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

"Pray don't think that I wish to intrude myself into your affairs," he said. "I
am obliged to ask you one or two plain questions. What is your name?"
A sudden trembling seized her. She supported herself against the foot of the
bed. Her whole future existence depended on her answer. She was incapable of
uttering a word.
Ignatius Wetzel stood her friend for once. His croaking voice filled the empty
gap of silence exactly at the right time. He doggedly held the handkerchief
under her eyes. He obstinately repeated: "Mercy Merrick is an English name. Is
it not so?"
Horace Holmcroft looked up from the table. "Mercy Merrick?" he said. "Who is
Mercy Merrick?"
Surgeon Wetzel pointed to the corpse on the bed.
"I have found the name on the handkerchief, "he said. "This lady, it seems, had
not curiosity enough to look for the name of her own countrywoman." He made that
mocking allusion to Mercy with a tone which was almost a tone of suspicion, and
a look which was almost a look of contempt. Her quick temper instantly resented
the discourtesy of which she had been made the object. The irritation of the
moment--so often do the most trifling motives determine the most serious human
actions--decided her on the course that she should pursue. She turned her back
scornfully on the rude old man, and left him in the delusion that he had
discovered the dead woman's name.
Horace returned to the business of filling up the form. "Pardon me for pressing
the question," he said. "You know what German discipline is by this time. What
is your name?"
She answered him recklessly, defiantly, without fairly realizing what she was
doing until it was done.
"Grace Roseberry," she said.
The words were hardly out of her mouth before she would have given everything
she possessed in the world to recall them.
"Miss?" asked Horace, smiling.
She could only answer him by bowing her head.
He wrote: "Miss Grace Roseberry"--reflected for a moment--and then added,
interrogatively, "Returning to her friends in England?" Her friends in England?
Mercy's heart swelled: she silently replied by another sign. He wrote the words
after the name, and shook the sandbox over the wet ink. "That will be enough,"
he said, rising and presenting the pass to Mercy; "I will see you through the
lines myself, and arrange for your being sent on by the railway. Where is your
luggage?"
Mercy pointed toward the front door of the building. "In a shed outside the
cottage," she answered. "It is not much; I can do everything for myself if the
sentinel will let me pass through the kitchen."
Horace pointed to the paper in her hand. "You can go where you like now," he
said. "Shall I wait for you here or outside?"
Mercy glanced distrustfully at Ignatius Wetzel. He was again absorbed in his
endless examination of the body on the bed. If she left him alone with Mr.
Holmcroft, there was no knowing what the hateful old man might not say of her.
She answered:
"Wait for me outside, if you please."
The sentinel drew back with a military salute at the sight of the pass. All the
French prisoners had been removed; there were not more than half-a-dozen Germans