The New Magdalen

JUST inside the door there appeared the figure of a small woman dressed

in plain and poor black garments. She silently lifted her black net veil

and disclosed a dull, pale, worn, weary face. The forehead was low

and broad; the eyes were unusually far apart; the lower features were

remarkably small and delicate. In health (as the consul at Mannheim had

remarked) this woman must have possessed, if not absolute beauty,

at least rare attractions peculiarly her own. As it was now,

suffering--sullen, silent, self-contained suffering--had marred its

beauty. Attention and even curiosity it might still rouse. Admiration or

interest it could excite no longer.

The small, thin, black figure stood immovably inside the door. The dull,

worn, white face looked silently at the three persons in the room.

The three persons in the room, on their side, stood for a moment without

moving, and looked silently at the stranger on the threshold. There was

something either in the woman herself, or in the sudden and stealthy

manner of her appearance in the room, which froze, as if with the touch

of an invisible cold hand, the sympathies of all three. Accustomed to

the world, habitually at their ease in every social emergency, they

were now silenced for the first time in their lives by the first serious

sense of embarrassment which they had felt since they were children in

the presence of a stranger.

Had the appearance of the true Grace Roseberry aroused in their minds a

suspicion of the woman who had stolen her name, and taken her place in

the house?

Not so much as the shadow of a suspicion of Mercy was at the bottom of

the strange sense of uneasiness which had now deprived them alike of

their habitual courtesy and their habitual presence of mind. It was as

practically impossible for any one of the three to doubt the identity of

the adopted daughter of the house as it would be for you who read these

lines to doubt the identity of the nearest and dearest relative you have

in the world. Circumstances had fortified Mercy behind the strongest of

all natural rights--the right of first possession. Circumstances had

armed her with the most irresistible of all natural forces--the force

of previous association and previous habit. Not by so much as a

hair-breadth was the position of the false Grace Roseberry shaken by

the first appearance of the true Grace Roseberry within the doors of

Mablethorpe House. Lady Janet felt suddenly repelled, without knowing

why. Julian and Horace felt suddenly repelled, without knowing why.

Asked to describe their own sensations at the moment, they would have

shaken their heads in despair, and would have answered in those words.

The vague presentiment of some misfortune to come had entered the room

with the entrance of the woman in black. But it moved invisibly; and it

spoke as all presentiments speak, in the Unknown Tongue.