our architect suggests anything of the kind he will be dismissed on the
instant."

[Illustration: THE POOR BUT MODEST ATTORNEY'S COTTAGE]

"Don't you think the room would look rather bare without a mantel? You
know it's the most common thing in the world to have them like this. I
can show you a hundred without going out of town."

"Common! It's worse than common; it is vulgar, it is atrocious, it is
the sum of all villainies!" said Jill, her indignation rising with each
succeeding epithet. "A fireplace is a sacred thing. To pretend to have
one when you have not is like pretending to be pious when you know you
are wicked; it is stealing the livery of a warm, gracious, kindly
hospitality to serve you in making a cold, heartless _pretense_ of
welcome."

"I didn't mean to do anything wrong," Jack protested with exceeding
meekness. "Such mantels were all the fashion when this house was built,
and fashions in marble can't be changed as easily as fashions in paper
flowers."

"There ought not to be 'fashions' in marble, but of course it was
fashion. Nothing else than the blindest of all blind guides could have
led people into anything so hopelessly silly and unprincipled. I shall
never enjoy this room again," she continued, "knowing, as well I know,
that yonder stately piece of sculpture is a whited sepulchre, a
delusion and a snare. I shall feel that I ought to unmask it the moment
a visitor comes in, lest I should be asked to make a fire on the hearth
and be obliged to confess the depravity in our own household."