over in what room they had put me;
whether the great dormitory, or one of the little dormitories. I was
puzzled, because I could not make the glimpses of furniture I saw
accord with my knowledge of any of these apartments. The empty white
beds were wanting, and the long line of large windows. "Surely,"
thought I, "it is not to Madame Beck's own chamber they have carried
me!" And here my eye fell on an easy-chair covered with blue damask.
Other seats, cushioned to match, dawned on me by degrees; and at last I
took in the complete fact of a pleasant parlour, with a wood fire on a
clear-shining hearth, a carpet where arabesques of bright blue relieved
a ground of shaded fawn; pale walls over which a slight but endless
garland of azure forget-me-nots ran mazed and bewildered amongst myriad
gold leaves and tendrils. A gilded mirror filled up the space between
two windows, curtained amply with blue damask. In this mirror I saw
myself laid, not in bed, but on a sofa. I looked spectral; my eyes
larger and more hollow, my hair darker than was natural, by contrast
with my thin and ashen face. It was obvious, not only from the
furniture, but from the position of windows, doors, and fireplace, that
this was an unknown room in an unknown house.

Hardly less plain was it that my brain was not yet settled; for, as I
gazed at the blue arm-chair, it appeared to grow familiar; so did a
certain scroll-couch, and not less so the round centre-table, with a
blue-covering, bordered with autumn-tinted foliage; and, above all, two
little footstools with worked covers, and a small ebony-framed chair,
of which the seat and back were also worked with groups of brilliant
flowers on a dark ground.

Struck with these things, I explored further. Strange to say, old
acquaintance were all about me, and "auld lang syne" smiled out of
every nook. There were two oval miniatures over the mantel-piece, of
which I knew by heart the pearls about the high and powdered "heads;"
the velvets circling the white throats; the swell of the full muslin
kerchiefs: the pattern of the lace sleeve-ruffles. Upon the
mantel-shelf there were two china vases, some relics of a diminutive
tea-service, as smooth as enamel and as thin as egg-shell, and a white
centre ornament, a classic group in alabaster, preserved under glass.
Of all these things I could have told the peculiarities, numbered the
flaws or cracks, like any _clairvoyante_. Above all, there was a pair
of handscree