eternal ormolu clock flanked by the two eternal ormolu candelabra on the
dreary mantelpiece. Some of this garniture had been removed, others
softened into cheeriness and comfort. The room somehow or other--thanks
partly to a very moderate expenditure in pretty twills with pretty
borders, gracefully simple table-covers, with one or two additional small
tables and easy-chairs, two simple vases filled with flowers; thanks
still more to a nameless skill in re-arrangement, and the disposal of the
slight knick-knacks and well-bound volumes, which, even in travelling,
women who have cultivated the pleasures of taste carry about them--had
been coaxed into that quiet harmony, that tone of consistent subdued
colour, which corresponded with the characteristics of the inmate. Most
people might have been puzzled where to place the piano, a semi-grand,
so as not to take up too much space in the little room; but where it was
placed it seemed so at home that you might have supposed the room had
been built for it.

There are two kinds of neatness,--one is too evident, and makes
everything about it seem trite and cold and stiff; and another kind of
neatness disappears from our sight in a satisfied sense of completeness,
--like some exquisite, simple, finished style of writing, an Addison's or
a St. Pierre's.

This last sort of neatness belonged to Isaura, and brought to mind the
well-known line of Catullus when on recrossing his threshold he invokes
its welcome,--a line thus not inelegantly translated by Leigh Hunt,

"Smile every dimple on the cheek of Home."

I entreat the reader's pardon for this long descriptive digression; but
Isaura is one of those characters which are called many-sided, and