"I have not overrated my interest," he said, pointing to a little slip
of paper in his hand. "Here is the pass. Have you got pen and ink? I
must fill up the form."
Mercy pointed to the writing materials on the table. Horace seated
himself, and dipped the pen in the ink.
"Pray don't think that I wish to intrude myself into your affairs," he
said. "I am obliged to ask you one or two plain questions. What is your
name?"
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.
She could only answer him by bowing her head.
He wrote: "Miss Grace Roseberry"--reflected for a moment--and then
added, interrogatively, "Returning to her friends in England?" Her
friends in England? Mercy's heart swelled: she silently replied by
another sign. He wrote the words after the name, and shook the sandbox
over the wet ink. "That will be enough," he said, rising and presenting
the pass to Mercy; "I will see you through the lines myself, and arrange
for your being sent on by the railway. Where is your luggage?"
Mercy pointed toward the front door of the building. "In a shed outside
the cottage," she answered. "It is not much; I can do everything for
myself if the sentinel will let me pass through the kitchen."