A sudden trembling seized her. She supported herself against the foot of the bed. Her whole future existence depended on her answer. She was incapable of uttering a word.
Ignatius Wetzel stood her friend for once. His croaking voice filled the empty gap of silence exactly at the right time. He doggedly held the handkerchief under her eyes. He obstinately repeated: “Mercy Merrick is an English name. Is it not so?”
Horace Holmcroft looked up from the table. “Mercy Merrick?” he said. “Who is Mercy Merrick?”
Surgeon Wetzel pointed to the corpse on the bed.
“I have found the name on the handkerchief,” he said. “This lady, it seems, had not curiosity enough to look for the name of her own countrywoman.” He made that mocking allusion to Mercy with a tone which was almost a tone of suspicion, and a look which was almost a look of contempt. Her quick temper instantly resented the discourtesy of which she had been made the object. The irritation of the moment—so often do the most trifling motives determine the most serious human actions—decided her on the course that she should pursue. She turned her back scornfully on the rude old man, and left him in the delusion that he had discovered the dead woman’s name.
Horace returned to the business of filling up the form. “Pardon me for pressing the question,” he said. “You know what German discipline is by this time. What is your name?”
She answered him recklessly, defiantly, without fairly realizing what she was doing until it was done.
“Grace Roseberry,” she said.
The words were hardly out of her mouth before she would have given everything she possessed in the world to recall them.
“Miss?” asked Horace, smiling.