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

herself alone she is known as the outcast of the London streets; the inmate of
the London Refuge; the lost woman who has stolen her way back--after vainly
trying to fight her way back--to Home and Name. There she sits in the grim
shadow of her own terrible secret, disguised in another person's identity, and
established in another person's place. Mercy Merrick had only to dare, and to
become Grace Roseberry if she pleased. She has dared, and she has been Grace
Roseberry for nearly four months past.
At this moment, while Lady Janet is talking to Horace Holmcroft, something that
has passed between them has set her thinking of the day when she took the first
fatal step which committed her to the fraud.
How marvelously easy of accomplishment the act of personation had been! At first
sight Lady Janet had yielded to the fascination of the noble and interesting
face. No need to present the stolen letter; no need to repeat the ready-made
story. The old lady had put the letter aside unopened, and had stopped the story
at the first words. "Your face is your introduction, my dear; your father can
say nothing for you which you have not already said for yourself." There was the
welcome which established her firmly in her false identity at the outset. Thanks
to her own experience, and thanks to the "Journal" of events at Rome, questions
about her life in Canada and questions about Colonel Roseberry's illness found
her ready with answers which (even if suspicion had existed) would have disarmed
suspicion on the spot. While the true Grace was slowly and painfully winning her
way back to life on her bed in a German hospital, the false Grace was presented
to Lady Janet's friends as the relative by marriage of the Mistress of
Mablethorpe House. From that time forward nothing had happened to rouse in her
the faintest suspicion that Grace Roseberry was other than a dead-and-buried
woman. So far as she now knew--so far as any one now knew--she might live out
her life in perfect security (if her conscience would let her), respected,
distinguished, and beloved, in the position which she had usurped.
She rose abruptly from the table. The effort of her life was to shake herself
free of the remembrances which haunted her perpetually as they were haunting her
now. Her memory was her worst enemy; her one refuge from it was in change of
occupation and change of scene.
"May I go into the conservatory, Lady Janet?" she asked.
"Certainly, my dear."
She bent her head to her protectress, looked for a moment with a steady,
compassionate attention at Horace Holmcroft, and, slowly crossing the room,
entered the winter-garden. The eyes of Horace followed her, as long as she was
in view, with a curious contradictory expression of admiration and disapproval.
When she had passed out of sight the admiration vanished, but the disapproval
remained. The face of the young man contracted into a frown: he sat silent, with
his fork in his hand, playing absently with the fragments on his plate.
"Take some French pie, Horace," said Lady Janet.
"No, thank you."
"Some more chicken, then?"
"No more chicken."
"Will nothing tempt you?"
"I will take some more wine, if you will allow me."
He filled his glass (for the fifth or sixth time) with claret, and emptied it
sullenly at a draught. Lady Janet's bright eyes watched him with sardonic
attention; Lady Janet's ready tongue spoke out as freely as usual what was