(Never had Lady Janet’s voice sounded so sternly in Mercy’s ear as it sounded now. If she spoke with that tone of severity to a servant who had neglected a lamp, what had her adopted daughter to expect when she discovered that her entreaties and her commands had been alike set at defiance?)
Having administered her reprimand, Lady Janet had not done with the servant yet. She had a question to put to him next.
“Where is Miss Roseberry?”
“In the library, my lady.”
Mercy returned to the couch. She could stand no longer; she had not even resolution enough left to lift her eyes to the door.
Lady Janet came in more rapidly than usual. She advanced to the couch, and tapped Mercy playfully on the cheek with two of her fingers.
“You lazy child! Not dressed for dinner? Oh, fie, fie!”
Her tone was as playfully affectionate as the action which had accompanied her words. In speechless astonishment Mercy looked up at her.
Always remarkable for the taste and splendor of her dress, Lady Janet had on this occasion surpassed herself. There she stood revealed in her grandest velvet, her richest jewelry, her finest lace—with no one to entertain at the dinner-table but the ordinary members of the circle at Mablethorpe House. Noticing this as strange to begin with, Mercy further observed, for the first time in her experience, that Lady Janet’s eyes avoided meeting hers. The old lady took her place companionably on the couch; she ridiculed her “lazy child’s” plain dress, without an ornament of any sort on it, with her best grace; she affectionately put her arm round Mercy’s waist, and rearranged with her own hand the disordered locks of Mercy’s hair—but the instant Mercy herself looked at her, Lady Janet’s eyes discovered something supremely interesting in the familiar objects that surrounded her on the library walls.
How were these changes to be interpreted? To what possible conclusion did they point?