“I have only done my duty,” said Mercy Merrick, a little coldly. “Don’t speak of it.”
“I must speak of it. What a situation you found me in when the French soldiers had driven the Germans away! My traveling-carriage stopped; the horses seized; I myself in a strange country at nightfall, robbed of my money and my luggage, and drenched to the skin by the pouring rain! I am indebted to you for shelter in this place—I am wearing your clothes—I should have died of the fright and the exposure but for you. What return can I make for such services as these?”
Mercy placed a chair for her guest near the captain’s table, and seated herself, at some little distance, on an old chest in a corner of the room. “May I ask you a question?” she said, abruptly.
“A hundred questions,” cried Grace, “if you like.” She looked at the expiring fire, and at the dimly visible figure of her companion seated in the obscurest corner of the room. “That wretched candle hardly gives any light,” she said, impatiently. “It won’t last much longer. Can’t we make the place more cheerful? Come out of your corner. Call for more wood and more lights.”
Mercy remained in her corner and shook her head. “Candles and wood are scarce things here,” she answered. “We must be patient, even if we are left in the dark. Tell me,” she went on, raising her quiet voice a little, “how came you to risk crossing the frontier in wartime?”
Grace’s voice dropped when she answered the question. Grace’s momentary gayety of manner suddenly left her.
“I had urgent reasons,” she said, “for returning to England.”
“Alone?” rejoined the other. “Without any one to protect you?”
Grace’s head sank on her bosom. “I have left my only protector—my father—in the English burial-ground at Rome,” she answered simply. “My mother died, years since, in Canada.”
The shadowy figure of the nurse suddenly changed its position on the chest. She had started as the last word passed Miss Roseberry’s lips.