The Evil Genius

Grace broke the silence. She had waited to open her lips until she had
eyed her conquered victim all over, with disdainfully minute attention,
from head to foot.

"Stand there. I like to look at you," she said, speaking with a spiteful
relish of her own cruel words. "It's no use fainting this time. You
have not got Lady Janet Roy to bring you to. There are no gentlemen here
to-day to pity you and pick you up. Mercy Merrick, I have got you at
last. Thank God, my turn has come! You can't escape me now!"

All the littleness of heart and mind which had first shown itself in
Grace at the meeting in the cottage, when Mercy told the sad story of
her life, now revealed itself once more. The woman who in those
past times had felt no impulse to take a suffering and a penitent
fellow-creature by the hand was the same woman who could feel no pity,
who could spare no insolence of triumph, now. Mercy's sweet voice
answered her patiently, in low, pleading tones.

"I have not avoided you," she said. "I would have gone to you of my own
accord if I had known that you were here. It is my heartfelt wish to
own that I have sinned against you, and to make all the atonement that
I can. I am too anxious to deserve your forgiveness to have any fear of
seeing you."

Conciliatory as the reply was, it was spoken with a simple and modest
dignity of manner which roused Grace Roseberry to fury.