CHAPTER II.
CHARLOTTE.
The little villa at Bayswater was looking its brightest on a resplendent midsummer afternoon, one year after Diana Paget's hurried hegira from Foretdechene.

If the poor dentist's house in dingy Bloomsbury had been fresh and brilliant of aspect, how much more brilliant was the western home of the rich stockbroker, whose gate was within five minutes' walk of that aristocratic Eden, Kensington Gardens! Mr.Sheldon's small domain was called The Lawn, and consisted of something over half an acre of flower-garden and shrubbery, a two-stall stable and coach-house, a conservatory and fernery, and a moderate-sized house in the gothic or mediaeval style, with mullioned windows in the dining-room and oriels in the best bedroom, and with a great deal of unnecessary stone-work and wooden excrescence in every direction.
The interior of Mr.Sheldon's dwelling bore no trace of that solid old-fashioned clumsiness which had distinguished his house in Fitzgeorge-street.

Having surrendered his ancestral chairs and tables in liquidation of his liabilities, Philip Sheldon was free to go with the times, and had furnished his gothic villa in the most approved modern style, but without any attempt at artistic grace or adornment.
All was bright, and handsome, and neat, and trim; but the brightness and the neatness savoured just a little of furnished apartments at the seaside, and the eye sought in vain for the graceful disorder of an elegant home.

The dining-room was gorgeous with all the splendour of new mahogany and crimson morocco; the drawing-room was glorified by big looking-glasses, and the virginal freshness of gilt frames on which the feet of agile house-fly or clumsy blue-bottle had never rested.

The crimsons, and blues, and greens, and drabs of the Brussels carpets retained the vivid brightness of the loom.