ith only a trifling sprinkling of black beans in the
boxes: Byles's, of course, who blackballs everybody: and Bung's, who
looks down upon a coal-merchant, having himself lately retired from the
wine-trade.

Some fortnight afterwards I saw Sackville Maine under the following
circumstances:--

He was showing the Club to his family. He had 'brought them thither
in the light-blue fly, waiting at the Club door; with Mrs. Chuff's
hobbadehoy footboy on the box, by the side of the flyman, in a sham
livery. Nelson Collingwood; pretty Mrs. Sackville; Mrs. Captain Chuff
(Mrs. Commodore Chuff we call her), were all there; the latter, of
course, in the vermilion tabinet, which, splendid as it is, is nothing
in comparison to the splendour of the 'Sarcophagus.' The delighted
Sackville Maine was pointing out the beauties of the place to them. It
seemed as beautiful as Paradise to that little party.

The 'Sarcophagus' displays every known variety of architecture and
decoration. The great library is Elizabethan; the small library is
pointed Gothic; the dining-room is severe Doric; the strangers' room
has an Egyptian look; the drawing-rooms are Louis Quatorze (so called
because the hideous ornaments displayed were used in the time of Louis
Quinze); the CORTILE, or hall, is Morisco-Italian. It is all over
marble, maplewood, looking-glasses, arabesques, ormolu, and scagliola.
Scrolls, ciphers, dragons, Cupids, polyanthuses, and other flowers
writhe up the walls in every kind of cornucopiosity. Fancy every
gentleman in Jullien's band playing with all his might, and
each performing a different tune; the ornaments at our Club, the
'Sarcophagus,' so bewilder and affect me. Dazzled with emotions which I
cannot describe, and which she dared not reveal, Mrs. Chuff, followed
by her children and son-in-law, walked wondering amongst these blundering
splendours.

In the great library (225 feet long by 150) the only man Mrs. Chuff saw,
was Tiggs. He was lying on a crimson-velvet sofa, reading a French novel
of Paul de Kock. It was a very little book. He is a very little man.
In that enormous hall he looked like a mere speck. As the ladies passed
breathless and trembling in the vastness of the magnificent solitude,
he threw a knowing, killing glance at the fair strangers, as much as to
say, 'Ain't I a fine fellow?' They thought so, I am sure.

'WHO IS THAT?' hisses out Mrs. Chuff, when we were about fifty yards
off him at the other end of the room