ah! you sicken me. I'll see that Mr. Holmcroft's eyes are opened; he shall know what a woman he might have married but for Me--"
She checked herself; the next refinement of insult remained suspended on her lips.
The woman whom she had outraged suddenly advanced on her. Her eyes, staring helplessly upward, saw Mercy Merrick's face, white with the terrible anger which drives the blood back on the heart, bending threateningly over her.
"'You will see that Mr. Holmcroft's eyes are opened,'" Mercy slowly repeated; "'he shall know what a woman he might have married but for you!'"
She paused, and followed those words by a question which struck a creeping terror through Grace Roseberry, from the hair of her head to the soles of her feet:
"Who are you?"
The suppressed fury of look and tone which accompanied that question told, as no violence could have told it, that the limits of Mercy's endurance had been found at last. In the guardian angel's absence the evil genius had done its evil work. The better nature which Julian Gray had brought to life sank, poisoned by the vile venom of a womanly spiteful tongue. An easy and a terrible means of avenging the outrages heaped on her was within Mercy's reach, if she chose to take it. In the frenzy of her indignation she never hesitated--she took it.
"Who are you?" she asked for the second time.
Grace roused herself and attempted to speak. Mercy stopped her with a scornful gesture of her hand.
"I remember!" she went on, with the same fiercely suppressed rage. "You are the madwoman from the German hospital who came here a week ago. I am not afraid of you this time. Sit down and rest yourself, Mercy Merrick "
Deliberately giving her that name to her face, Mercy turned from her and took the chair which Grace had forbidden her to occupy when the interview began. Grace started to her feet.
"What does this mean?" she asked.
"It means," answered Mercy, contemptuously, "that I recall every word I said to you just now. It means that I am resolved to keep my place in this house."
"Are you out of your senses?"
"You are not far from the bell. Ring it. Do what you asked me to do. Call in the whole household, and ask them which of us is mad--you or I."
"Mercy Merrick! you shall repent this to the last hour of your life!"
Mercy rose again, and fixed her flashing eyes on the woman who still defied her.
"I have had enough of you!" she said. "Leave the house while you can leave it. Stay here, and I will send for Lady Janet Roy."
"You can't send for her! You daren't send for her!"
"I can and I dare. You have not a shadow of a proof against me. I have got the papers; I am in possession of the place; I have established myself in Lady Janet's confidence. I mean to deserve your opinion of me--I will keep my dresses and my jewels and my position in the house. I deny that I have done wrong. Society has used me cruelly; I owe nothing to Society. I have a right to take any advantage of it if I can. I deny that I have injured you. How was I to know that you would come to life again? Have I degraded your name and your character? I have done honor to both. I have won everybody's liking and everybody's respect. Do you think Lady Janet would have loved you as she loves me? Not she! I tell you to your face I have filled the false position more creditably than you could have filled the true one, and I mean to keep it. I won't give up your name; I won't restore your character! Do your worst; I defy you!"
She poured out those reckless words in one headlong flow which defied interruption. There was no answering her until she was too breathless to say more. Grace seized her opportunity the moment it was within her reach.
"You defy me?" she returned, resolutely. "You won't defy me long. I have written to Canada. My friends will speak for me."
"What of it, if they do? Your friends are strangers here. I am Lady Janet's adopted daughter. Do you think she will believe your friends? She will believe me. She will burn their letters if they write. She will forbid th e house to them if they come. I shall be Mrs. Horace Holmcroft in a week's time. Who can shake my position? Who can injure Me?"
"Wait a little. You forget the matron at the Refuge."
"Find her, if you can. I never told you her name. I never told you where the Refuge was."
"I will advertise your name, and find the matron in that way."
"Advertise in every newspaper in London. Do you think I gave a stranger like you the name I really bore in the Refuge? I gave you the name I assumed when I left England. No such person as Mercy Merrick is known to the matron. No such person is known to Mr. Holmcroft. He saw me at the French cottage while you were senseless on the bed. I had my gray cloak on; neither he nor any of them saw me in my nurse's dress. Inquiries have been made about me on the Continent--and (I happen to know from the person who made them) with no result. I am safe in your place; I am known by your name.