ladies will see your honour," he said, and conducted me back into
the house and up the wide stairs. I had heard that Arlington Street was
known as the street of the King's ministers, and I surmised that Mr.
Manners had rented this house, and its furniture, from some great man who
had gone out of office, plainly a person of means and taste. The hall,
like that of many of the great town-houses, was in semi-darkness, but I
remarked that the stair railing was of costly iron-work and polished
brass; and, as I went up, that the stone niches in the wall were filled
with the busts of statesmen, and I recognized among these, that of the
great Walpole. A great copper gilt chandelier hung above. But the
picture of the drawing-room I was led into, with all its colours, remains
in the eye of my mind to this day. It was a large room, the like of
which I had never seen in any private residence of the New World,
situated in the back of the house. Its balcony overlooked the fresh
expanse of the Green Park. Upon its high ceiling floated Venus and the
graces, by Zucchi; and the mantel, upon which ticked an antique and
curious French clock, was carved marble.

On the gilt panels of the walls were wreaths of red roses. At least a
half-dozen tall mirrors, framed in rococos, were placed about, the
largest taking the space between the two high windows on the park side.
And underneath it stood a gold cabinet, lacquered by Martin's inimitable
hand, in the centre of which was set a medallion of porcelain, with the
head in dark blue of his Majesty, Charles the First. The chairs and
lounges were marquetry,--satin-wood and mahogany,--with seats and backs
of blue brocade. The floor was polished to the degree of danger, and on
the walls hung a portrait by Van Dycke, another, of a young girl, by
Richardson, a landscape by the Dutch artist Ruysdael, and a water-colour
by Zaccarelli.

I had lived for four months the roughest of lives, and the room brought
before me so sharply the contrast between my estate and the grandeur and
elegance in which Dorothy lived, that my spirits fell as I looked about
me. In front of me was a vase of flowers, and beside them on the table
lay a note "To Miss Manners, in Arlington Street," and sealed with a
ducal crest. I was unconsciously turning it over, when something
impelled me to look around. There, erect in the doorway, stood Dolly,
her eyes so earnestly fixed upon me that I dropped the letter with a
start. A faint col