pits et seats Te erase seeclGarehgesates ST Sete peaaes mo ion OA tet ae ord oY ai} estieestatastale SORA as tHE QHIO STATE UNIVERSITY headed @ loo ee ee THE NEW MAGDALEN ‘Confront me with her—and then send me away if you like.’ THE NEW MAGDALEN By WILKIE COLLINS Illustrated by JOHN SLOAN Charles Scribner’s Sons New York . . .. 1908 CopyRIGHT, 1908, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS Go the Memory OF CHARLES ALLSTON COLLINS April 9, 1873 CONTENTS FIRST SCENE THE COTTAGE ON THE FRONTIER Preamble . CHAPTER THE FIRST The Two Women : CHAPTER THE SECOND Magdalen—in Modern Times CHAPTER THE THIRD The German Shell CHAPTER THE FOURTH The Temptation . CHAPTER THE FIFTH The German Surgeon SECOND SCENE MABLETHORPE HousE Preamble CHAPTER THE SIXTH Lad anet’s Companion . Pp CHAPTER THE SEVENTH The Man Is Coming. CHAPTER THE EIGHTH The Man Appears vii PAGE T3 20 29 37 51 a3 64 81 vill CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER THE NINTH News from: Mannheim |:'°..-.. 0 Sco CHAPTER THE TENTH A Council of Three 24. 6c ec CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH The Dead ‘Alive ....: < icf \f.a tee uen yonenn ta el en reece CHAPTER THE TWELFTH Exit Juliano. 26 5. 3.0o 08S” oe eg ee CHAPTER THE THIRTEENTH Enter Julian. (00 6. cee po, ete ee CHAPTER THE FOURTEENTH Coming Events Cast Their Shadows Before. . . . . . 142 CHAPTER THE FIFTEENTH A. Woman's: Remorse 720s") oes) astine nance ee ee CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH They Meet ‘Again y.) 220022202) con cece ee tere, tae eR CHAPTER THE SEVENTEENTH The: Guardian Angel 2s (oaks (oa ge aie eee ee CHAPTER THE EIGHTEENTH The Search in‘ the Grounds’. /5.9 0k) 2 seat ee CHAPTER THE NINETEENTH The* Evil (Genius ¢ jee 3." 6 aan a, Ses aye kc an au CHAPTER THE TWENTIETH The Policeman in Plain Clothes. ~ 22) S22.) eee ee CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FIRST The. Footstep inthe Corridor -. °°. ee eee CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SECOND The Man in the Dining-Room «... \.. 2 5 Lc ea CHAPTER THE TWENTY-THIRD Lady Janet‘at Bay ooo oi CONTENTS CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FOURTH Lady Janet’s Letter . CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FIFTH The Confession CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SIXTH Great Heart and Little Heart CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SEVENTH Magdalen’s Apprenticeshi g Pp Pp CHAPTER THE TWENTY-EIGHTH Sentence Is Pronounced on Her . CHAPTER THE TWENTY-NINTH The Last Trial EPILOGUE I Letter from Mr. Horace Holmcroft to Miss Grace Rose- - 343 berry II Letter from Miss Grace Roseberry to Mr. Horace Holm- ey Rk ok am 1 0 croft . Il Letter from Mr. Horace Holmcroft to Miss Grace Rose- . 352 berry TV. Extracts from the Diary of the Rev. Julian Gray . . 290 . 298 » 332 aK ij ILLUSTRATIONS ‘Confront me with her—and then send me away if you Hiker, Wo Ce sie Renee Mame ee MR en ona) Et PENLES PICCE Facing page She might be Grace Roseberryijfshedared. . . . . . . 32 POLE VO“ (” ota. Wan Wee amet ne ores ied Ute Sen's ce! 3: 2200 ‘It doesn’t end with this world,’ she whispered; ‘there’s ae Deter WOTIC:to' Come gn mmmen oe RRC Bap ieigs! os) <2 338 FIRST SCENE THE COTTAGE ON THE FRONTIER PREAMBLE The place 1s France. The time is autumn, in the year eighteen hundred and seventy—the year of the war between France nad Germany. The persons are: Captain Arnault, of the French army; Surgeon Surville, of the French ambulance; Surgeon Weitzel, of the German army; Mercy Merrick, attached as nurse to the French ambulance; and Grace Roseberry, a travelling lady on her way to England. THE NEW MAGDALEN CHAPTER THE FIRST THE TWO WOMEN It was a dark night. The rain was pouring in tor- rents. 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 inter- cepted despatches taken from the Germans. He had suffered the wood fire, scattered over the large open grate, to burn low; the red embers only faintly illumi- nated a part of the room. On the floor behind him lay some of the miller’s empty sacks. In a corner op- posite to him was the miller’s solid walnut-wood bed. On the walls all round him were the miller’s coloured prints, representing a happy mixture of devotional and 3 4 THE NEW MAGDALEN 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 ambu- lance. A piece of coarse canvas screened the opening between the two rooms, in place of the door. A second door, leading from the bedchamber 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 despatches, 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 in- truder in the room. Surgeon Surville, entering from the kitchen, drew aside the canvas screen, and ap- proached 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?’ enquired the captain, suspiciously. The surgeon pointed to the kitchen—now the hos- pital 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?’ i, THE TWO WOMEN 5 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, Cap- tain 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 dis- trustfully 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. 