He did for her the same things he did for Lizzy, whom he called his child.

He came to see her no oftener, spoke to her no more affectionately: she believed that she and Lizzy were sisters together in his fatherly heart.
When she was undeceived, the shock was very great: it was twofold,--a shock to her sense of loyalty to Stephen, a shock to her tender love for Parson Dorrance.

It was true, as she had said to Lizzy, that she would have died to give him a pleasure; and yet she was forced to inflict on him the hardest of all pains.

Every circumstance attending it made it harder; made it seem to Mercy always in after life, as she looked back upon it, needlessly hard,--cruelly, malignantly hard.
It was in the early autumn.

The bright colors which had thrilled Mercy with such surprise and pleasure on her first arrival in Penfield were glowing again on the trees, it seemed to her brighter than before.