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.




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