Her custom fell from _vendre cher_ to _bon marché_. With the diminishing stream of patronage the material in her shop went down from _velours ras, velours façonné_, and _velours de soie_, to _velours de coton_ and _coton croisé_, from velvet to velveteens. The air of distinction which attracted gentility utterly faded away; the coarse, crude stuffs and rude handiwork repelled the aristocratic. Calls for her work became infrequent; more infrequent; came no more. One morning the milliner’s shop was shut. It never was opened again. The stuffs on the dusty shelves grew faded, discolored, and stained; cobwebs hung from the mouldy walls; the trade which had known and frequented the place knew it no more. * * * * * But out of this end, like a paradox, above the apparent wreck Margot arose in prosperity: the Devil was good as his word. She dwelt in a massive great house, a mansion, handsome, stately, and somber, by a courtyard paved in marble, approached through a vaulted tunnel lit by a dull-flaming torch and closed by an iron gate. From the side of the court a staircase of marble rose to her private door, ornate as a public office’s entry and massively carved in flowers; stairs within, of blue-veined marble, went up through wide corridors heavily panelled in dark Spanish wood. Beneath the house vast cellars boomed and echoed; the chimneys rose like turrets grouped against the darkling sky. The house throughout was furnished with every luxury befitting persons of circumstance: broad hearths for the burning of long wood in winter, vaulted corridors, burnished fittings of latten, and jalousies of saffron-wood with retaining rosettes of porcelain; mahogany tables of rare design, deep-carved, and adorned with brass. Curtains of saffron-colored silk cinctured with gold braid hung from the ceiling to the floor in heavy golden folds. Day was made night, night day by many subterfuges, with blinds and saffron jalousies ironed fast against the noon. By night the light shone out to the red stars, and the house was full of the swift, rich sweeping of heavy silk curtains waved by the wind, and the glow of the wax candles chequered the courtyard below with gold. In the middle of the courtyard, at the foot of the staircase, a fountain played in a yellow basin, with a pleasant, incessant noise of whispering green water, falling perpetually with a delicate patter over seven brown stone dolphins, spouting from whose pouted mouths went up contending streams; the waters gushed, white-laced, babbling, from the green-coppered vents in the dolphins’ mouths, and descended in spray to the bowl below; and under the bowl the drain-pipe murmured subterranean cool. About the courtyard stood a row of crimson-flowered pomegranate-trees: through the split brown rinds the garnet pulp and silver seeds showed, clotted thick as crystals in a stone; and purple fruits in heavy clusters, of