g house in
Northumberland situated in superb scenery, had in its furniture
grown more and more hideous to the eye as early and mid-Victorian
fashions and ideals receded and modern taste shook itself free from
what was tawdry, fluffy, stuffy, floppy, messy, cheaply imitative,
fringed and tasselled and secretive.

Michael himself from sheer detestation of the surroundings under
which he had grown to manhood favoured the uncovered, the naked wood
or stone or slate, the bare floor, the wooden settee or
cane-bottomed chair, the massive side-board, the bare mantelpiece
and distempered wall. On the whole, their house in Portland Place
satisfied tolerably well the advanced taste in domestic scenery of
1901. But your eye was caught at once by the additions made by Mrs.
Rossiter. Linda conceived it was her womanly mission to lighten the
severity of Michael's choice in furniture and decorations. She
introduced rickety and expensive screens that were easily knocked
over; photographs in frames which toppled at a breath; covers on
every flat surface that could be covered--occasional tables, tops of
grand pianos. If she did not put frills round piano legs, she placed
tasselled poufs about the drawing-room that every short-sighted
visitor fell over, and used large bows of slightly discoloured
ribbon to mask unneeded brackets. In the reception rooms
food-bestrewn parrot stands were left where they ought never to be
seen; and there were gilt-wired parrot cages; baskets for the pugs
lined with soiled shawls; absurd ornaments, china cats with
exaggerated necks, alabaster figures of stereotyped female beauty
and flowerpot stands of ornate bamboo. She loved portieres, and she
would fain have mitigated the bareness of the panelled or
distempered walls; only that here her husband was firm. She
unconsciously mocked the few well-chosen, well-placed pictures on
the walls (which she itched to cover with a "flock" paper) by
placing in the same room on bamboo easels that matched the
be-ribboned flower-stands pastel, crayon, or _gouache_ studies of
the worst possible taste.

Michael's library alone was free from her improvements, though it
was sometimes littered with her work-bags or her work. She had long
ago developed the dreadful mistake that it "helped" Michael at his
work if she brought hers (perfectly futile as a rule) there too. "I
just sit silently in his room, my dear, and stitch or knit something
for poor people in Marrybone--I'm told y