step
toward him, defiantly.

Julian checked her. He too--though he had only once seen Mercy--felt
an angry sense of the insult offered to the beautiful creature who had
interested him at his first sight of her. "Silence!" he said, speaking
sternly to Grace for the first time. "You are offending--justly
offending--Lady Janet. You are talking worse than absurdly--you are
talking offensively--when you speak of another woman presenting herself
here in your place."

Grace's blood was up. Stung by Julian's reproof, she turned on him a
look which was almost a look of fury.

"Are you a clergyman? Are you an educated man?" she asked. "Have you
never read of cases of false personation, in newspapers and books? I
blindly confided in Mercy Merrick before I found out what her character
really was. She left the cottage--I know it, from the surgeon who
brought me to life again--firmly persuaded that the shell had killed me.
My papers and my clothes disappeared at the same time. Is there nothing
suspicious in these circumstances? There were people at the Hospital who
thought them highly suspicious--people who warned me that I might find
an impostor in my place." She suddenly paused. The rustling sound of
a silk dress had caught her ear. Lady Janet was leaving the room, with
Horace, by way of the conservatory. With a last desperate effort of
resolution, Grace sprung forward and placed herself in front of them.

"One word, Lady Janet, before you turn your back on me," she said,
firmly. "One word, and I will be content. Has Colonel Roseberry's letter
found its way to this house or not? If it has, did a woman bring it to
you?"

Lady Janet looked--as only a great lady can look, when a person of
inferior rank has presumed to fail in respect toward her.

"You are surely not aware," she said, with icy composure, "that these
questions are an insult to Me?"

"And worse than an insult," Horace added, warmly, "to Grace!"

The little resolute black figure (still barring the way to the
conservatory) was suddenly shaken from head to foot. The woman's eyes
traveled backward and forward between Lady Janet and Horace with the
light of a new suspicion in them.

"Grace!" she exclaimed. "What Grace? That's my name. Lady Janet, you
_have_ got the letter! The woman is here!"

Lady Janet dropped Horace's arm, and retraced her steps to the place at
which her nephew was standing.

"Julian," she said. "You force me, for the first time in my life, t