Once more she placed the sheet of paper before her.Resting her head on her hand as she sat at the table, she tried to trace her way through the labyrinth of the past, beginning with the day when she had met Grace Roseberry in the French cottage, and ending with the day which had brought them face to face, for the second time, in the dining-room at Mablethorpe House.
The chain of events began to unroll itself in her mind clearly, link by link.
She remarked, as she pursued the retrospect, how strangely Chance, or Fate, had paved the way for the act of personation, in the first place.
If they had met under ordinary circumstances, neither Mercy nor Grace would have trusted each other with the confidences which had been ex changed between them.As the event had happened, they had come together, under those extraordinary circumstances of common trial and common peril, in a strange country, which would especially predispose two women of the same nation to open their hearts to each other.In no other way could Mercy have obtained at a first interview that fatal knowledge of Grace's position and Grace's affairs which had placed temptation before her as the necessary consequence that followed the bursting of the German shell.
Advancing from this point through the succeeding series of events which had so naturally and yet so strangely favored the perpetration of the fraud, Mercy reached the later period when Grace had followed her to England.Here again she remarked, in the second place, how Chance, or Fate, had once more paved the way for that second meeting which had confronted them with one another at Mablethorpe House.
She had, as she well remembered, attended at a certain assembly (convened by a charitable society) in the character of Lady Janet's representative, at Lady Janet's own request.For that reason she had been absent from the house when Grace had entered it.If her return had been delayed by a few minutes only, Julian would have had time to take Grace out of the room, and the terrible meeting which had stretched Mercy senseless on the floor would never have taken place.As the event had happened, the period of her absence had been fatally shortened by what appeared at the time to be, the commonest possible occurrence.The, persons assembled at the society's rooms had disagreed so seriously on the business which had brought them together as to render it necessary to take the ordinary course of adjourning the proceedings to a future day.And Chance, or Fate, had so timed that adjournment as to bring Mercy back into the dining-room exactly at the moment when Grace Roseberry insisted on being confronted with the woman who had taken her place.
She had never yet seen the circumstances in this sinister light.She was alone in her room, at a crisis in her life.She was worn and weakened by emotions which had shaken her to the soul.
Little by little she felt the enervating influences let loose on her, in her lonely position, by her new train of thought.Little by little her heart began to sink under the stealthy chill of superstitious dread.Vaguely horrible presentiments throbbed in her with her pulses, flowed through her with her blood.Mystic oppressions of hidden disaster hovered over her in the atmosphere of the room.The cheerful candle-light turned traitor to her and grew dim.Supernatural murmurs trembled round the house in the moaning of the winter wind.She was afraid to look behind her.On a sudden she felt her own cold hands covering her face, without knowing when she had lifted them to it, or why.
Still helpless, under the horror that held her, she suddenly heard footsteps--a man's footsteps--in the corridor outside.At other times the sound would have startled her: now it broke the spell.The footsteps suggested life, companionship, human interposition--no matter of what sort.She mechanically took up her pen; she found herself beginning to remember her letter to Julian Gray.
At the same moment the footsteps stopped outside her door.The man knocked.
She still felt shaken.She was hardly mistress of herself yet.A faint cry of alarm escaped her at the sound of the knock.Before it could be repeated she had rallied her courage, and had opened the door.
The man in the corridor was Horace Holmcroft.
His ruddy complexion had turned pale.His hair (of which he was especially careful at other times) was in disorder.The superficial polish of his manner was gone; the undisguised man, sullen, distrustful, irritated to the last degree of endurance, showed through.He looked at her with a watchfully suspicious eye; he spoke to her, without preface or apology, in a coldly angry voice.