The New Magdalen

ABSORBED in herself, Mercy failed to notice the opening door or to hear

the murmur of voices in the conservatory.

The one terrible necessity which had been present to her mind at

intervals for a week past was confronting her at that moment. She owed

to Grace Roseberry the tardy justice of owning the truth. The longer her

confession was delayed, the more cruelly she was injuring the woman whom

she had robbed of her identity--the friendless woman who had neither

witnesses nor papers to produce, who was powerless to right her own

wrong. Keenly as she felt this, Mercy failed, nevertheless, to conquer

the horror that shook her when she thought of the impending avowal.

Day followed day, and still she shrank from the unendurable ordeal of

confession--as she was shrinking from it now!

Was it fear for herself that closed her lips?

She trembled--as any human being in her place must have trembled--at the

bare idea of finding herself thrown back again on the world, which had

no place in it and no hope in it for _her_. But she could have overcome

that terror--she could have resigned herself to that doom.

No! it was not the fear of the confession itself, or the fear of the

consequences which must follow it, that still held her silent. The

horror that daunted her was the horror of owning to Horace and to Lady

Janet that she had cheated them out of their love.

Every day Lady Janet was kinder and kinder. Every day Horace was fonder

and fonder of her. How could she confess to Lady Janet? how could she

own to Horace that she had imposed upon him? "I can't do it. They are so

good to me--I can't do it!" In that hopeless way it had ended during the

seven days that had gone by. In that hopeless way it ended again now.

The murmur of the two voices at the further end of the conservatory

ceased. The billiard-room door opened again slowly, by an inch at a

time.

Mercy still kept her place, unconscious of the events that were passing

round her. Sinking under the hard stress laid on it, her mind had

drifted little by little into a new train of thought. For the first time

she found the courage to question the future in a new way. Supposing

her confession to have been made, or supposing the woman whom she had

personated to have discovered the means of exposing the fraud, what

advantage, she now asked herself, would Miss Roseberry derive from Mercy

Merrick's disgrace?

Could Lady Janet transfer to the woman who was really her relative

by marriage the affection which she had given to the woman who had

pretended to be her relative? No! All the right in the world would not

put the true Grace into the false Grace's vacant place. The qualities

by which Mercy had won Lady Janet's love were the qualities which were

Mercy's won. Lady Janet could do rigid justice--but hers was not the

heart to give itself to a stranger (and to give itself unreservedly) a

second time. Grace Roseberry would be formally acknowledged--and there

it would end.