London in the month of May! And as Miss Katharine Vavasour realised the melancholy fact, it required all the counterbalancing comfort to be found in the recollection that Rhoda was at last “coming out,” to make amends to her for the lost country pleasures to which distance now lent a hitherto undiscovered charm. But if the time-worn, smoke-stained walls of the family mansion struck the imagination of Lady Millicent’s young daughters as gloomy and uninviting, what could be said of the interior, where the wear and tear of years was everywhere visible? In the spacious suite of drawing-rooms, the furniture of which had not been renewed for more years than Lady Millicent had ever cared to count, and where, “dingy yellow” vying with “dirty red,” everywhere displayed tokens that the letting of the town mansion of the Vavasours had been very promiscuously carried on, poor Rhoda (for Kate was too overjoyed at the change to take any lasting notice of the surroundings) stood in mute dismay. The last tenant had been an American--a wealthy New-Yorkian--who, following the “common and unclean” habits peculiar to his country, had not improved either the outward appearance or the intrinsic value, in a delicate female point of view, of the carpets. Probably Mr. John B. Foy, or whatever might have been the gentleman’s multifold cognomen, would have scorned the meanness of letting his house in the Fifth Avenue, or in University-square, to any Britisher or other foreigner desirous to witness the humours of “York City;” but, having paid a good many almighty dollars to an individual (a “female,” as the said New-Yorker might possibly have designated the superb Lady Millicent), he very naturally concluded that, viewing the matter commercially, he had a right to abuse as well as to use, in aristocratic Bolton-square, the privileges of his sex and country. “Did you ever see anything so dirty, so shabby, so faded?” Rhoda remarked to her brother Horace, the first moment after their arrival when she found herself alone with him. “Mamma could have had no idea of how bad it was. Just look at the paint and the curtains! If they were but clean! But really, these are too horrid!” “Wait till you make acquaintance with some of the other great houses that fine ladies give their balls and drums in!” Horace said. “It isn’t everyone who finds money for everything; and you will amuse yourself just as well in a room where the paint is dingy and the hangings old-fashioned, as you have any chance of doing in places that are kept in apple-pie order. In my opinion, and as far as I can judge, it’s rather _chique_ to be shabby in this kind of way, as well as in some others that I could mention.”