The furniture was mostly of mahogany, now dark with age, while chairs
and sofas were covered with horsehair. Against the walls stood tall dark
presses, and mirrors with the glass in two pieces, and having their
gilded frames adorned with urns and garlands. The rooms were lit by
old-fashioned chandeliers and girandoles.

The Consul met one of the servants in the passage. "Has Mr. Garman
arrived?"

"Yes, sir; and he has gone upstairs, to my mistress," answered the girl.

When the weather was warm, Mrs. Garman usually preferred one of the airy
rooms upstairs. She was a very fat lady, who lived in a continual state
of strife with dyspepsia. From whatever side you looked at her, she
presented a succession of smoothly rounded curves covered with shining
black silk.

It was wonderful that Mrs. Garman got so stout; it must have been, as
she herself said, "a cross" she had to bear. She seemed to eat very
little at her meals, and could not control her astonishment at the
appetites of the rest of the company. Only at times, when she was alone
in her room, she seemed to have a fancy for some little delicacy, and
Miss Cordsen used to bring her a little bit of just what happened to be
handy.

When the Consul entered her room, his wife was sitting on the sofa,
engaged in conversation with her brother-in-law.

"How are you? how are you, Christian Frederick?" said Richard, gaily.
"Here I am again!"