d many other chambers, were
decorated in the fashion of those discovered at Pompeii. They had been
furnished with the utmost luxury, and the beauty of the paintings,
furniture, carpets, and hangings was enhanced by statues in bronze and
marble. The villa, indeed, and its fittings were of a kind to which
I was little used, and at the same time of such beauty that I never
ceased to regard all as a creation of an enchanter's wand, or as the
drop-scene to some drama which might suddenly be raised and disappear
from my sight. The house, in short, together with its furniture, was,
I believe, intended to be a reproduction of an ancient Roman villa,
and had something about it repellent to my rustic and insular ideas.
In the contemplation of its perfection I experienced a curious mental
sensation, which I can only compare to the physical oppression produced
on some persons by the heavy and cloying perfume of a bouquet of
gardenias or other too highly scented exotics.

In my brother's room was a medieval reproduction in mellow alabaster of
a classic group of a dolphin encircling a Cupid. It was, I think, the
fairest work of art I ever saw, but it jarred upon my sense of propriety
that close by it should hang an ivory crucifix. I would rather, I think,
have seen all things material and pagan entirely, with every view of
the future life shut out, than have found a medley of things sacred and
profane, where the emblems of our highest hopes and aspirations were
placed in insulting indifference side by side with the embodied forms of
sensuality. Here, in this scene of magical beauty, it seemed to me for
a moment that the years had rolled back, that Christianity had still to
fight with a _living_ Paganism, and that the battle was not yet won. It
was the same all through the house; and there were many other matters
which filled me with regret, mingled with vague and apprehensive
surmises which I shall not here repeat.

At one end of the house was a small library, but it contained few works
except Latin and Greek classics. I had gone thither one day to look for
a book that John had asked for, when in turning out some drawers I found
a number of letters written from Worth by my lost Constance to her
husband. The shock of being brought suddenly face to face with a
handwriting that evoked memories at once so dear and sad was in itself
a sharp one; but its bitterness was immeasurably increased by the
discovery that not one of these envelope