The New Magdalen

"I will stay with you, Horace, as long as you wish me to be here."

Having answered in those terms, he stopped as he passed Mercy, on his

way to the window. His quick and kindly insight told him that he might

still be of some service to her. A hint from him might show her the

shortest and the easiest way of making her confession. Delicately and

briefly he gave her the hint. "The first time I met you," he said, "I

saw that your life had had its troubles. Let us hear how those troubles

began."

He withdrew to his place in the recess. For the first time, since

the fatal evening when she and Grace Roseberry had met in the French

cottage, Mercy Merrick looked back into the purgatory on earth of her

past life, and told her sad story simply and truly in these words.