6 THE NEW MAGDALEN ‘Did you ever know a woman who could resist look- ing 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 head-quarters 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 under- lying 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 ap- peared. The nurse led the way—tall, lithe, and 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 her man- ner 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 grey 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 THE TWO WOMEN 7 quite marked enough to account for the surgeon’s polite anxiety to shelter her in the captain’s room. ‘The com- mon consent of mankind would have declared her to be an unusually pretty woman. She wore the large grey 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 move- ments, 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 as we can. Compose yourself, dear madam, and rely on the protection of a Frenchman who is devoted to you!’ He gallantly emphasised 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 ap- peared, 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?’ 8 THE NEW MAGDALEN The nurse hesitated. ‘Nota pretty name like yours,’ she said, and hesitated again. ‘Call me ‘“ Mercy Mer- rick,’”’’ 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 those 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 travelling 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 about yourself?’ she said, abruptly. Under ordinary circumstances, it was not in Grace’s character to receive the advances of a stranger unre- servedly. But she and the nurse had met, in a strange country, under those circumstances of common peril and common trial which especially predispose two women of the same nation to open their hearts to one another. She answered cordially, without a moment’s hesitation. ‘A hundred questions,’ she cried, ‘if you like.’ She looked at the expiring fire, and at the dimly visible THE TWO WOMEN 9 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 an- swered. ‘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 war time?’ Grace’s voice dropped when she answered the ques- tion. Grace’s momentary gaiety of manner suddenly left her. ‘I had urgent reasons,’ she said, ‘for returning to England.’ ‘Alone?’ rejoined the other. ‘Without anyone 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?’ ‘T once lived within a few miles of Port Logan.’ ‘When ?’ ‘Some time since.’ With those words Mercy Mer- rick shrank back into her corner and changed the sub- 10 THE NEW MAGDALEN ject. ‘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 Iam. 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 grey 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 THE TWO WOMEN TT thousands of miserable women who would ask for n6é 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 honourably 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 ro- mance in your life?’ she asked. ‘Why have you sacri- ficed 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 never can be friends.’ ‘Why not?’ The nurse was dumb. She had shown a marked hesitation when she had mentioned her name. Re- membering this, Grace openly avowed the conclusion at which she had arrived. ‘Should I be guessing right,’ she asked, ‘if I guessed you to be some great lady in disguise ?’ Mercy laughed to herselfi—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 per- sisted. ‘Once more,’ she whispered persuasively, ‘let us be friends.’ She gently laid her arm as she spoke on Mercy’s shoulder. Mercy roughly shook it off. 12 THE NEW MAGDALEN ‘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 un- generous 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 leapt 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. MAGDALEN—IN MODERN TIMES 13 CHAPTER THE SECOND 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 under- stand 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 news- papers 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 betrayed to Sin?’ Still wondering, Grace answered that she had read of such things in newspapers and in books. ‘Have you heard—when those starving and sinning fellow-creatures happen to be women—of Refuges estab- lished 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?’ ves, ‘Move your chair a little farther away from me.’ She paused. Her voice, without losing its steadiness, fell to its lowest tones. ‘Z was once one of those women,’ she said quietly. 14 THE NEW MAGDALEN Grace sprang to her feet with a faint cry. She stood petrified—incapable of uttering a word. ‘T have been in a Refuge,’ pursued the sweet sad voice of the other woman. ‘J 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 coldly. 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 towards 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 pro- nounced those words; she waited a moment and re- covered 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 else- where, 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 con- MAGDALEN—IN MODERN TIMES 15 fused. ‘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 es- caped 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 sig- nificant 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; 16 THE NEW MAGDALEN 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 neighbourhood. 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 neighbours were French Canadians. I had daily practice in speaking 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 parts of her sad story—began to falter once more. She stopped; following silently the MAGDALEN—IN MODERN TIMES 17 memories and associations roused in her by what she had just said. Had she forgotten the presence of an- other 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 be- friend you?’ ‘Befriend me? He doesn’t even know that such a person as I am is in existence.’ That strange answer, naturally enough, only strength- ened the anxiety of Grace to hear more. ‘You said just now > she began. ‘T said just now that he saved me. He did save me; you shall hear how. One Sunday our regular clergy- man 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?’ 18 THE NEW MAGDALEN ‘Afraid of making my hard life harder still.’ A woman who could have sympathised 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. ‘T 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 plain- est terms. ‘You!’ she exclaimed, in a tone of blank astonish- ment. The nurse rose slowly to her feet. Grace’s expres- sion 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 tome. 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 in- sisted 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 cir- MAGDALEN—IN MODERN TIMES ig cumstances. 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. Com- mon humanity made it an act of necessity to say some- thing to her. Grace considered—advanced a step towards her—stopped—and took refuge in the most trivial of all the commonplace 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 towards 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 towards 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 out- break 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.’ 20 THE NEW MAGDALEN With those melancholy words—touchingly, not bit- terly spoken—she moved to pass into the kitchen. She had just reached the canvas screen, when Grace stopped her by a question. ‘Is the weather changing?’ Grace asked. ‘I don’t hear the rain against the window.’ Before Mercy could check her, she had crossed the room, and had unfastened the window shutter. ‘Close the shutter!’ cried Mercy. ‘You were warned not to open it when we came into the room.’ Grace persisted in looking 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) Miss Roseberry might resume her journey. In a few hours more the morning would dawn. Hurriedly retracing her steps, Mercy closed the shutter with her own hands. Before she could fasten it, the report of a rifle-shot reached the cottage from one of the distant posts. It was followed almost in- stantly by a second report, nearer and louder than the first. Mercy paused, and listened intently for the next sound. CHAPTER THE THIRD THE GERMAN SHELL A third rifle-shot rang through the night air, close to the cottage. Grace started and drew back from the window in alarm. ‘What does that firing mean?’ she asked. THE GERMAN SHELL 21 _ ‘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 enquired. Surgeon Surville ominously shook his head. ‘Impossible! We are outnumbered as usual—ten to one.’ The shrill roll of the French drums was heard out- side. ‘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 out- posts. 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 English- woman on his breast. ‘Fear nothing, madam,’ he said, looking as if he could have annihilated the whole Ger- man force with his own invincible arm. ‘A French- man’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 22 THE NEW MAGDALEN 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 think- ing 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 shoul- der 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-waggon.’ ‘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. sur- geon to take his place as director-general of the ambu- lance 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, ‘Sur- ville is the soul of honour! Surville is devoted to me!””’ He struck his breast; he again forgot the obscurity in THE GERMAN SHELL 23 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 ex- ploded 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 court- yard, 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. 24 THE NEW MAGDALEN 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 clamour and confusion attending the removal of those among the wounded who were strong enough to be placed in the waggon. 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 mechani- cally 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 smouldering 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 enquire if any harm had been done. Mercy called to him to approach. ‘I am afraid the THE GERMAN SHELL 25 shell has struck her,’ she said, yielding her place to him. ‘See if she is mortally wounded.’ The surgeon’s anxiety for his charming patient ex- pressed 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. ‘Geta 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 over- power me!’ Mercy approached him with the candle. The light disclosed the frightful injury which a frag- ment of the shell had inflicted on the Englishwoman’s head. Surgeon Surville’s manner altered on the in- stant. The expression of anxiety left his face; its pro- fessional 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 grey eyes watched him attentively. ‘Mortally 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 26 THE NEW MAGDALEN the bed in one corner of the room. ‘Next time, nurse, it may be you or me. Who knows? Bah! the prob- lem 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, be- fore it is too late.’ He offered his arm to the nurse. The creaking of the baggage-waggon, 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 Surgeon Surville’s arm. ‘I have already told you that I shall stay here,’ she answered. Monsieur Surville lifted his hands in polite remon- strance. Mercy held back the curtains, 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 waggon-wheels died away in the distance. No renewal of firing from the position occupied by the enemy dis- turbed the silence that followed. The Germans knew THE GERMAN SHELL 27 that the French were in retreat. A few minutes more and they would take possession of the abandoned vil- lage: the tumult of their approach would become audi- ble 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 afterwards. The forehead was un- usually low and broad; the eyes unusually far apart; the mouth and chin remarkably small. With tender hands Mercy smoothed the dishevelled hair, and ar- ranged 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 28 THE NEW MAGDALEN 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 in- terval before the Germans appeared ? Mercy recalled the conversation that had passed be- “tween her ill-fated companion and herself. Miss Rose- berry 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 wait- ing 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 catas- trophe 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 reluc- tance to carry the investigation any further. 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 THE TEMPTATION 29 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 THE FOURTH THE TEMPTATION Some letters, tied together with a ribbon, attracted Mercy’s attention first. The ink in which the ad- dresses were written had faded with age. The letters, directed alternately to Colonel Roseberry and to the Honourable Mrs. Roseberry, contained a correspond- ence between the husband and wife at a time when the Colonel’s military duties had obliged him to be absent fromhome. 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, Mabelthorpe House, Kensington, London.’ Mercy took the enclosure from the open envelope. The first lines she read informed her that she had found the Colonel’s letter of introduction, pre- senting his daughter to her protectress on her arrival in England. Mercy read the letter through. It was described by 30 THE NEW MAGDALEN the writer as the last effort 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 death- bed—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 complain- ing voices from the next room caught her ear. The wounded men left behind were moaning for help—the deserted soliders were losing their fortitude at last. She entered the kitchen. A cry of delight welcomed her appearance—the mere sight of her composed the THE TEMPTATION a1 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 compassion- ate 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 de- serted 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 succouring the afflicted—what Christian judgment would have hesi- tated 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 cir- cumstances: 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 mie references to your char- 32 THE NEW MAGDALEN acter, 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 imaginary pict- ure of the beauty of Mablethorpe House and the com- fort 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 mas- tered 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 deline- ated with pitiless fidelity the dreary scene. Go where she might, do what she might, it would end always in the same way. Curiosity and admiration excited by her beauty; enquiries made about her; the story of the past discovered; Society charitably sorry for her; So- ciety 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; _brand- ing 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 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 nad Germany. The persons are: Captain Arnault, of the French army; Surgeon Surville, of the French ambulance; Surgeon Weizel, of the German army; Mercy Merrick, attached as nurse to the French ambulance; and Grace Roseberry, a travelling lady on her way to England. She might be Grace Roseberry if she dared. THE TEMPTATION a3 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, feel- ing her own position as she felt it. In the bitter mock- ery 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 ij 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. 34 THE NEW MAGDALEN 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, liter- ally everything, was in the lost woman’s favour. The people with whom she had been connected in the ambu- lance 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 humil- iation 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 colour rose, her eyes sparkled; she had never been so irresistibly beautiful as she looked at the moment when the new future dis- closed itself, radiant with new hope. She waited a minute, until she could think over 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 an- swered 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 honourably; if she was diligent under instruction, and grateful for kindness—if, in one word, she was all that THE TEMPTATION 35 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 it- self. 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 favour; 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 ex- citement had all cooled down, and then put the con- templated 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. 