ite's capacity to be
disagreeable when she chose. She had gray eyes, which, though they had a
very deceptive trick of suffusing with tears as of great sensibility on
occasion, were capable of resting upon a person with a positively unhuman
coldness; her voice also had at these times a distinctly unhuman quality
in its tones. She had apparently no conception of any necessity of
controlling her feelings, or the expression of them. If she were pleased,
if all things went precisely as she liked, if all persons ministered to
her pleasure, well and good,--she would be graciously pleased to smile,
and be good-humored. If she were displeased, if her preferences were not
consulted, if her plans were interfered with, woe betide the first person
who entered her presence; and still more woe betide the person who was
responsible for her annoyance.

As soon as Stephen's eyes fell on her face, on this occasion, he felt with
a sense of almost terror that he had made a fatal mistake, and he knew
instantly that it must be much later than he had supposed; but he plunged
bravely in, like a man taking a header into a pool he fears he may drown
in, and began to give a voluble account of how he had found Mrs. Philbrick
sitting on their stone wall, so absorbed in looking at the bright leaves
that she had not even seen the house. He ran on in this strain for some
minutes, hoping that his mother's mood might soften, but in vain. She
listened with the same stony, unresponsive look on her face, never taking
the stony, unresponsive eyes from his face; and, as soon as he stopped
speaking, she said in an equally stony voice,--

"Mrs. Philbrick, will you be so good as to take off your bonnet and take
tea with us? It is already long past our tea-hour!"

Mercy sprang to her feet, and said impulsively, "Oh, no, I thank you. I
did not dream that it was so late. My mother will be anxious about me. I
must go. I am very sorry I came in. Good-evening."

"Good-evening, Mrs. Philbrick," in the same slow and stony syllables, came
from Mrs. White's lips, and she turned her head away immediately.

Stephen, with his face crimson with mortification, followed Mercy to the
door. In a low voice, he said, "I hope you will be able to make allowances
for my mother's manner. It is all my fault. I know that she can never bear
to have me late at meals, and I ought never to allow myself to forget the
hour. It is all my fault"

Mercy's indignation at her reception was too