The New Magdalen | Page 5

name?"
The nurse hesitated. "Not a pretty name, like yours," she said, and
hesitated again. "Call me 'Mercy Merrick,' " she added, after a
moment's consideration.
Had she given an assumed name? Was there some unhappy celebrity
attached to her own name? Miss Roseberry did not wait to ask herself
these questions. "How can I thank you," she exclaimed, gratefully, "for
your sisterly kindness to a stranger like me?"
"I have only done my duty," said Mercy Merrick, a little coldly. "Don't
speak of it."
"I must speak of it. What a situation you found me in when the French
soldiers had driven the Germans away! My traveling-carriage stopped;

the horses seized; I myself in a strange country at nightfall, robbed of
my money and my luggage, and drenched to the skin by the pouring
rain! I am indebted to you for shelter in this place--I am wearing your
clothes--I should have died of the fright and the exposure but for you.
What return can I make for such services as these?"
Mercy placed a chair for her guest near the captain's table, and seated
herself, at some little distance, on an old chest in a corner of the room.
"May I ask you a question?" she said, abruptly.
"A hundred questions," cried Grace, "if you like." She looked at the
expiring fire, and at the dimly visible figure of her companion seated in
the obscurest corner of the room. "That wretched candle hardly gives
any light," she said, impatiently. "It won't last much longer. Can't we
make the place more cheerful? Come out of your corner. Call for more
wood and more lights."
Mercy remained in her corner and shook her head. "Candles and wood
are scarce things here," she answered. "We must be patient, even if we
are left in the dark. Tell me," she went on, raising her quiet voice a little,
"how came you to risk crossing the frontier in wartime?"
Grace's voice dropped when she answered the question. Grace's
momentary gayety of manner suddenly left her.
"I had urgent reasons," she said, "for returning to England."
"Alone?" rejoined the other. "Without any one to protect you?"
Grace's head sank on her bosom. "I have left my only protector--my
father--in the English burial-ground at Rome," she answered simply.
"My mother died, years since, in Canada."
The shadowy figure of the nurse suddenly changed its position on the
chest. She had started as the last word passed Miss Roseberry's lips.
"Do you know Canada?" asked Grace.

"Well," was the brief answer--reluctantly given, short as it was.
"Were you ever near Port Logan?"
"I once lived within a few miles of Port Logan."
"When?"
"Some time since." With those words Mercy Merrick shrank back into
her corner and changed the subject. "Your relatives in England must be
very anxious about you," she said.
Grace sighed. "I have no relatives in England. You can hardly imagine
a person more friendless than I am. We went away from Canada, when
my father's health failed, to try the climate of Italy, by the doctor's
advice. His death has left me not only friendless but poor." She paused,
and took a leather letter-case from the pocket of the large gray cloak
which the nurse had lent to her. "My prospects in life," she resumed,
"are all contained in this little case. Here is the one treasure I contrived
to conceal when I was robbed of my other things."
Mercy could just see the letter-case as Grace held it up in the deepening
obscurity of the room. "Have you got money in it?" she asked.
"No; only a few family papers, and a letter from my father, introducing
me to an elderly lady in England--a connection of his by marriage,
whom I have never seen. The lady has consented to receive me as her
companion and reader. If I don't return to England soon, some other
person may get the place."
"Have you no other resource?"
"None. My education has been neglected--we led a wild life in the far
West. I am quite unfit to go out as a governess. I am absolutely
dependent on this stranger, who receives me for my father's sake." She
put the letter-case back in the pocket of her cloak, and ended her little
narrative as unaffectedly as she had begun it. "Mine is a sad story, is it
not?" she said.

The voice of the nurse answered her suddenly and bitterly in these
strange words:
"There are sadder stories than yours. There are thousands of miserable
women who would ask for no greater blessing than to change places
with you."
Grace started. "What can there possibly be to envy in such a lot as
mine?"
"Your unblemished character, and your prospect of being established
honorably in a respectable house."
Grace