loose.

He had indicated a private corridor, and she entered it and approached a
door ajar. There was no response to her knock, but as she was expected,
and Lady Victoria no doubt was still dressing, she pushed open the door
and entered. The room was empty, but Isabel was instantly impressed with
its reflection of an individuality, although of a side that had
attracted her least. Here was none of the old-time stiffness of
Capheaton, and there was a conspicuous absence of dead masters and their
pupils. It was not a large room. The walls were covered with a Japanese
gold paper to within four feet of the floor where it was met by a
tapestry of Indian cashmeres, and from it was separated by a narrow
shelf set thick with photographs in silver frames, and with odd and
exquisite bibelots. On the walls were artists' sketches, and two or
three canvases of the Impressionist and Secessionist schools, expressive
of the ardent temperaments of their creators. In the place of honor was
a painting of Salambo in the folds of her python.

There were several deep chairs and a mighty divan covered with
gold-colored cushions and a tiger-skin, whose mate was on the floor. The
gloom of the afternoon was excluded by heavy gold-colored curtains, and
the only, but quite sufficient light, filtered through an opalescent
globe upheld by a twisted bronze female of the modern Munich school,
that looked like nothing so much as Alice elongating in Wonderland.

Isabel suddenly felt herself and her organdie absurdly out of place in
this room with its enchantress atmosphere. She wished that Lady Victoria
had made the appointment for the library, which was equally in tune with
another side of her.

She was even meditating a retreat, inexplicably embarrassed, when an
inner door opened and Lady Victoria entered. She wore a tea-gown of a
sort, black and yellow, open over the soft lace of a chemisette,
although a dog-collar of tiny golden sequins clasped her throat. In her
hair a golden butterfly trembled, and in that light she would have
looked little older than her guest had it not been for the expression of
her face. It was this expression that arrested Isabel even more than the
toilette, as she moved towards the divan without a word of greeting. It
looked as if it had been put on with the costume, both intended to
express a mood of the wearer: which might have been that of a tigress
whose ferocity was slowly awakening with the approach of the victim. T