"Wilkie Collins - The New Magdalen" - читать интересную книгу автора (Collins Wilkie)

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.
"Do you know Canada?" asked Grace.
"Well," was the brief answer--reluctantly given, short as it was.
"Were you ever near Port Logan?"
"I once lived within a few miles of Port Logan."
"When?"
"Some time since." With those words Mercy Merrick shrank back into her corner
and changed the subject. "Your relatives in England must be very anxious about
you," she said.
Grace sighed. "I have no relatives in England. You can hardly imagine a person
more friendless than I am. We went away from Canada, when my father's health
failed, to try the climate of Italy, by the doctor's advice. His death has left
me not only friendless but poor." She paused, and took a leather letter-case
from the pocket of the large gray cloak which the nurse had lent to her. "My
prospects in life," she resumed, "are all contained in this little case. Here is
the one treasure I contrived to conceal when I was robbed of my other things."
Mercy could just see the letter-case as Grace held it up in the deepening
obscurity of the room. "Have you got money in it?" she asked.
"No; only a few family papers, and a letter from my father, introducing me to an
elderly lady in England--a connection of his by marriage, whom I have never
seen. The lady has consented to receive me as her companion and reader. If I
don't return to England soon, some other person may get the place."
"Have you no other resource?"
"None. My education has been neglected--we led a wild life in the far West. I am
quite unfit to go out as a governess. I am absolutely dependent on this
stranger, who receives me for my father's sake." She put the letter-case back in
the pocket of her cloak, and ended her little narrative as unaffectedly as she