a good name than a gilt girdle!

Jean had never seen a gilt girdle, but he thought in a vague way
he would very much like to have one.

The holidays came, and one Thursday after breakfast his aunt
produced a white waistcoat from the wardrobe, and Jean, dressed
in his Sunday best, climbed on an omnibus which took him to the
Rue de Rivoli. He mounted four flights of a staircase, the carpet
and polished brass stair-rods of which filled him with surprise
and admiration.

On reaching the landing, he could hear the tinkling of a piano.
He rang the bell, blushed hotly and was sorry he had rung. He
would have given worlds to run away. A maid-servant opened the
door, and behind her stood Edgar Ewans, wearing a brown holland
suit, in which he looked entirely at his ease.

"Come along," he cried, and dragged him into a drawing-room, into
which the half-drawn curtains admitted shafts of sunlight that
were flashed back in countless broken reflections from mirrors
and gilt cornices. A sweet, stimulating perfume hung about the
room, which was crowded with a superabundance of padded chairs
and couches and piles of cushions.

In the half-light jean beheld a lady so different from all he had
ever set eyes on till that moment that he could form no notion of
what she was, no idea of her beauty or her age. Never had he seen
eyes that flashed so vividly in a face of such pale fairness, or
lips so red, smiling with such an unvarying almost tired-looking