She set down her lamp on a table of rose-tinged marble, and dropped for a minute on to a little rococo settee. "The things in here we found just as you see them." "So I imagined." "All but the ornaments on the mantel." "Very astute in me; I divined that, too." "We liked it, so we left it. Pretty, ain't it? Oh, beg pardon!" She blushed and looked at him sidelong, laughing. "That was a bad break! That came mighty near to being the forbidden question how you like it. All the same, it is pretty, _is it not_?" "Extremely. Extremely pretty." "There are going to be some tapestries presently. Oh, don't be afraid! Not those old worsted things full of maggots, but beautiful new ones, painted by hand, all in these same delicate colors. A story in four scenes, one for each panel. The 'Fountain of Love' is the subject. It sounds to me like something Biblical, Sunday-schoolish, but Mr. Hunt says, no, _it is not_." "Mr. Hunt--" "The nephew, Charlie. You know him, don't you? He's getting them done for me. He's a great friend of mine. He's helped me a lot to buy things." "Did he help you to buy the pictures?" "Yes. He knows the dealers, and gets them to make fair prices. I think it perfectly wonderful how cheap everything is over here. He helped me to buy these, too." She lifted the chain of pink corals, graduated from the size of a pea to that of a hazelnut, which with their delicate living color brightened her winter dress. "I can't say, though," she dropped, "that I found these particularly cheap. Hush!" she broke off. "It's Hat! Quick!" she whispered, "let's get behind the door and say 'Boo!' as she comes in." Amazingly, incredibly to him, this grown woman appeared about to ensconce herself. "But won't it make her jump?" he asked, supposing it to be Miss Madison for whom the little surprise was intended. "Of course it'll make her jump. No matter how often I do it, she jumps. That's the fun." "Mrs. Hawthorne, please!" he begged nervously. "As a very special favor to me, don't! It would make me jump, too--horribly." She stood listening while the footsteps turned away and faded fruitlessly. With a look of disappointment, as at opportunity missed, she took up her lamp and moved on. "And here," she said, leaving the oval room by the door opposite to the one they had come through, "is the dining-room. Which takes us back to the hall and completes the circle." This room, of a fine new Pompeian red, was lighted. The table was set; a butler busied himself at the sideboard. Gerald's eye was caught by the brightness of a china basket piled high with sumptuous fruit, and similarly caught the next moment by the pattern of the curtains, in which the same rampant red lion was innumerably repeated on a ground of wide-meshed lace.