ames of them, though my lady thought nothing of it, I am sure), and upon
a stand her great prayer-book open at the evening psalms for the day, on
the other. But as soon as she was gone, I troubled myself little with
either, but amused myself with looking round the room at my leisure. The
side on which the fire-place stood was all panelled,--part of the old
ornaments of the house, for there was an Indian paper with birds and
beasts and insects on it, on all the other sides. There were coats of
arms, of the various families with whom the Hanburys had intermarried,
all over these panels, and up and down the ceiling as well. There was
very little looking-glass in the room, though one of the great drawing-
rooms was called the "Mirror Room," because it was lined with glass,
which my lady's great-grandfather had brought from Venice when he was
ambassador there. There were china jars of all shapes and sizes round
and about the room, and some china monsters, or idols, of which I could
never bear the sight, they were so ugly, though I think my lady valued
them more than all. There was a thick carpet on the middle of the floor,
which was made of small pieces of rare wood fitted into a pattern; the
doors were opposite to each other, and were composed of two heavy tall
wings, and opened in the middle, moving on brass grooves inserted into
the floor--they would not have opened over a carpet. There were two
windows reaching up nearly to the ceiling, but very narrow and with deep
window-seats in the thickness of the wall. The room was full of scent,
partly from the flowers outside, and partly from the great jars of pot-
pourri inside. The choice of odours was what my lady piqued herself
upon, saying nothing showed birth like a keen susceptibility of smell. We
never named musk in her presence, her antipathy to it was so well
understood through the household: her opinion on the subject was believed
to be, that no scent derived from an animal could ever be of a
sufficiently pure nature to give pleasure to any person of good family,
where, of course, the delicate perception of the senses had been
cultivated for generations. She would instance the way in which
sportsmen preserve the breed of dogs who have shown keen scent; and how
such gifts descend for generations amongst animals, who cannot be
supposed to have anything of ancestral pride, or hereditary fancies about
them. Musk, then, was never mentioned at Hanbury Court. No mor