Mercy's head sank lower; her hand trembled as it held by the back of the chair.
It was hard to bear the reiterated insults heaped on her, but Julian's influence still made itself felt. She answered as patiently as ever.
"If it is your pleasure to use hard words to me," she said, "I have no right to resent them."
"You have no right to anything!" Grace retorted. "You have no right to the gown on your back. Look at yourself, and look at Me!" Her eyes traveled with a tigerish stare over Mercy's costly silk dress. "Who gave you that dress? who gave you those jewels? I know! Lady Janet gave them to Grace Roseberry. Are you Grace Roseberry? That dress is mine. Take off your bracelets and your brooch. They were meant for me."
"You may soon have them, Miss Roseberry. They will not be in my possession many hours longer."
"What do you mean?"
"However badly you may use me, it is my duty to undo the harm that I have done. I am bound to do you justice—I am determined to confess the truth."
Grace smiled scornfully.
"You confess!" she said. "Do you think I am fool enough to believe that? You are one shameful brazen lie from head to foot! Are you the woman to give up your silks and your jewels, and your position in this house, and to go back to the Refuge of your own accord? Not you—not you!"
A first faint flush of color showed itself, stealing slowly over Mercy's face; but she still held resolutely by the good influence which Julian had left behind him. She could still say to herself, "Anything rather than disappoint Julian Gray." Sustained by the courage which he had called to life in her, she submitted to her martyrdom as bravely as ever. But there was an ominous change in her now: she could only submit in silence; she could no longer trust herself to answer.
The mute endurance in her face additionally exasperated Grace Roseberry.
"You won't confess," she went on. "You have had a week to confess in, and you have not done it yet. No, no! you are of the sort that cheat and lie to the last. I am glad of it; I shall have the joy of exposing you myself before the whole house. I shall be the blessed means of casting you back on the streets. Oh! it will be almost worth all I have gone through to see you with a policeman's hand on your arm, and the mob pointing at you and mocking you on your way to jail!"
This time the sting struck deep; the outrage was beyond endurance. Mercy gave the woman who had again and again deliberately insulted her a first warning.
"Miss Roseberry," she said, "I have borne without a murmur the bitterest words you could say to me. Spare me any more insults. Indeed, indeed, I am eager to restore you to your just rights. With my whole heart I say it to you—I am resolved to confess everything!"
She spoke with trembling earnestness of tone. Grace listened with a hard smile of incredulity and a hard look of contempt.
"You are not far from the bell," she said; "ring it."
Mercy looked at her in speechless surprise.
"You are a perfect picture of repentance—you are dying to own the truth," pursued the other, satirically. "Own it before everybody, and own it at once. Call in Lady Janet—call in Mr. Gray and Mr. Holmcroft—call in the servants. Go down on your knees and acknowledge yourself an impostor before them all. Then I will believe you—not before."
"Don't, don't turn me against you!" cried Mercy, entreatingly.
"What do I care whether you are against me or not?"
"Don't—for your own sake, don't go on provoking me much longer!"
"For my own sake? You insolent creature! Do you mean to threaten me?"
With a last desperate effort, her heart beating faster and faster, the blood burning hotter and hotter in her cheeks, Mercy still controlled herself.
"Have some compassion on me!" she pleaded. "Badly as I have behaved to you, I am still a woman like yourself. I can't face the shame of acknowledging what I have done before the whole house. Lady Janet treats me like a daughter; Mr. Holmcroft has engaged himself to marry me. I can't tell Lady Janet and Mr. Holmcroft to their faces that I have cheated them out of their love. But they shall know it, for all that. I can, and will, before I rest to-night, tell the whole truth to Mr. Julian Gray."
Grace burst out laughing. "Aha!" she exclaimed, with a cynical outburst of gayety. "Now we have come to it at last!"
"Take care!" said Mercy. "Take care!"
"Mr. Julian Gray! I was behind the billiard-room door—I saw you coax Mr. Julian Gray to come in! confession loses all its horrors, and becomes quite a luxury, with Mr. Julian Gray!"
"No more, Miss Roseberry! no more! For God's sake, don't put me beside myself! You have tortured me enough already."
"You haven't been on the streets for nothing. You are a woman with resources; you know the value of having two strings to your bow. If Mr. Holmcroft fails you, you have got Mr. Julian Gray. Ah! you sicken me. I'll see that Mr. Holmcroft's eyes are opened; he shall know what a woman he might have married but for Me—"
She checked herself; the next refinement of insult remained suspended on her lips.
The woman whom she had outraged suddenly advanced on her. Her eyes, staring helplessly upward, saw Mercy Merrick's face, white with the terrible anger which drives the blood back on the heart, bending threateningly over her.
"'You will see that Mr. Holmcroft's eyes are opened,'" Mercy slowly repeated; "'he shall know what a woman he might have married but for you!'"
She paused, and followed those words by a question which struck a creeping terror through Grace Roseberry, from the hair of her head to the soles of her feet:
"Who are you?"
The suppressed fury of look and tone which accompanied that question told, as no violence could have told it, that the limits of Mercy's endurance had been found at last. In the guardian angel's absence the evil genius had done its evil work. The better nature which Julian Gray had brought to life sank, poisoned by the vile venom of a womanly spiteful tongue. An easy and a terrible means of avenging the outrages heaped on her was within Mercy's reach, if she chose to take it. In the frenzy of her indignation she never hesitated—she took it.
"Who are you?" she asked for the second time.
Grace roused herself and attempted to speak. Mercy stopped her with a scornful gesture of her hand.
"I remember!" she went on, with the same fiercely suppressed rage. "You are the madwoman from the German hospital who came here a week ago. I am not afraid of you this time. Sit down and rest yourself, Mercy Merrick."
Deliberately giving her that name to her face, Mercy turned from her and took the chair which Grace had forbidden her to occupy when the interview began. Grace started to her feet.
"What does this mean?" she asked.
"It means," answered Mercy, contemptuously, "that I recall every word I said to you just now. It means that I am resolved to keep my place in this house."
"Are you out of your senses?"
"You are not far from the bell. Ring it. Do what you asked me to do. Call in the whole household, and ask them which of us is mad—you or I."
"Mercy Merrick! you shall repent this to the last hour of your life!"
Mercy rose again, and fixed her flashing eyes on the woman who still defied her.
"I have had enough of you!" she said. "Leave the house while you can leave it. Stay here, and I will send for Lady Janet Roy."
"You can't send for her! You daren't send for her!"
"I can and I dare. You have not a shadow of a proof against me. I have got the papers; I am in possession of the place; I have established myself in Lady Janet's confidence. I mean to deserve your opinion of me—I will keep my dresses and my jewels and my position in the house. I deny that I have done wrong. Society has used me cruelly; I owe nothing to Society. I have a right to take any advantage of it if I can. I deny that I have injured you. How was I to know that you would come to life again? Have I degraded your name and your character? I have done honor to both. I have won everybody's liking and everybody's respect. Do you think Lady Janet would have loved you as she loves me? Not she! I tell you to your face I have filled the false position more creditably than you could have filled the true one, and I mean to keep it. I won't give up your name; I won't restore your character! Do your worst; I defy you!"