36 THE NEW MAGDALEN 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 enquiries at a later time, and those enquiries might betray her. She looked round. The grey 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 sud- denly drawn back from the other side, and three men confronted her in the open doorway. THE GERMAN SURGEON 37 CHAPTER THE FIFTH THE GERMAN SURGEON The youngest of the three strangers—judging by feat- ures, 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 silence in these words: ‘A woman ill on the bed; another woman in attend- ance on her, and no one else in the room. Any neces- sity, 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 profes- sional 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 38 THE NEW MAGDALEN 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 tortoise- shell spectacles. ‘You can be of no use, sir,’ she said, shortly. ‘The lady was killed when your troops shelled this cot- tage.’ The Englishman started, and looked compassionately towards 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 enquired next. Mercy answered, ‘The doctor attached to the French ambulance.’ The German grunted in contemptuous disapproval of all French men and all French institutions. The Englishman seized his first opportuntiy 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 in view she had, there might be serious rea- sons for speaking with extreme caution when she spoke of Grace. THE GERMAN SURGEON 39 ‘I believe so,’ she said. ‘We met here by accident. I know nothing of her.’ ‘Not even her name?’ enquired 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 an- swering him. She heard the voices of the wounded men raised in feeble remonstrance, and the harsh com- mand of the foreign officers, bidding them be silent. The generous instincts of the woman instantly pre- vailed 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, 4o THE NEW MAGDALEN and took the matter up before the Englishman could say a word more. ‘You have nothing to do with the wounded French- men,’ 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 Ignatius 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 disci- pline 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 beauti- ful,’ he thought. ‘What a charming creature!’ ‘Well!’ said Ignatius Wetzel, eyeing Mercy sternly through his spectacles. ‘Are you satisfied? And will you hold your tongue?’ She yielded: it was plainly useless to persist. 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 ab- sorbed 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 THE GERMAN SURGEON 4I 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 to you if you will let me. May I ask if you are travelling ?’ 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 ?’ nes. ‘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 | 42 THE NEW MAGDALEN newspapers. If I ask him, the commanding officer will stant 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. ‘T gratefully accept your offer, sir.’ He advanced a step towards 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 towards the German surgeon. Ignatius Wetzel was again at the bed, bending over the body, and apparently absorbed in examining the wound which had been inflicted by the shell. Mercy’s in- stinctive aversion to the old man increased tenfold now that she was left alone with him. She withdrew un- easily to the window, and looked out at the moon- light. 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 re- consider 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 be- come 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 GERMAN SURGEON 43 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 strength- ened 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 con- gregation whom he addressed against the degrading in- fluences of falsehood and deceit. The terms in which he had appealed to the miserable women round hin— 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 purposed 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 con- fronted Ignatius Wetzel. He was just stepping for- ward 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 handker- chief with some difficulty. ‘Her name is—Mercy Merrick.’ His lips had said it—not hers! He had given Grace Roseberry the name. ‘Mercy Merrick” is an English name?’ pursued 44 THE NEW MAGDALEN 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 her- self 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 once more. 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 Mer- rick 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 THE GERMAN SURGEON 45 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 realising 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 sand-box 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 ?’ 46 THE NEW MAGDALEN Mercy pointed towards 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 had resumed 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 Ger- mans 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 under- stood 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?’ THE GERMAN SURGEON 47 ‘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-humouredly accepted the hint implied in those words. He quitted the room by the door lead- ing into the yard, and waited for the charming English- woman 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, ad- dressing with a terrible gaiety 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 anima- tion 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 48 THE NEW MAGDALEN little boys,’ he said tenderly, as if they were two children; ‘my blessed little boys, come to work!’ He turned to the assistant. ‘Do you remember the battle of Sol- ferino, Max—and the Austrian soldier I operated on for a wound on the head ?’ The assistant’s sleepy eyes opened wide; he was evi- dently 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 Sol- ferino, 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 GERMAN SURGEON 49 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 sen- tinel at the final limit of the German lines (barely audi- ble in the distance) gave the word for the last time: “Pass the English lady!’ THE END OF THE FIRST SCENE 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:> THE SIXTH 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 varied 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 con- servatory, the monotony of the panelled wall is re- lieved 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 fire- place, surmounted by its marble mantel-piece, 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 mantel-piece (neither very old nor very new) presents a startling, almost a revolu- 53 54 THE NEW MAGDALEN tionary 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 de- veloped 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 news- paper. Lady Janet Roy needs but little introduction. Every- body 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 easily-flowing talk, her inexhaustible spirits, her good-humoured gracious sociability of manner? Where is the modern hermit who is not familiarly acquainted, by hearsay at least, with the fantastic novelty and humour 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 dis- courage 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. LADY JANET’S COMPANION 55 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 grey poplin, trimmed with grey 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 grey 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 56 THE NEW MAGDALEN woman who has stolen her way back—after vainly try- ing 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 marvellously 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 iden- tity 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 for- ward nothing had happened to rouse in Mercy the faintest suspicion that Grace Roseberry was other than LADY JANET’S COMPANION Vi a dead, and buried, woman. So far as she now knew— so far as anyone 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, en- tered the winter garden. ‘The eyes of Horace followed her, as long as she was in view, with a curious, contra- dictory expression of admiration and disapproval. When she had passed out of sight, the admiration van- ished, 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; 58 THE NEW MAGDALEN 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 my- self to be shot, with no other object in view than de- scribing 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 offence, except a breach of good manners. She snatched up the nearest weapon of correction at hand—a table-spoon—and rapped her young friend smartly with it on the arm that was near- est 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 some- thing 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 LADY JANET’S COMPANION 59 newspaper had offered to employ him again in the capac- ity 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 any- body do anything nowadays (fighting included) without wishing to see it in the newspapers? J subscribe to a charity; ¢hou art presented with a testimonial; he preaches a sermon; we suffer a grievance; you make a discovery; ‘hey 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. 60 THE NEW MAGDALEN ‘Don’t I live in the latter part of the nineteenth cen- tury?’ she asked. ‘In the newspapers, did you say? In large print, 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 towards the con- servatory: 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 Mabel- thorpe House. Invited to become Lady Janet’s guest (he had passed his holidays as a schoolboy under Lady Janet’s roof)—free to spend the idle time of his con- valescence from morning to night in Mercy’s society— the impression originally produced on him in the 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 mar- riage 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 LADY JANET’S COMPANION 61 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. Asa connection of Lady Janet’s by marriage, Horace’s mother and sisters were ready to receive her with all the honours due to a new member of the family. No pecuniary considerations made it necessary, in this case, to wait for a favourable 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. ‘T 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 gaily—she suddenly changes colour, 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 forme. 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!’ 62 THE NEW MAGDALEN 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 Holm- croft’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 ob- serving 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 preju- dices, 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 en- deared, not by his own merits only, but by old associa- tions 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 LADY JANET’S COMPANION 63 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 en- treated 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 direc- tion 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 towards the door. ‘Away with you, and cultivate the favourite 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 com- plained. 