The cheap and the costly, the rare and the common, the exquisite and the tawdry jostled one another on walls and floor.

At one end of the Louis XVI sofa on which Dale had been sitting lay a boating cushion covered with a Union Jack, at the other a cushion covered with old Moorish embroidery.

The chair I had vacated I discovered to be of old Spanish oak and stamped Cordova leather bearing traces of a coat-of-arms in gold.

My hostess lounged in a low characterless seat amid a mass of heterogeneous cushions.

There were many flowers in the room--some in Cloisonne vases, others in gimcrack vessels such as are bought at country fairs.