第96章

She started to her feet.Lady Janet's letter was still in the pocket of her apron--the letter which imperatively commanded her to abstain from making the very confession that had just passed her lips! It was near the dinner hour, and the library was the favorite place in which the mistress of the house and her guests assembled at that time.It was no matter of doubt; it was an absolute certainty that Lady Janet had only stopped in the hall on her way into the room.

The alternative for Mercy lay between instantly leaving the library by the dining-room door--or remaining where she was, at the risk of being sooner or later compelled to own that she had deliberately disobeyed her benefactress.Exhausted by what she had already suffered, she stood trembling and irresolute, incapable of deciding which alternative she should choose.

Lady Janet's voice, clear and resolute, penetrated into the room.She was reprimanding the servant who had answered the bell.

"Is it your duty in my house to look after the lamps?""Yes, my lady."

"And is it my duty to pay you your wages?"""If you please, my lady."

"Why do I find the light in the hall dim, and the wick of that lamp smoking? I have not failed in my duty to You.Don't let me find you failing again in your duty to Me."(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?

Julian's profounder knowledge of human nature, if Julian had been present, might have found a clew to the mystery.He might have surmised (incredible as it was) that Mercy's timidity before Lady Janet was fully reciprocated by Lady Janet's timidity before Mercy.It was even so.The woman whose immovable composure had conquered Grace Roseberry's utmost insolence in the hour of her triumph--the woman who, without once flinching, had faced every other consequence of her resolution to ignore Mercy's true position in the house--quailed for the first time when she found herself face to face with the very person for whom she had suffered and sacrificed so much.She had shrunk from the meeting with Mercy, as Mercy had shrunk from the meeting with her.The splendor of her dress meant simply that, when other excuses for delaying the meeting downstairs had all been exhausted, the excuse of a long, and elaborate toilet had been tried next.Even the moments occupied in reprimanding the servant had been moments seized on as the pretext for another delay.The hasty entrance into the room, the nervous assumption of playfulness in language and manner, the evasive and wandering eyes, were all referable to the same cause.In the presence of others, Lady Janet had successfully silenced the protest of her own inbred delicacy and inbred sense of honor.In the presence of Mercy, whom she loved with a mother's love--in the presence of Mercy, for whom she had stooped to deliberate concealment of the truth--all that was high and noble in the woman's nature rose in her and rebuked her.What will the daughter of my adoption, the child of my first and last experience of maternal love, think of me, now that I have made myself an accomplice in the fraud of which she is ashamed? How can I look her in the face, when I have not hesitated, out of selfish consideration for my own tranquillity, to forbid that frank avowal of the truth which her finer sense of duty had spontaneously bound her to make? Those were the torturing questions in Lady Janet's mind, while her arm was wound affectionately round Mercy's waist, while her fingers were busying themselves familiarly with the arrangement of Mercy's hair.Thence, and thence only, sprang the impulse which set her talking, with an uneasy affectation of frivolity, of any topic within the range of conversation, so long as it related to the future, and completely ignored the present and the past.

"The winter here is unendurable," Lady Janet began."I have been thinking, Grace, about what we had better do next."Mercy started.Lady Janet had called her "Grace." Lady Janet was still deliberately assuming to be innocent of the faintest suspicion of the truth.