Not content with the existing arrangements of the yacht, which were at once elegant and luxurious, Mr. Smithson had sent down a Bond Street upholsterer to refit the saloon and Lady Lesbia's cabin. The dark velvet and morocco which suited a masculine occupant would not have harmonised with girlhood and beauty; and Mr. Smithson's saloon, as originally designed, had something of the air of a _tabagie_. The Bond Street man stripped away all the velvet and morocco, plucked up the Turkey carpet, draped the scuttle-ports with pale yellow cretonne garnished with orange pompons, subdued the glare of the skylight by a blind of oriental silk, covered the divans with Persian saddlebags, the floor with a delicate Indian matting, and furnished the saloon with all that was most feminine in the way of bamboo chairs and tea-tables, Japanese screens and fans of gorgeous colouring. Here and there against the fluted yellow drapery he fastened a large Rhodes plate; and the thing was done. Lady Lesbia's cabin was all bamboo and embroidered India muslin. An oval glass, framed in Dresden biscuit, adorned the side, a large white bearskin covered the floor. The berth was pretty enough for the cradle of a duchess's first baby. Even Lesbia, spoiled by much indulgence and unlimited credit, gave a little cry of pleasure at sight of the nest that had been made ready for her. 'Really, Mr. Smithson is immensely kind!' she exclaimed. 'Smithson is always kind,' answered Lady Kirkbank, 'and you don't half enough appreciate him. He has given me his very own cabin--such a dear little den! There are his cigar boxes and everything lovely on the shelves, and his own particular dressing-case put open for me to use--all the backs of all the brushes _repoussé_ silver, and all the scent-bottles filled expressly for me. If the yacht would only stand quite still, I should think it more delicious than the best house I ever stayed in: only I don't altogether enjoy that little way it has of gurgling up and down perpetually.' Mr. Smithson's chief butler, a German Swiss, and a treasure of intelligence, had come down to take the domestic arrangements of the yacht into his control. The Park Lane _chef_ was also on board, Mr. Smithson's steward acting as his subordinate. This great man grumbled sorely at the smallness of his surroundings; for the most luxurious yacht was a poor substitute for the spacious kitchens and storerooms and stillrooms of the London mansion. There was a cabin for Lady Kirkbank's Rilboche and Lady Lesbia's Kibble, where the two might squabble at their leisure; in a word, everything had been done that forethought could do to make the yacht as perfect a place of sojourn as any floating habitation, from Noah's Ark to the Orient steamers, had ever been made.