, and of course I found no answer. It was one of
those rooms whose spacious and consistent ugliness grows old into a sort
of beauty, formidable and repellent, but impressive; an early Victorian
room, large and stately and symmetrical, full--but not too full--of
twisted and tortured mahogany, green rep, lustres, valances, fringes,
gilt tassels. The green and gold drapery of the two high windows, and
here and there a fine curve in a piece of furniture, recalled the Empire
period and the deserted Napoleonic palaces of France. The expanse of
yellow and green carpet had been married to the floor by two generations
of decorous feet, and the meaning of its tints was long since explained
away. Never have I seen a carpet with less individuality of its own than
that carpet; it was so sweetly faded, amiable, and flat, that its sole
mission in the world seemed to be to make things smooth for the chairs.
The wall-paper looked like pale green silk, and the candles were
reflected in it as they were reflected in the crystals of the chandelier.
The grand piano, a Collard and Collard, made a vast mass of walnut in the
chamber, incongruous, perhaps, but still there was something in its mild
and indecisive tone that responded to the furniture. It, too, spoke of
Evangelicalism, the Christian Year, and a dignified reserved confidence
in Christ's blood. It, too, defied the assault of time and the invasion
of ideas. It, too, protested against Chopin and romance, and demanded
Thalberg's variations on 'Home, Sweet Home.'

My great-grandfather, the famous potter--second in renown only to
Wedgwood--had built that Georgian house, and my grandfather had furnished
it; and my parents, long since dead, had placidly accepted it and the
ideal that it stood for; and it had devolved upon my Aunt Constance, and
ultimately it would devolve on me, the scarlet woman in a dress of
virginal white, the inexplicable offspring of two changeless and
blameless families, the secret revolutionary, the living lie! How had I
come there?

I went to the window, and, pulling the curtain aside, looked vaguely out
into the damp, black garden, from which the last light was fading. The
red, rectangular house stood in the midst of the garden, and the garden
was surrounded by four brick walls, which preserved it from four streets
where dwelt artisans of the upper class. The occasional rattling of a
cart was all we caught of the peaceable rumour of the town; but on clear
nights t