Amid much, however, which was beset with uncertainty, one thing at
least was clear. The time at Mercy's disposal in her own room had been
indefinitely prolonged by Mercy's benefactress. Hours might pass before
the disclosure to which she stood committed would be expected from her.
In those hours she might surely compose her mind sufficiently to be able
to write her letter of confession to Julian Gray.
Once more she placed the sheet of paper before her. Resting her head on
her hand as she sat at the table, she tried to trace her way through
the labyrinth of the past, beginning with the day when she had met
Grace Roseberry in the French cottage, and ending with the day which had
brought them face to face, for the second time, in the dining-room at
Mablethorpe House.
The chain of events began to unroll itself in her mind clearly, link by
link.
She remarked, as she pursued the retrospect, how strangely Chance, or
Fate, had paved the way for the act of personation, in the first place.
If they had met under ordinary circumstances, neither Mercy nor Grace
would have trusted each other with the confidences which had been
exchanged between them. As the event had happened, they had come
together, under those extraordinary circumstances of common trial and
common peril, in a strange country, which would especially predispose
two women of the same nation to open their hearts to each other. In
no other way could Mercy have obtained at a first interview that fatal
knowledge of Grace's position and Grace's affairs which had placed
temptation before her as the necessary consequence that followed the
bursting of the German shell.
Advancing from this point through the succeeding series of events which
had so naturally and yet so strangely favored the perpetration of the
fraud, Mercy reached the later period when Grace had followed her to
England. Here again she remarked, in the second place, how Chance, or
Fate, had once more paved the way for that second meeting which had
confronted them with one another at Mablethorpe House.
She had, as she well remembered, attended at a certain assembly
(convened by a charitable society) in the character of Lady Janet's
representative, at Lady Janet's own request. For that reason she had
been absent from the house when Grace had entered it. If her return had
been delayed by a few minutes only, Julian would have had time to take
Grace out of the room, and the terrible meeting which had stretched
Mercy senseless on the floor would never have taken place. As the event
had happened, the period of her absence had been fatally shortened by
what appeared at the time to be, the commonest possible occurrence. The
persons assembled at the society's rooms had disagreed so seriously on
the business which had brought them together as to render it necessary
to take the ordinary course of adjourning the proceedings to a future
day. And Chance, or Fate, had so timed that adjournment as to bring
Mercy back into the dining-room exactly at the moment when Grace
Roseberry insisted on being confronted with the woman who had taken her
place.