ul
creature pines under the slow torment of constant self-reproach.

To the mistress of the house, and to all who inhabit it or enter it,
she is known as Grace Roseberry, the orphan relative by marriage of Lady
Janet Roy. To herself alone she is known as the outcast of the London
streets; the inmate of the London Refuge; the lost woman who has stolen
her way back--after vainly trying to fight her way back--to Home and
Name. There she sits in the grim shadow of her own terrible secret,
disguised in another person's identity, and established in another
person's place. Mercy Merrick had only to dare, and to become Grace
Roseberry if she pleased. She has dared, and she has been Grace
Roseberry for nearly four months past.

At this moment, while Lady Janet is talking to Horace Holmcroft,
something that has passed between them has set her thinking of the day
when she took the first fatal step which committed her to the fraud.

How marvelously easy of accomplishment the act of personation had been!
At first sight Lady Janet had yielded to the fascination of the noble
and interesting face. No need to present the stolen letter; no need
to repeat the ready-made story. The old lady had put the letter aside
unopened, and had stopped the story at the first words. "Your face is
your introduction, my dear; your father can say nothing for you which
you have not already said for yourself." There was the welcome which
established her firmly in her false identity at the outset. Thanks
to her own experience, and thanks to the "Journal" of events at
Rome, questions about her life in Canada and questions about Colonel
Roseberry's illness found her ready with answers which (even if
suspicion had existed) would have disarmed suspicion on the spot. While
the true Grace was slowly and painfully winning her way back to life
on her bed in a German hospital, the false Grace was presented to
Lady Janet's friends as the relative by marriage of the Mistress of
Mablethorpe House. From that time forward nothing had happened to rouse
in her the faintest suspicion that Grace Roseberry was other than a
dead-and-buried woman. So far as she now knew--so far as any one now
knew--she might live out her life in perfect security (if her conscience
would let her), respected, distinguished, and beloved, in the position
which she had usurped.

She rose abruptly from the table. The effort of her life was to shake
herself free of the remembrances which haunte