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 understand- ing, sooner or later, on the serious question of the marriage. The difficulty was, how to approach the subject without giving offence. ‘I don’t understand 64 THE NEW MAGDALEN 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 in- fluence could accomplish, and to trust to the inspiration of the moment for exerting itin the right way. ‘Grace!’ she called out, approaching the conservatory door. The tall lithe figure in its grey 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 THE SEVENTH THE MAN IS COMING ‘You look very pale this morning, my child.’ Mercy sighed wearily. ‘Iam not well,’ she answered. ‘The slightest noise startles 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 colour flowed charmingly over THE MAN IS COMING 65 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 learnt 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 66 THE NEW MAGDALEN the time to say a word for Horace.’ Keeping that ex- cellent 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 recon- ciled 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 com- panion, innocent of the faintest suspicion of thesubject THE MAN IS COMING 67 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 recognised the handwriting on the ad- dress with a look of surprise. ‘Excuse me, my dear,’ she said, pausing, with her old-fashioned courtesy, be- fore she opened the enveolpe. Mercy made the neces- sary 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 68 THE NEW MAGDALEN 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 in- terested? Pray say Yes, by the bearer, and oblige your affectionate nephew, JULIAN GRay,’ Lady Janet referred again suspiciously to the sen- tence in the letter which alluded to the ‘lady.’ Julian Gray was her only surviving nephew, the son of a favourite 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 resem- blance 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 inex- haustible good humour, the aunt and the nephew gen- erally met on friendly terms. Apart from what she called ‘his detestable opinions,’ Lady Janet was suffi- ciently 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 accept- able 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 omin- ously as she rose from the sofa, and advanced to the library door. 7 ee ee a — THE MAN IS COMING 69 ‘Grace,’ she said, pausing and turning round, ‘I have a note to write tomy nephew. Ishall 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 favourite subjects of conversation. JI 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 mo- 70 THE NEW MAGDALEN ment. 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 for ever? ‘I can’t tell him! I won’t teli him!’ she burst out passionately. ‘The dis- grace 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 THE MAN IS COMING at 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 resigna- tion 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 re- sult of Lady Janet’s interference in his favour 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 anend. Was his betrothed wife waiting alone to speak to him on his return to the room? He ad- vanced a few steps. She never moved—she sat heed- less, 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 un- reasonable impatience of tone and manner which would have warned an older and more experienced man to 72 THE NEW MAGDALEN 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 mentioned my name in speaking to you ?’ She turned on him angrily before he could add a word more. ‘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-humouredly. ‘Is it so very inexcusable to ask Lady Janet to intercede for me? J 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 floor 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 of- fence 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 THE MAN IS COMING 73 as if it had not reached her ears. There was a spirit in her—a miserable spirit, born of her own bitter expe- rience—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 pros- perity and enjoyment? Has his mother known starva- tion? Have his sisters been left forsaken in the street ?’ It hardened her heart—it almost reconciled her to de- ceiving him—when he set his relatives up as patterns for her. Would he never understand that women de- tested having other women exhibited as examples to them? She looked round at him with a sense of im- patient 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 towards 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 74 THE NEW MAGDALEN 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 ques- tion of Lady Janet’s prolonged absence. ‘What made her leave you?’ he asked, standing at the back of the sofa and leaning over her. THE MAN IS COMING "Ws ‘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 suddenly looked round at him in blank, be- wildered 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 slowly; ‘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 Rose- berry has assumed the aspect of a fatality. What lesser influence could have 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?’ 76 THE NEW MAGDALEN ‘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 aroom. 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 your- self!’ She looked round at him again with a ghastly gaiety; 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 sur- prise. 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. EE | a ee