I had a vague idea that Miss Lawrence must have been married since I saw her, so completely was she mistress of herself, and so easy was her deportment,--not to speak of her dress, which was black lace, with a single feather in her hair of the most vivid green; but unstudied as very few costumes are, even of married women. She was still Miss Lawrence, though, for some one addressed her by name,--a broad-featured man behind her,--and she turned her head alone, and answered him over her shoulder. She dismissed him very shortly, or sent him to some one else; for she led me--as a queen might lead one of her knights, by her finger-tips, small as a Spaniard's, upon the tips of my gloves, while she held her own gloves in her other hand--to a gentleman upon the rug, a real gentleman of the old school, to whom she introduced me simply as to her father; and then she brought me back again to a low easy-chair, out of a group of easy-chairs close by the piano, and herself sat down quite near me, on the extreme corner of an immense embroidered ottoman. "You see how it is, my dear Mr. Auchester," she began in her genial voice,--"a dinner, which I should not have dreamed to annoy you with, but for one party we expect. You have seen Seraphael, of course, and the little Burney? Or perhaps not; they have been in town only two days." I was about to express something rather beyond surprise, when a fresh appearance at the door carried her away, and I could only watch the green plume in despair as it waved away from me. To stifle my sensations, I just glanced round the room; it was very large, but so high and so apportioned that one felt no space to spare. The draperies, withdrawn for the sunset smile to enter, were of palest sky-color, the walls of the palest blush, the tables in corners, the chairs in clusters, the cabinets in niches, gilt and carven, were of the deepest blue and crimson, upon a carpet of all imaginable hues, like dashed flower-petals. Luxurious as was the furniture, in nothing it offended even the calmest taste, and the choicest must have lavished upon it a prodigal leisure. The pianoforte was a grand one, of dark and lustrous polish; its stools were velvet; a large lamp, unlighted, with gold tracery over its moon-like globe, issued from a branch in the wall immediately over it, and harmonized with a circle of those same lamps above the centre ottoman, and with the same upon the mantelshelf guarding a beautiful French clock, and reflected in a sheet of perfect glass sweeping to the ceiling.