The New Magdalen

The door was opened by the maid. Grace Roseberry entered the room.

She advanced rapidly, with a defiant assurance in her manner, and a

lofty carriage of her head. She sat down in the chair, to which Lady

Janet silently pointed, with a thump; she returned Lady Janet's grave

bow with a nod and a smile. Every movement and every look of the little,

worn, white-faced, shabbily dressed woman expressed insolent triumph,

and said, as if in words, "My turn has come!"

"I am glad to wait on your ladyship," she began, without giving Lady

Janet an opportunity of speaking first. "Indeed, I should have felt it

my duty to request an interview, if you had not sent your maid to invite

me up here."

"You would have felt it your duty to request an interview?" Lady Janet

repeated, very quietly. "Why?"

The tone in which that one last word was spoken embarrassed Grace at

the outset. It established as great a distance between Lady Janet and

herself as if she had been lifted in her chair and conveyed bodily to

the other end of the room.

"I am surprised that your ladyship should not understand me," she said,

struggling to conceal her confusion. "Especially after your kind offer

of your own boudoir."

Lady Janet remained perfectly unmoved. "I do _not_ understand you," she

answered, just as quietly as ever.

Grace's temper came to her assistance. She recovered the assurance which

had marked her first appearance on the scene.

"In that case," she resumed, "I must enter into particulars, in justice

to myself. I can place but one interpretation on the extraordinary

change in your ladyship's behavior to me downstairs. The conduct of that

abominable woman has at last opened your eyes to the deception that has

been practiced on you. For some reason of your own, however, you

have not yet chosen to recognize me openly. In this painful position

something is due to my own self-respect. I cannot, and will not, permit

Mercy Merrick to claim the merit of restoring me to my proper place in

this house. After what I have suffered it is quite impossible for me to

endure that. I should have requested an interview (if you had not sent

for me) for the express purpose of claiming this person's immediate

expulsion from the house. I claim it now as a proper concession to Me.

Whatever you or Mr. Julian Gray may do, _I_ will not tamely permit her

to exhibit herself as an interesting penitent. It is really a little too

much to hear this brazen adventuress appoint her own time for explaining

herself. It is too deliberately insulting to see her sail out of the

room--with a clergyman of the Church of England opening the door for

her--as if she was laying me under an obligation! I can forgive much,

Lady Janet--including the terms in which you thought it decent to order

me out of your house. I am quite willing to accept the offer of your

boudoir, as the expression on your part of a better frame of mind. But

even Christian Charity has its limits. The continued presence of that

wretch under your roof is, you will permit me to remark, not only a

monument of your own weakness, but a perfectly insufferable insult to

Me."