a's pincushion, a-bristle with
new pins, lay on the dimity-flounced toilet-table, and round it stood
a multitude of multiform glass vessels, domed, all of them, with dull
gold, on which Z. D., in zianites and diamonds, was encrusted. On
a small table stood a great casket of malachite, initialled in like
fashion. On another small table stood Zuleika's library. Both books were
in covers of dull gold. On the back of one cover BRADSHAW, in beryls,
was encrusted; on the back of the other, A.B.C. GUIDE, in amethysts,
beryls, chrysoprases, and garnets. And Zuleika's great cheval-glass
stood ready to reflect her. Always it travelled with her, in a great
case specially made for it. It was framed in ivory, and of fluted ivory
were the slim columns it swung between. Of gold were its twin sconces,
and four tall tapers stood in each of them.

The door opened, and the Warden, with hospitable words, left his
grand-daughter at the threshold.

Zuleika wandered to her mirror. "Undress me, Melisande," she said. Like
all who are wont to appear by night before the public, she had the habit
of resting towards sunset.

Presently Melisande withdrew. Her mistress, in a white peignoir tied
with a blue sash, lay in a great chintz chair, gazing out of the
bay-window. The quadrangle below was very beautiful, with its walls of
rugged grey, its cloisters, its grass carpet. But to her it was of no
more interest than if it had been the rattling court-yard to one of
those hotels in which she spent her life. She saw it, but heeded it not.
She seemed to be thinking of herself, or of something she desired, or of
some one she had never met. There was ennui, and there was wistfulness,
in her gaze. Yet one would have guessed these things to be transient--to
be no more than the little shadows that sometimes pass between a bright
mirror and the brightness it reflects.

Zuleika was not strictly beautiful. Her eyes were a trifle large, and
their lashes longer than they need have been. An anarchy of small curls
was her chevelure, a dark upland of misrule, every hair asserting its
rights over a not discreditable brow. For the rest, her features were
not at all original. They seemed to have been derived rather from a
gallimaufry of familiar models. From Madame la Marquise de Saint-Ouen
came the shapely tilt of the nose. The mouth was a mere replica of
Cupid's bow, lacquered scarlet and strung with the littlest pearls.
No apple-tree, no wall of peaches, had not b