The New Magdalen

Horace spoke, laying his finger on the telegram. His voice had changed with the change in his face. The tone was low and trembling: no one would have recognized it as the tone of Horace's voice.

'What does this mean?' he said to Mercy. 'It can't be for you?'

'It is for me.'

'What have You to do with a Refuge?'

Without a change in her face, without a movement in her limbs, she spoke the fatal words:

'I have come from a Refuge, and I am going back to a Refuge. Mr. Horace Holmcroft, I am Mercy Merrick.'

CHAPTER XXVI. GREAT HEART AND LITTLE HEART.

THERE was a pause.

The moments passed—and not one of the three moved. The moments passed—and not one of the three spoke. Insensibly the words of supplication died away on Julian's lips. Even his energy failed to sustain him, tried as it now was by the crushing oppression of suspense. The first trifling movement which suggested the idea of change, and which so brought with it the first vague sense of relief, came from Mercy. Incapable of sustaining the prolonged effort of standing, she drew back a little and took a chair. No outward manifestation of emotion escaped her. There she sat—with the death-like torpor of resignation in her face—waiting her sentence in silence from the man at whom she had hurled the whole terrible confession of the truth in one sentence!

Julian lifted his head as she moved. He looked at Horace, and advancing a few steps, looked again. There was fear in his face, as he suddenly turned it toward Mercy.

'Speak to him!' he said, in a whisper. 'Rouse him, before it's too late!'

She moved mechanically in her chair; she looked mechanically at Julian.

'What more have I to say to him?' she asked, in faint, weary tones. 'Did I not tell him everything when I told him my name?'

The natural sound of her voice might have failed to affect Horace. The altered sound of it roused him. He approached Mercy's chair, with a dull surprise in his face, and put his hand, in a weak, wavering way, on her shoulder. In that position he stood for a while, looking down at her in silence.

The one idea in him that found its way outward to expression was the idea of Julian. Without moving his hand, without looking up from Mercy, he spoke for the first time since the shock had fallen on him.

'Where is Julian?' he asked, very quietly.

'I am here, Horace—close by you.'

'Will you do me a service?'

'Certainly. How can I help you?'

He considered a little before he replied. His hand left Mercy's shoulder, and went up to his head—then dropped at his side. His next words were spoken in a sadly helpless, bewildered way.

'I have an idea, Julian, that I have been somehow to blame. I said some hard words to you. It was a little while since. I don't clearly remember what it was all about. My temper has been a good deal tried in this house; I have never been used to the sort of thing that goes on here—secrets and mysteries, and hateful low-lived quarrels. We have no secrets and mysteries at home. And as for quarrels—ridiculous! My mother and my sisters are highly bred women (you know them); gentlewomen, in the best sense of the word. When I am with them I have no anxieties. I am not harassed at home by doubts of who people are, and confusion about names, and so on. I suspect the contrast weighs a little on my mind and upsets it. They make me over-suspicious among them here, and it ends in my feeling doubts and fears that I can't get over: doubts about you and fears about myself. I have got a fear about myself now. I want you to help me. Shall I make an apology first?'

'Don't say a word. Tell me what I can do.'

He turned his face toward Julian for the first time.

'Just look at me,' he said. 'Does it strike you that I am at all wrong in my mind? Tell me the truth, old fellow.'

'Your nerves are a little shaken, Horace. Nothing more.'

He considered again after that reply, his eyes remaining anxiously fixed on Julian's face.

'My nerves are a little shaken,' he repeated. 'That is true; I feel they are shaken. I should like, if you don't mind, to make sure that it's no worse. Will you help me to try if my memory is all right?'

'I will do anything you like.'

'Ah! you are a good fellow, Julian—and a clear-headed fellow too, which is very important just now. Look here! I say it's about a week since the troubles began in this house. Do you say so too?'

'Yes.'

'The troubles came in with the coming of a woman from Germany, a stranger to us, who behaved very violently in the dining-room there. Am I right, so far?'

'Quite right.'

'The woman carried matters with a high hand. She claimed Colonel Roseberry—I wish to be strictly accurate— she claimed the late Colonel Roseberry as her father. She told a tiresome story about her having been robbed of her papers and her name by an impostor who had personated her. She said the name of the impostor was Mercy Merrick. And she afterward put the climax to it all: she pointed to the lady who is engaged to be my wife, and declared that she was Mercy Merrick. Tell me again, is that right or wrong?'