ven among clouds by a radiant
youth surrounded by smiling, flower-scattering maidens,--Mrs. Hawthorne
to "gay up" the room, as she said, had hung windows and doors with
draperies of her favorite cornflower blue, and covered the chairs with
the same. On the floor she had stretched a pearl-gray carpet all aglow
with wreaths of roses tied with ribbons of blue; and over the carpet--at
the bedside, before the dressing-table, in front of the fireplace--laid
down white bear-skins.

To cover further the yellow silk, she had hung in one panel of it a
painting of the "Madonna della Seggiola," in another, Carlo Dolci's
"Angel of the Annunciation," and in another, Carlo Dolci's Magdalen
clasping the box of ointment--all works of art bought in Via dei Fossi,
framed in great gilt-wood frames, like the mirror.

The lace curtains under the cornflower blue brocade were like Brussels
wedding veils seen through a magnifying glass.

Yes, the room had been made to look bright. It had lamps of
cream-colored biscuit, painted with roses and crowned with pink shades;
it had polished brass fire-irons. But the point of supreme brightness
was the dressing-table, where glittered in orderly display Mrs.
Hawthorne's American toilet silver, mirror, trays, brushes, boxes,
bottles--solid, shining, richly embossed.

There was just one thing in all the room that looked poor, workaday. It
was on the small table at the head of the bed, beside the candle-stick
and match-safe, a black book, the commonest kind of Bible, such a Bible
as is dispensed by those who have to furnish the sacred writings in
large numbers--Sunday schools, for instance.

It was in fact a Sunday-school prize that now lay on the night-stand, in
what the sober volume presented to a pious little girl must have thought
strange company. Cover to cover with it, cheek by jowl, lay a book on
etiquette.

It was for the Bible, however, that Mrs. Hawthorne reached after she had
got into bed. She found her place. She read in it every night before
sleeping, to keep a promise made long ago, and avoid the reproaches of a
person gone from this earth, but who still, she never questioned, could
be pleased or displeased with her actions.

She did not always try to understand or follow; when she was sleepy she
read merely with her eyes. To-night her mind was too full of personal
things to permit of strict attention to the text. As she enumerated the
wonders of the House that Solomon built for the Lo