Grace's voice dropped when she answered the question. Grace's momentary
gayety of manner suddenly left her.
"I had urgent reasons," she said, "for returning to England."
"Alone?" rejoined the other. "Without any one 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?"
"I once lived within a few miles of Port Logan."
"When?"
"Some time since." With those words Mercy Merrick shrank back into her
corner and changed the subject. "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 I am. 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 gray 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 thousands of miserable
women who would ask for no greater blessing than to change places with
you."
Grace started. "What can there possibly be to envy in such a lot as
mine?"