There was the same sort of patronage in her voice and manner that, as a girl, I had always experienced from her--a patronage I yielded to and even liked; it was not founded on conventional grounds of superior wealth or station (in the last particular there had never been any inequality; her degree was mine); but on natural reasons of physical advantage: it was the shelter the tree gives the herb.

I put a request without further ceremony.
"Do let me go down-stairs, madam; I am so cold and dull here." "I desire nothing better, if you are strong enough to bear the change," was her reply.

"Come then; here is an arm." And she offered me hers: I took it, and we descended one flight of carpeted steps to a landing where a tall door, standing open, gave admission into the blue-damask room.

How pleasant it was in its air of perfect domestic comfort! How warm in its amber lamp-light and vermilion fire-flush! To render the picture perfect, tea stood ready on the table--an English tea, whereof the whole shining service glanced at me familiarly; from the solid silver urn, of antique pattern, and the massive pot of the same metal, to the thin porcelain cups, dark with purple and gilding.

I knew the very seed-cake of peculiar form, baked in a peculiar mould, which always had a place on the tea-table at Bretton.