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 gray poplin, trimmed with gray 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 gray 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 woman who has stolen
her way back--after vainly trying 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 marvelously 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 identity 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 forward nothing had happened to rouse
in her the faintest suspicion that Grace Roseberry was other than a
dead-and-buried woman. So far as she now knew--so far as any one 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.