I could change places now!"

The silence began to oppress her. She walked slowly to the other end of
the room.

The cloak on the floor--her own cloak, which she had lent to Miss
Roseberry--attracted her attention as she passed it. She picked it up
and brushed the dust from it, and laid it across a chair. This done, she
put the light back on the table, and going to the window, listened for
the first sounds of the German advance. The faint passage of the wind
through some trees near at hand was the only sound that caught her ears.
She turned from the window, and seated herself at the table, thinking.
Was there any duty still left undone that Christian charity owed to the
dead? Was there any further service that pressed for performance in the
interval before the Germans appeared?

Mercy recalled the conversation that had passed between her ill-fated
companion and herself. Miss Roseberry had spoken of her object in
returning to England. She had mentioned a lady--a connection by
marriage, to whom she was personally a stranger--who was waiting to
receive her. Some one capable of stating how the poor creature had met
with her death ought to write to her only friend. Who was to do it?
There was nobody to do it but the one witness of the catastrophe now
left in the cottage--Mercy herself.

She lifted the cloak from the chair on which she had placed it, and took
from the pocket the leather letter-case which Grace had shown to her.
The only way of discovering the address to write to in England was to
open the case and examine the papers inside. Mercy opened the case--and
stopped, feeling a strange reluctance to carry the investigation any
farther.

A moment's consideration satisfied her that her scruples were misplaced.
If she respected the case as inviolable, the Germans would certainly not
hesitate to examine it, and the Germans would hardly trouble themselves
to write to England. Which were the fittest eyes to inspect the papers
of the deceased lady--the eyes of men and foreigners, or the eyes of her
own countrywoman? Mercy's hesitation left her. She emptied the contents
of the case on the table.

That trifling action decided the whole future course of her life.

CHAPTER IV. THE TEMPTATION.

Some letters, tied together with a ribbon, attracted Mercy's attention
first. The ink in which the addresses were written had faded with
age. The letters, directed alternately to Colonel Roseberry and to the
Honorable Mrs. Ro