y tedious operation, in which the arrangement of cushions,
pillows, and footstools played a conspicuous part, that bland lady
began, in her very softest of voices,

"This, indeed, repays me, amply, fully repays me! eh, Martha?"

"Quite so, sister," responded Martha, in a meek whisper.

"A poor invalid as I am, rarely rising from a sofa except to snatch the
perfumed odors of a violet in spring, or to listen to the murmurs of a
rippling fountain; denied all the excitements of society by a nervous
temperament so finely strung as to be jarred by contact, even the
remotest, with inferior souls think of what ecstasy a moment like this
affords me!"

As Kate was profoundly ignorant to what happy combination of
circumstances this blissful state could be attributed, she could only
smile courteously, and mutter some vague expressions of her pleasure,
satisfaction, and so forth.

"Eve in her own paradise!" exclaimed Mrs. Ricketts, as she turned her
eyes from Kate to the gorgeous chamber in which they were seated. "May I
ask if the taste of these decorations be yours, Miss Dalton?"

"Lady Hester Onslow's, madam," said Kate, quietly.

"I declare, I like these hangings better than 'Gobelins' they are
lighter and more graceful. You remember, Martha, I told the dear Queen
of Saxony that blue velvet would go so well with her small pictures. We
discussed the point every morning at breakfast for a week, and the poor
dear King at last called us the 'blue devils; 'very happy, wasn't it,
Miss Dalton? But he speaks English just like one of ourselves."

"These are all Dutch pictures, I perceive," said Purvis, who, with
his poodle under his arm, was making a tour of the room, peering into
everything, opening books, prying into china jars, and spying into
work-boxes, as though in search of some missing article.

"I 'm tired of Wou-Wou-Wou--" Here the poodle barked, doubtless in
the belief that he was responding to an invitation. "Down, Fidele!
Wou-ver-mans," gulped out Purvis. "He 's always the same."

"But those dear white palfreys, how I love them! I always have a white
horse, out of regard for Wouvermans."

Kate thought of the poor gray in the courtyard, and said nothing.

"And there is something so touching so exquisitely touching in
those Flemish interiors, where the goodwife is seated reading, and a
straggling sunbeam comes slanting in upon the tiled floor. Little peeps
of life, as it were, in a class of which we know nothing;