...

"I looked about me. There were tubs here and there against the walls,
gaily painted, with glossy-leaved aloes and palms in them--one of the
aloes, I remember, was flowering; a little fountain in the middle made a
tinkling noise; we put our caps on a carved and gilt console table; and
before us rose a broad staircase with shallow steps of spotless stone and
a beautiful wrought-iron handrail. At the top of the staircase were more
palms and aloes, and double doors painted in a clear grey.

"We followed our hostesses up the staircase. I can hear yet the sharp
clean click our boots made on that hard shiny stone--see the lights of
the candle gleaming on the handrail ... The young girl--she was not much
more than a girl--pushed at the doors, and we went in.

"The room we entered was all of a piece with the rest for rather
old-fashioned fineness. It was large, lofty, beautifully kept. Carroll
went round for Miss ... whatever her name was ... lighting candles in
sconces; and as the flames crept up they glimmered on a beautifully
polished floor, which was bare except for an Eastern rug here and there.
The elder lady had sat down in a gilt chair, Louis Fourteenth I should
say, with a striped rep of the colour of a petunia; and I really don't
know--don't smile, Smith--what induced me to lead her to it by the
finger-tips, bending over her hand for a moment as she sat down. There
was an old tambour-frame behind her chair, I remember, and a vast oval
mirror with clustered candle-brackets filled the greater part of the
farther wall, the brightest and clearest glass I've ever seen...."

He paused, looking at my cigarette case, which he had taken into his hand
again. He smiled at some recollection or other, and it was a minute or
so before he continued.

"I must admit that I found it a little annoying, after what we'd
been talking about at dinner an hour before, that Rangon wasn't with
us. I still couldn't understand how he could have neighbours so
charming without knowing about them, but I didn't care to insist on
this to the old lady, who for all I knew might have her own reasons
for keeping to herself. And, after all, it was our place to return
Rangon's hospitality in London if he ever came there, not, so to speak,
on his own doorstep.... So presently I forgot all about Rangon, and I'm
pretty sure that Carroll, who was talking to his companion of some
Felibrige junketing or other and having the air of Gounod's _Mireille_
hum