impaired by the oddness of finding himself in this strange
empty house, where apparently no one expected him.
He was sorry that he had not told May Welland of
Countess Olenska's request, and a little disturbed by
the thought that his betrothed might come in to see her
cousin. What would she think if she found him sitting
there with the air of intimacy implied by waiting alone
in the dusk at a lady's fireside?

But since he had come he meant to wait; and he sank
into a chair and stretched his feet to the logs.

It was odd to have summoned him in that way, and
then forgotten him; but Archer felt more curious than
mortified. The atmosphere of the room was so different
from any he had ever breathed that self-consciousness
vanished in the sense of adventure. He had been before
in drawing-rooms hung with red damask, with pictures
"of the Italian school"; what struck him was the way
in which Medora Manson's shabby hired house, with
its blighted background of pampas grass and Rogers
statuettes, had, by a turn of the hand, and the skilful
use of a few properties, been transformed into something
intimate, "foreign," subtly suggestive of old
romantic scenes and sentiments. He tried to analyse the
trick, to find a clue to it in the way the chairs and
tables were grouped, in the fact that only two Jacqueminot
roses (of which nobody ever bought less than a
dozen) had been placed in the slender vase at his elbow,
and in the vague pervading perfume that was not