other's terror and magnificence--both proved every day of
the week--lay, like a dark cloud, at the back of her confusion.

She could not, however, extract anything definite from the little
cluster of discomforts; old Lady Carloes and Lord Crewner, a young thing
that Lord Crewner had brought with him, and her brother Richard were
all waiting for tea, and floods of conversation instantly covered Lady
Adela's poor mind and drowned it.

The Long Drawing-room, where they now were, was long and narrow, with
two large open fireplaces, a great deal of old furniture rather faded
and very handsome, silver that gleamed against the dark wall-paper, one
big portrait of the Duchess, painted by Sargent twenty years ago, and
high windows shut off now by heavy dark green curtains.

The Duchess, it was understood, did not approve of electric light and
the house therefore disdained it. Parts of the room were lighted by
candles placed in heavy old silver candlesticks. Round the fireplace at
the farther end of the light shone and glittered; there the tea-tables
stood, and round about them the company was gathered.

The rest of the room, hung in dark shadow, stretched into black depths,
lit only now and again by the gleam of silver or glass as the light of
the more distant fire flashed and fell.

The voices, the clatter of the tea-things, these sounds seemed to be
echoed by the darker depths of the farther stretches of the room.

Lady Carlos was eighty, extremely vigorous, and believed in bright
colours. She was dressed now in purple, and wore a hat with a large
white feather. Her figure was bunched into a kind of bundle, so that her
waist was too near her bosom and her bosom too near her chin and her
chin too near her forehead.

It was as though some spiteful person had pressed all of her too closely
together. But this very shapelessness added to her undoubted amiability;
her face was fat and smiling, her hair white and untidy, and she
maintained her dignity in spite of her figure. Nobody knew anything with
certainty as to her income, but she was charitable, and ran a little
house in Charles Street with a great deal of ceremony and hospitality.
Her husband had long been dead and her two daughters had long been
married, so that she was happy and independent. Many people considered
her tiresome because her curiosity was insatiable and her discretion
open to question, yet she was a staunch Beaminster adherent, an old
friend of the Duche