h a charred and badly-trimmed
wick. Hippolyte, seeing the large mirror that decorated the
chimney-piece, immediately fixed his eyes on it to admire Adelaide. Thus
the girl's little stratagem only served to embarrass them both.

While talking with Madame Leseigneur, for Hippolyte called her so, on
the chance of being right, he examined the room, but unobtrusively and
by stealth.

The Egyptian figures on the iron fire-dogs were scarcely visible, the
hearth was so heaped with cinders; two brands tried to meet in front
of a sham log of fire-brick, as carefully buried as a miser's treasure
could ever be. An old Aubusson carpet, very much faded, very much
mended, and as worn as a pensioner's coat, did not cover the whole of
the tiled floor, and the cold struck to his feet. The walls were hung
with a reddish paper, imitating figured silk with a yellow pattern. In
the middle of the wall opposite the windows the painter saw a crack, and
the outline marked on the paper of double-doors, shutting off a recess
where Madame Leseigneur slept no doubt, a fact ill disguised by a sofa
in front of the door. Facing the chimney, above a mahogany chest of
drawers of handsome and tasteful design, was the portrait of an officer
of rank, which the dim light did not allow him to see well; but from
what he could make out he thought that the fearful daub must have been
painted in China. The window-curtains of red silk were as much faded
as the furniture, in red and yellow worsted work, [as] if this room
"contrived a double debt to pay." On the marble top of the chest
of drawers was a costly malachite tray, with a dozen coffee cups
magnificently painted and made, no doubt, at Sevres. On the chimney
shelf stood the omnipresent Empire clock: a warrior driving the four
horses of a chariot, whose wheel bore the numbers of the hours on its
spokes. The tapers in the tall candlesticks were yellow with smoke,
and at each corner of the shelf stood a porcelain vase crowned with
artificial flowers full of dust and stuck into moss.

In the middle of the room Hippolyte remarked a card-table ready for
play, with new packs of cards. For an observer there was something
heartrending in the sight of this misery painted up like an old woman
who wants to falsify her face. At such a sight every man of sense must
at once have stated to himself this obvious dilemma--either these two
women are honesty itself, or they live by intrigue and gambling. But
on looking at Ade