"a perfect lady—just set in her seat and stared",what does "stared" refer to?

I'm not sure that staring would be an ideal attribute for a "perfect lady". It usually refers to a fixed and unresponsive gaze and, as children, we were always told "It's rude to stare!". I suppose that the writer meant to convey that the lady sat and observed, without saying anything. Incidentally, I assume that you have mistyped 'set' for 'sat'. Although 'set' is related to the normally intransitive verb 'to sit', it usually means something rather different and there is a separate verb (which may either be transitive or intransitive) 'to set'. 'To set' may mean 'to put something down carefully'; 'to go down below the horizon' (as of the sun, moon &c - opposite to 'to rise'); 'to adjust a device or clock to a particular position/setting' or 'to change from a liquid to a solid' (usually at a normal ambient temperature, as opposed to freezing). As a matter of fact, 'sit' and 'set' are sometimes confused, even by English writers and many dialects use them interchangeably (so the sentence you quote may well be correctly reproducing something spoken in dialect). The correct forms of each verb ('to sit' and 'to set') are as follows: Present infinitive: to sit; to set Present tense: I/you/we/they sit, he/she/it sits; I/you/we/they set, he/she/it sets Present participle: sitting; setting Past tense and Past participle: sat; set (notice that, in the third person singular past tense, there is no added 's' - "She sat"; "The sun set") Examples: (Present tense): "I sit [down] on the chair"; "I set the cutlery [down] on the table" (Past tense): "The children sat on the floor"; "The man carefully set the book on the table before speaking." 'Set' is normally transitive when it means 'adjust something' or 'place something in position': "He set the clock to the correct time", "She set the plate on the mantlepiece". It is intransitive when it is used of the sun (or other heavenly bodies) or of jam/jelly solidifying. Occasionally, 'sit' may be used in a transitive sense to mean something done to someone or something: "The mother sat the child in the high chair." Usually a speaker or writer will choose another word ('put', 'place', 'arrange' &c) instead of 'set' if there is likely to be any confusion. This would be an example of somewhat careless usage: "Once the jelly has set, unmould it and set it carefully on a plate." It would have been less ambiguous and repetitive to say "... place it carefully ..."!

It's along the same lines as "Good children are seen-&-not-heard." A 'lady' is 'the wife of a lord'---a word literally rooted-in "bread-guardian." The lady is simply to sit & stare, not raising her voice unless 'the bread' is in danger