The New Magdalen

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.