osition and Grace's affairs which had placed
temptation before her as the necessary consequence that followed the
bursting of the German shell.

Advancing from this point through the succeeding series of events which
had so naturally and yet so strangely favored the perpetration of the
fraud, Mercy reached the later period when Grace had followed her to
England. Here again she remarked, in the second place, how Chance, or
Fate, had once more paved the way for that second meeting which had
confronted them with one another at Mablethorpe House.

She had, as she well remembered, attended at a certain assembly
(convened by a charitable society) in the character of Lady Janet's
representative, at Lady Janet's own request. For that reason she had
been absent from the house when Grace had entered it. If her return had
been delayed by a few minutes only, Julian would have had time to take
Grace out of the room, and the terrible meeting which had stretched
Mercy senseless on the floor would never have taken place. As the event
had happened, the period of her absence had been fatally shortened by
what appeared at the time to be, the commonest possible occurrence. The
persons assembled at the society's rooms had disagreed so seriously on
the business which had brought them together as to render it necessary
to take the ordinary course of adjourning the proceedings to a future
day. And Chance, or Fate, had so timed that adjournment as to bring
Mercy back into the dining-room exactly at the moment when Grace
Roseberry insisted on being confronted with the woman who had taken her
place.

She had never yet seen the circumstances in this sinister light. She was
alone in her room, at a crisis in her life. She was worn and weakened by
emotions which had shaken her to the soul.

Little by little she felt the enervating influences let loose on her, in
her lonely position, by her new train of thought. Little by little her
heart began to sink under the stealthy chill of superstitious dread.
Vaguely horrible presentiments throbbed in her with her pulses, flowed
through her with her blood. Mystic oppressions of hidden disaster
hovered over her in the atmosphere of the room. The cheerful
candle-light turned traitor to her and grew dim. Supernatural murmurs
trembled round the house in the moaning of the winter wind. She was
afraid to look behind her. On a sudden she felt her own cold hands
covering her face, without knowing when she had lift