ticular survey of her apartment. It was
a large, but not very lofty room, panelled with oak, and having two
windows looking across a wide lawn to the main road. The bright fire
in the ample fireplace illuminated the richly-carved cornice, with
its grotesque heads and fanciful scrollwork. It had evidently been a
dining-room, for some of the heavy furniture, in the fashion of the
period in which it had been last inhabited, still remained. There
were the massive table and the old-fashioned high-backed chairs, with
covers of what had once been bright embroidery, doubtless the work of
many a fair hand; but what attracted her attention most, was a
picture over the chimney-piece. It was painted on the wooden panel;
perhaps the reason it had never been removed, though evidently the
work of no mean artist. It represented a scene of wild revelry. At
the head of a table, covered with a profusion of fruits, with glasses
and decanters of various elegant forms, stood a young man; high above
his head he held a goblet filled to the brim with wine; excitement
flashed from his bright blue eyes, and flushed the rounded cheek;
light-brown hair, untouched by powder, curled round the low narrow
forehead; whilst the small sensual mouth expressed all the worst
passions of our nature. Around the table sat his admiring parasites;
young beauty and hoary age, the strength of manhood and the earliest
youth, were there, alike debased by the evidences of lawless passion.
With what a master-hand had the painter seized upon the individual
expression of each! There the glutton, and here the sot; now the eye
fell on the mean pander or the roystering boon-companion; now on the
wit, looking with a roguish leer upon his fair neighbour, or the
miserable wretch maudlin in his cups; and again on the knave
profiting by the recklessness of those around him. The bright blaze
of the fire lit up the different countenances with a vivid and
lifelike expression; and as Anna gazed, fascinated and spell-bound,
her thoughts naturally reverted to what she had heard of the life and
character of the last owner of the place. Was that youthful figure,
so evidently the master of the revel, a portrait of the unhappy man
himself who had thus unconsciously left behind him not only a
memorial, but a warning. How often had the now silent halls echoed to
the brawl of the drunkard, the song of the wanton, the jest of the
profane, the laugh of the scorner! It was here, perhaps in this