with the same glister as her black dress; and her
black hair, so black that it must have been dyed, was parted in the
middle and lay in a chignon upon her neck. She seemed all the larger,
sitting in this small room full of Victorian finery, and Michael was
amused to hear her address Sylvia as "great."

"We want something to eat and something to drink, you lovely old
mountain," Sylvia said.

Mrs. Gainsborough doubled herself up and smacked her knees in a tempest
of wheezy laughter.

"Sit here, you terrors, while I get the cloth on the dining-room table,"
and out she went, her laughter dying in sibilations along the diminutive
corridor. Lily had flung herself down in an armchair near the fire.
Behind her stood a small mahogany table on which was a glass case of
humming-birds; by her elbow on the wall was a white china bell coronated
with a filigree of gilt, and by chance the antimacassar on the chair was
of Berlin wool checkered black and blue. She in her pierrette's dress of
black with light blue pompons looked strangely remote from present time
in that setting. Michael could not connect this secluded house with
anything which had made an impression upon him during his experience of
the underworld. Here was nothing that was not cozy and old-fashioned;
here was no sign of decay, whether in the fabric of the house or in the
attitude of the people living there. This small square room with the
heavy furniture that occupied so much of the space had no demirep
demeanor. That horsehair sofa with lyre-shaped sides and back of
floriated wood; that brass birdcage hanging in the window against the
curtains of maroon serge; those cabinets in miniature, some lacquered,
some of plain wood with tiny drop-handles of brass; those black chairs
with seats of gilded cane; those trays with marquetery in
mother-of-pearl of wreaths and rivulets and parrots; that table-cloth
like a dish of black Sevres; those simpering steel engravings--there was
nothing that did not bespeak the sobriety of the Victorian prime here
miraculously preserved. Lily and Sylvia in such dresses belonged to a
period of fantasy; Mrs. Gainsborough was in keeping with her furniture;
and Michael, as he looked at himself in the glass overmantel, did not
think that he was seeming very intrusive.

"Whose are these rooms?" he asked. Lily was adorable, but he did not
believe they were her creation or discovery.

"I found them," said Sylvia. "The old girl who owns the house