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 amus.e.m.e.nt of Lady Janet. "Another explanation!" he exclaimed, with a look of comic resignation.
Julian overheard the words. His large l.u.s.trous 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 ident.i.ty?"
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 pa.s.s 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 sh.e.l.l. 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 a.s.suming 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 sh.e.l.l had killed me.
My papers and my clothes disappeared at the same time. Is there nothing suspicious in these circ.u.mstances? 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) pa.s.sed 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 ident.i.ty 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.