The New Magdalen

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

who m 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.