“I shouldn’t like to have his blood upon my head, though I _do_ hate and detest him,” thought Miss Grunderson; “for in these days of spirit-rapping there’s no knowing how he might spite himself upon me. I might have him tilting and tip-toeing every table I ever sat down to.” “I’m only going to my room to write a letter,” answered Mr. Tredethlyn; “shall I order my wife’s carriage for you?” “No, thank you; as our house is so near, I think I’ll ask one of your servants to see me home,” replied Rosa, who had no idea of leaving the ground just yet. “I’ll run up to Mrs. Tredethlyn’s room and say good-bye. Shall I take her any message from you?” “None, thank you; good night.” “Good night.” Rosa left him still standing in the drawing-room. The spacious and grandiose apartment, in all of whose costly adornment--from the pictures on the walls to the Louis-Seize snuff-boxes and lapis-lazuli _bonbonnières_, and all the expensive frivolities so lavishly scattered on the tables--there was no single object which had been chosen with any reference to his taste, with any thought of his comfort or pleasure. No exquisite toys of “picking-up;” no delicious bargaining with dirty brokers in the purlieus of Holborn; no evening excursions, treasure-hunting, among dingy by-ways, where remnants of choice old china lurk sometimes, unrecognized and unvalued, amongst the rubbish in a dimly-lighted shop-window; none of the pleasant struggles, the proud triumphs, which attend the collection of Poverty’s art and _virtu_, had attended the decoration of this splendid chamber. The Cornishman had given _carte blanche_ to his friend, and had written cheques--whose figures he had not remembered five minutes after writing them--in favour of a celebrated dealer in Bond Street, and an upholsterer in Oxford Street; and that was all. He smiled bitterly now as he paused to look round the room before he left it--perhaps for ever. “And this has been my home,” he thought. “Home! Better to sit by my uncle Oliver’s miserly fire, in the dreary house on the Cornish moors, than to loll in one of those yellow-satin chairs, playing at ball with a gold snuff-box, and watching the traitor whom I have trusted talking to my wife.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XXXIV. THE LADY AT PETERSHAM.