The New Magdalen, by Wilkie Collins

First Scene.— The Cottage on the Frontier.

Preamble.

THE place is France.

The time is autumn, in the year eighteen hundred and seventy — the year of the war between France and Germany.

The persons are, Captain Arnault, of the French army; Surgeon Surville, of the French ambulance; Surgeon Wetzel, of the German army; Mercy Merrick, attached as nurse to the French ambulance; and Grace Roseberry, a traveling lady on her way to England.