jocosely significant; then with loud cheerfulness she tried to
rally her guest: "It's all right; what did I tell you? Where's my
knitting? Come; I'll go over to the parlor with you; we'll sit
there."

Mrs. Maitland's parlor was not calculated to cheer a panic-
stricken mother. It was a vast room, rather chilly on this foggy
November evening, and smelling of soot. On its remote ceiling was
a design in delicate relief of garlands and wreaths, which the
dingy years had not been able to rob of its austere beauty. Two
veined black-marble columns supported an arch that divided the
desert of the large room into two smaller rooms, each of which
had the center-table of the period, its bleak white-marble top
covered with elaborately gilded books that no one ever opened.
Each room had, too, a great cut-glass chandelier, swathed in
brown paper-muslin and looking like a gigantic withered pear.
Each had its fireplace, with a mantelpiece of funereal marble to
match the pillars. Mrs. Maitland had refurnished this parlor when
she came to the old house as a bride; she banished to the lumber-
room, or even to the auctioneer's stand, the heavy, stately
mahogany of the early part of the century, and purchased
according to the fashion of the day, glittering rosewood, carved
and gilded and as costly as could be found. Between the windows
at each end of the long room were mirrors in enormous gilt
frames; the windows themselves, topped with cornices and heavy
lambrequins, were hung with crimson brocade; a grand piano, very
bare and shining, sprawled sidewise between the black columns of
the arch, and on the wall opposite the fireplaces were four large
landscapes in oil, of exactly the same size. "Herbert likes
pictures," the bride said to herself when she purchased them.