to suit you, there are others, of which you can have your choice.
Come to my boudoir when you are ready."

"Where is that?" said Alice, anxiously.

"It is--You had better ring for some one to show you. I will send
you my maid."

Alice, even more afraid of the maid than of the mistress, declined
hastily. "I am accustomed to attend to myself, Miss Carew," with
proud humility.

"You will find it more convenient to call me Lydia," said Miss
Carew. "Otherwise you will be supposed to refer to my grandaunt, a
very old lady." She then left the room.

Alice was fond of thinking that she had a womanly taste and touch in
making a room pretty. She was accustomed to survey with pride her
mother's drawing-room, which she had garnished with cheap
cretonnes, Japanese paper fans, and knick-knacks in ornamental
pottery. She felt now that if she slept once in the bed before her,
she could never be content in her mother's house again. All that she
had read and believed of the beauty of cheap and simple ornament,
and the vulgarity of costliness, recurred to her as a hypocritical
paraphrase of the "sour grapes" of the fox in the fable. She
pictured to herself with a shudder the effect of a sixpenny Chinese
umbrella in that fireplace, a cretonne valance to that bed, or
chintz curtains to those windows. There was in the room a series of
mirrors consisting of a great glass in which she could see herself
at full length, another framed in the carved oaken dressing-table,