se and went to write letters in the hall, he said.
He had refused to play bridge on account of this important
correspondence.

So at last I got the two women off to their rooms, and was standing
irresolutely for a second, glancing over the balustrade after closing
the last door, when my kinsman looked up.

"Comtesse," he called, softly, "won't you come down and tell me when
the post goes?"

I descended the stairs. He was standing at the bottom by one of the
negro figures when I reached the last step.

"Have you not some quiet corner where we might sit and talk of our
ancestors?" he asked, with a comic look in his cat's eyes. "This place
is so draughty, and I am afraid of the bears! And we should disturb
that loving couple in the library and the bridge-players in the
drawing-room. Have you no suggestions for my comfort? I am one of your
guests, too, you know!"

"There is Mrs. Gurrage's boudoir, that has straight-up, padded chairs
and crimson satin, and there is my own, that is mustard yellow. Which
could you bear best before dinner?" I said, laughing.

"Oh! the yellow--mustard is stimulating and will give me an appetite."

So we walked up the stairs again together and he followed me down the
thickly carpeted passage to my highly gilded shrine.

For the first time since I have owned it, I felt sorry I had been too
numb to make it nice. The house-maids arrange it in the morning, and
there it stays, a monument of the English upholsterer's idea of a
Louis XV. boudoir.

As I told Hephzibah, the little copy of La Rochefoucauld and the
miniature of Ambrosine Eustasie are the only things of mine--my
own--that are here, besides all my new books, of course.

I sat down in the straight-backed sofa. It has terra-cotta and buff
tulips running over the mustard brocade. The gilt part runs into your
back.

Antony sat at the other end.

A very fat, rich cushion of "school of art" embroidery, with frills,
fell between us. We looked up at the same moment and our eyes met, and
we both laughed.

"You remind me of a picture I bought last year," Antony said. "It
was a little pastel by La Tour, and the last owner had framed it in
a brand-new, brilliant gilt Florentine frame."

Suddenly, as he spoke, a sense of shame came over me. I felt how wrong
I had been to laugh with him about this--my home. It is because, after
all these months, I cannot realize that Ledstone is my home that I
have been capable of committing this bad tas