In the all-absorbing agitation of the moment, the sound of
the wheels (followed by the opening of the house door) passed
unnoticed by the persons in the dining-room. Horace's voice was
still raised in angry protest against the insult offered to Lady
Janet; Lady Janet herself (leaving him for the second time) was
vehemently ringing the bell to summon the servants; Julian had
once more taken the infuriated woman by the arms and was trying
vainly to compose her--when the library door was opened quietly
by a young lady wearing a mantle and a bonnet. Mercy Merrick
(true to the appointment which she had made with Horace) entered
the room.
The first eyes that discovered her presence on the scene were the
eyes of Grace Roseberry. Starting violently in Julian's grasp,
she pointed toward the library door. "Ah!" she cried, with a
shriek of vindictive delight. "There she is!"
Mercy turned as the sound of the scream rang through the room,
and met--resting on her in savage triumph--the living gaze of the
woman whose identity she had stolen, whose body she had left laid
out for dead. On the instant of that terrible discovery--with her
eyes fixed helplessly on the fierce eyes that had found her--she
dropped senseless on the floor.
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