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

It was a striking face--once seen (in life or in death) not to be forgotten
afterward. The forehead was unusually low and broad; the eyes unusually far
apart; the mouth and chin remarkably small. With tender hands Mercy smoothed the
disheveled hair and arranged the crumpled dress. "Not five minutes since," she
thought to herself, "I was longing to change places with you!" She turned from
the bed with a sigh. "I wish I could change places now!"
The silence began to oppress her. She walked slowly to the other end of the
room.
The cloak on the floor--her own cloak, which she had lent to Miss
Roseberry--attracted her attention as she passed it. She picked it up and
brushed the dust from it, and laid it across a chair. This done, she put the
light back on the table, and going to the window, listened for the first sounds
of the German advance. The faint passage of the wind through some trees near at
hand was the only sound that caught her ears. She turned from the window, and
seated herself at the table, thinking. Was there any duty still left undone that
Christian charity owed to the dead? Was there any further service that pressed
for performance in the interval before the Germans appeared?
Mercy recalled the conversation that had passed between her ill- fated companion
and herself. Miss Roseberry had spoken of her object in returning to England.
She had mentioned a lady--a connection by marriage, to whom she was personally a
stranger--who was waiting to receive her. Some one capable of stating how the
poor creature had met with her death ought to write to her only friend. Who was
to do it? There was nobody to do it but the one witness of the catastrophe now
left in the cottage--Mercy herself.
She lifted the cloak from the chair on which she had placed it, and took from
the pocket the leather letter-case which Grace had shown to her. The only way of
discovering the address to write to in England was to open the case and examine
the papers inside. Mercy opened the case--and stopped, feeling a strange
reluctance to carry the investigation any farther.
A moment's consideration satisfied her that her scruples were misplaced. If she
respected the case as inviolable, the Germans would certainly not hesitate to
examine it, and the Germans would hardly trouble themselves to write to England.
Which were the fittest eyes to inspect the papers of the deceased lady--the eyes
of men and foreigners, or the eyes of her own countrywoman? Mercy's hesitation
left her. She emptied the contents of the case on the table.
That trifling action decided the whole future course of her life.



CHAPTER IV.
THE TEMPTATION.
Some letters, tied together with a ribbon, attracted Mercy's attention first.
The ink in which the addresses were written had faded with age. The letters,
directed alternately to Colonel Roseberry and to the Honorable Mrs. Roseberry,
contained a correspondence between the husband and wife at a time when the
Colonel's military duties had obliged him to be absent from home. Mercy tied the
letters up again, and passed on to the papers that lay next in order under her
hand.
These consisted of a few leaves pinned together, and headed (in a woman's
handwriting) "My Journal at Rome." A brief examination showed that the journal