From the depth of the house an agitated feminine murmur reached him through the half-open door.

"What's he like, Ruby ?" "Quite the gentleman, miss--young and very good-looking." A pause, and the first voice rejoined: "Show him into the drawing-room, and ask him to sit down." The maid came back with this message, and took Charles into a large sombre room.

She gave him a fluttered glance of coquetry as she offered him a chair, as though she would have liked to linger with such an unusual visitor, then went out softly, closing the door behind her.
The room into which he had been ushered was furnished after some faded standard of departed elegance with tapestried chairs, and couches, painted screens, landscapes worked in black lutestring on white silk, and collections of stuffed humming-birds which gazed wanly at the intruder from glassy eyes.

A massive dead Christ in Gobelin tapestry covered the whole side of one wall, and from the opposite one the threaded features of Joseph and his brethren stared gloomily down.

These subjects accorded ill with several pieces of marble statuary scattered about the room--a reeling Bacchus, a nude Psyche, and an unchaste presentment of Leda drooping her head over an amorous swan.