Presently I, remarking with corner of eye the sumptuousness of her appearance, and the supercilious indifference of her demeanour, which made it seem totally improbable that she should ever, like _Desdemona_, seriously incline to treat me as an _Othello_, commenced to heave the sighs of a fire-stove, causing Miss JESSIMINA to accuse me of desiring myself in India. I denied this with native hyperbolism, saying that I was content to remain in _statu quo_ until the doom cracked, and that the conservatory was for me the equivalent of Paradise. She replied that its similitude to Paradise would be more startling if a larger proportion of the pots had contained plants, and if such plants as there were had not fallen into such a lean and slippered stage of decrepitude, adding that she did perpetually urge her mamma to incur the expense of some geranium-blooms and a few fairy-lamps, but she had refused to run for such adornments. [Illustration: "I BECAME ONCE MORE THE SILENT TOMB."] And I, with spontaneous gallantry, retorted that she was justified in such parsimony, since her daughter's eyes supplied such fairy illumination, and upon her cheeks was a bloom brighter than many geraniums. But this compliment she unhappily mistook as an insinuation that her complexion was of meretricious composition, and seeing that I had put my foot into a _cul-de-sac_, I became once more the silent tomb, and exhaled sighs at intervals. Presently she declared once more that she saw, from the dullness of my expression, that I was longing for the luxurious magnificence of my Indian palace. Now my domestic abode, though a respectable spacious sort of residence, and containing my father, mother, married brothers, &c., together with a few antique unmarried aunts, is not at all of a palatial architecture; but it is a bad bird that blackens his own nest, and so I merely answered that I was now so saturated with Western civilisation, that I had lost all taste for Oriental splendours. Next she inquired whether I did not miss the tiger-shooting and pig-sticking; and I replied (with veraciousness, since I am not the _au fait_ in such sports) that I could not deny a liability to miss both tigers and pigs, and, indeed, all animals that were _feræ naturæ_, and she condemned the hazardousness of these jungle sports, and wished me to promise that I would abstain from them on my return to India. To this I replied that before I agreed to such a self-denying ordinance, I desired to be more convinced of the sincerity of her interest in the preservation of my humble existence. Miss JESSIMINA asked what had she done that I should be in dubitation as to her _bona fides_?