While those wild words were pouring from her lips, the rumbling of
carriage wheels became audible on the drive in front of the house.
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.