"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?
Julian's profounder knowledge of human nature, if Julian had been
present, might have found a clew to the mystery.
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