fect paradise.

In a richly decorated room, whose three windows opened on a marble
terrace, sat the Princess. It was December; but the sky was cloudless,
the sea a perfect mirror, and the light air that stirred the leaves
soft and balmy as the breath of May. Her dress was in keeping with the
splendor around her: a rich robe of yellow silk fastened up the front
with large carbuncle buttons; sleeves of deep Valenciennes lace fell far
over her jewelled fingers; and a scarf of golden embroidery, negligently
thrown over an arm of her chair, gave what a painter would call the warm
color to a very striking picture. Farther from the window, and carefully
protected from the air by a screen, sat a gentleman whose fur-lined
pelisse and velvet skull-cap showed that he placed more faith in the
almanac than in the atmosphere. From his cork-soled boots to his shawl
muffled about the throat, all proclaimed that distrust of the weather
that characterizes the invalid. No treachery of a hot sun, no seductions
of that inveterate cheat, a fine day in winter, could inveigle Sir
Horace Upton into any forgetfulness of his precautions. He would have
regarded such as a palpable weakness on his part,--a piece of folly
perfectly unbecoming in a man of his diplomatic standing and ability.

He was writing, and smoking, and talking by turns, the table before him
being littered with papers, and even the carpet at his feet strewn with
the loose sheets of his composition. There was not in his air any of
the concentration, or even seriousness, of a man engaged in an important
labor; and yet the work before him employed all his faculties, and
he gave to it the deepest attention of abilities of which very few
possessed the equal. To great powers of reasoning and a very strong
judgment he united a most acute knowledge of men; not exactly of mankind
in the mass, but of that especial order with whom he had habitually to
deal. Stolid, commonplace stupidity might puzzle or embarrass him;
while for any amount of craft, for any degree of subtlety, he was an
over-match. The plain matter-of-fact intelligence occasionally gained a
slight advantage over him at first; the trained and polished mind of
the most astute negotiator was a book he could read at sight. It was his
especial tact to catch up all this knowledge at once,--very often in
a first interview,--and thus, while others were interchanging the
customary platitudes of every-day courtesy, he was gleaning and