She had no desire to encounter for the second time the torrent of Mrs.Wyeth's manner, no wish to meet unnecessarily one so disagreeably gifted in the art of arousing in her an aversion of which she was half ashamed.
No further sound greeted her straining ears, and, deciding that the way was clear, she descended the thickly carpeted stairs.

Near the bottom, opposite the open doors of the front drawing-room, she paused to look into the big mirror on the opposite wall.

As she turned her head for a final touch to the back of her veil, her eyes became alive to something in that corner of the room now revealed to her by the mirror--something that held her frozen with embarrassment.
Though the room lay in the dusk of drawn curtains, the gown of Mrs.
Wyeth showed unmistakably--Mrs.Wyeth abandoned to the close, still embrace of an unrecognized man.
Distressed at the awkwardness of her position, Nancy hesitated, not knowing whether to retreat or go forward.

She had decided to go on, observing nothing--and of course she _had_ observed nothing save an agreeable incident in the oft impugned domesticity of Mr.and Mrs.
Wyeth--when a further revelation arrested her.
Even as she put her foot to the next step, the face of Mrs.Wyeth was lifted and Mrs.Wyeth's big eyes fastened upon hers through the impartial mirror.

But their expression was not that of the placid matron observed in a passage of conjugal tenderness.