If Mr.
Holmcroft fails you, you have got Mr.Julian Gray.

Ah! you sicken me.
_I'll_ see that Mr.Holmcroft's eyes are opened; he shall know what a woman he might have married but for Me--" She checked herself; the next refinement of insult remained suspended on her lips.
The woman whom she had outraged suddenly advanced on her.

Her eyes, staring helplessly upward, saw Mercy Merrick's face, white with the terrible anger which drives the blood back on the heart, bending threateningly over her.
"'You will see that Mr.Holmcroft's eyes are opened,'" Mercy slowly repeated; "'he shall know what a woman he might have married but for you!'" She paused, and followed those words by a question which struck a creeping terror through Grace Roseberry, from the hair of her head to the soles of her feet: "_Who are you ?_" The suppressed fury of look and tone which accompanied that question told, as no violence could have told it, that the limits of Mercy's endurance had been found at last.

In the guardian angel's absence the evil genius had done its evil work.

The better nature which Julian Gray had brought to life sank, poisoned by the vile venom of a womanly spiteful tongue.