She checked it, and submitted in silence.

"I will be worthy of Julian Gray's confidence in me," she thought, as she stood patiently by the chair.

"I will bear anything from the woman whom I have wronged." In silence the two faced each other; alone together, for the first time since they had met in the French cottage.

The contrast between them was strange to see.

Grace Roseberry, seated in her chair, little and lean, with her dull white complexion, with her hard, threatening face, with her shrunken figure clad in its plain and poor black garments, looked like a being of a lower sphere, compared with Mercy Merrick, standing erect in her rich silken dress; her tall, shapely figure towering over the little creature before her; her grand head bent in graceful submission; gentle, patient, beautiful; a woman whom it was a privilege to look at and a distinction to admire.