r.

At this second appeal she spoke to him. "Is that Lady Janet Roy?" she
asked, with her eyes fixed on the mistress of the house.

Julian answered, and drew back to watch the result.

The woman in the poor black garments changed her position for the first
time. She moved slowly across the room to the place at which Lady Janet
was sitting, and addressed her respectfully with perfect self-possession
of manner. Her whole demeanor, from the moment when she had appeared at
the door, had expressed--at once plainly and becomingly--confidence in
the reception that awaited her.

"Almost the last words my father said to me on his death-bed," she
began, "were words, madam, which told me to expect protection and
kindness from you."

It was not Lady Janet's business to speak. She listened with the
blandest attention. She waited with the most exasperating silence to
hear more.

Grace Roseberry drew back a step--not intimidated--only mortified and
surprised. "Was my father wrong?" she asked, with a simple dignity
of tone and manner which forced Lady Janet to abandon her policy of
silence, in spite of herself.

"Who was your father?" she asked, coldly.

Grace Roseberry answered the question in a tone of stern surprise.

"Has the servant not given you my card?" she said. "Don't you know my
name?"

"Which of your names?" rejoined Lady Janet.

"I don't understand your ladyship."

"I will make myself understood. You asked me if I knew your name. I
ask you, in return, which name it is? The name on your card is 'Miss
Roseberry.' The name marked on your clothes, when you were in the
hospital, was 'Mercy Merrick.'"

The self-possession which Grace had maintained from the moment when she
had entered the dining-room, seemed now, for the first time, to be on
the point of failing her. She turned, and looked appealingly at Julian,
who had thus far kept his place apart, listening attentively.

"Surely," she said, "your friend, the consul, has told you in his letter
about the mark on the clothes?"

Something of the girlish hesitation and timidity which had marked her
demeanor at her interview with Mercy in the French cottage re-appeared
in her tone and manner as she spoke those words. The changes--mostly
changes for the worse--wrought in her by the suffering through which she
had passed since that time were now (for the moment) effaced. All that
was left of the better and simpler side of her character asserted itself
in her brief