The New Magdalen | Page 6

turned in her chair, and looked wonderingly into the dim corner
of the room.
"How strangely you say that!" she exclaimed. There was no answer; the
shadowy figure on the chest never moved. Grace rose impulsively, and
drawing her chair after her, approached the nurse. "Is there some
romance in your life?" she asked. "Why have you sacrificed yourself to
the terrible duties which I find you performing here? You interest me
indescribably. Give me your hand."
Mercy shrank back, and refused the offered hand.
"Are we not friends?" Grace asked, in astonishment.
"We can never be friends."
"Why not?"
The nurse was dumb. Grace called to mind the hesitation that she had
shown when she had mentioned her name, and drew a new conclusion
from it. "Should I be guessing right," she asked, eagerly, "if I guessed
you to be some great lady in disguise?"
Mercy laughed to herself--low and bitterly. "I a great lady!" she said,
contemptuously. "For Heaven's sake, let us talk of something else!"

Grace's curiosity was thoroughly roused. She persisted. "Once more,"
she whispered, persuasively, "let us be friends." She gently laid her
hand as she spoke on Mercy's shoulder. Mercy roughly shook it off.
There was a rudeness in the action which would have offended the
most patient woman living. Grace drew back indignantly. "Ah!" she
cried, "you are cruel."
"I am kind," answered the nurse, speaking more sternly than ever.
"Is it kind to keep me at a distance? I have told you my story."
The nurse's voice rose excitedly. "Don't tempt me to speak out," she
said; "you will regret it."
Grace declined to accept the warning. "I have placed confidence in
you," she went on. "It is ungenerous to lay me under an obligation, and
then to shut me out of your confidence in return."
"You will have it?" said Mercy Merrick. "You shall have it! Sit down
again." Grace's heart began to quicken its beat in expectation of the
disclosure that was to come. She drew her chair closer to the chest on
which the nurse was sitting. With a firm hand Mercy put the chair back
to a distance from her. "Not so near me!" she said, harshly.
"Why not?"
"Not so near," repeated the sternly resolute voice. "Wait till you have
heard what I have to say."
Grace obeyed without a word more. There was a momentary silence. A
faint flash of light leaped up from the expiring candle, and showed
Mercy crouching on the chest, with her elbows on her knees, and her
face hidden in her hands. The next instant the room was buried in
obscurity. As the darkness fell on the two women the nurse spoke.
CHAPTER II.
MAGDALEN--IN MODERN TIMES.

"WHEN your mother was alive were you ever out with her after
nightfall in the streets of a great city?"
In those extraordinary terms Mercy Merrick opened the confidential
interview which Grace Roseberry had forced on her. Grace answered,
simply, "I don't understand you."
"I will put it in another way," said the nurse. Its unnatural hardness and
sternness of tone passed away from her voice, and its native gentleness
and sadness returned, as she made that reply. "You read the newspapers
like the rest of the world," she went on; "have you ever read of your
unhappy fellow- creatures (the starving outcasts of the population)
whom Want has driven into Sin?"
Still wondering, Grace answered that she had read of such things often,
in newspapers and in books.
"Have you heard--when those starving and sinning fellow-creatures
happened to be women--of Refuges established to protect and reclaim
them?"
The wonder in Grace 's mind passed away, and a vague suspicion of
something painful to come took its place. "These are extraordinary
questions," she said, nervously. "What do you mean?"
"Answer me," the nurse insisted. "Have you heard of the Refuges?
Have you heard of the Women?"
"Yes."
"Move your chair a little further away from me." She paused. Her voice,
without losing its steadiness, fell to its lowest tones." I was once of
those women," she said, quietly.
Grace sprang to her feet with a faint cry. She stood petrified--incapable
of uttering a word.
"I have been in a Refuge," pursued the sweet, sad voice of the other

woman." I have been in a Prison. Do you still wish to be my friend? Do
you still insist on sitting close by me and taking my hand?" She waited
for a reply, and no reply came. "You see you were wrong," she went on,
gently, "when you called me cruel--and I was right when I told you I
was kind."
At that appeal Grace composed herself, and spoke. "I don't wish to
offend you--" she began, confusedly.
Mercy Merrick stopped her there.
"You don't offend me," she said,