Lady Anne could be royally kind when it pleased her.
She drew a chair by the sofa and sat down.

Mary, who had come in with her, listened in some wonder to Lady Anne's sympathetic questions about the children.

That was something in which Mary was interested, in which Mary had knowledge and experience; but though she listened she would not have spoken a word for worlds.
As she sat there on the edge of one of Mrs.Carruthers' chairs--the drawing-room furniture was of the sparsest; a chair or small table dotted here and there on the wilderness of polished floor--she could see herself in a pier-glass at the other end of the room.

It was a quite unfamiliar presentment she saw.

This Mary was dressed in soft dove-grey.
She had a little white muslin folded fichu about her shoulders.