From its long, heavily curtained windows one looked down upon a crowded cross-town thoroughfare, or up to the summit of a stupendous hotel on the opposite side of the street. There was a small foyer at the rear of this lofty room, with an entrance from the narrow hall outside. Suspended in the wide doorway between the two rooms was a pair of blue velvet Italian portières of great antiquity and, to a connoisseur, unrivaled quality. Beyond the foyer and extending to the area wall was the rather commodious dining-room, with its long oaken English table, its high-back chairs, its massive sideboard and the chandelier that is said to have hung in the Doges' Palace when the Bridge of Sighs was a new and thriving avenue of communication. At least, so stated the dealer's tag tucked carelessly among the crystal prisms, supplying the observer with the information that, in case one was in need of a chandelier, its price was five hundred guineas. The same curious-minded observer would have discovered, if he were not above getting down on his hands and knees and peering under the table, a price tag; and by exerting the strength necessary to pull the sideboard away from the wall, a similar object would have been exposed. In other words, if one really wanted to purchase any article of furniture or decoration in the singularly impressive apartment of the Marchioness, all one had to do was to signify the desire, produce a check or its equivalent, and give an address to the competent-looking young woman who would put in an appearance with singular promptness in response to a couple of punches at an electric button just outside the door, any time between nine and five o'clock, Sundays included. The drawing-room contained many priceless articles of furniture, wholly antique--(and so guaranteed), besides rugs, draperies, tapestries and stuffs of the rarest quality. Bronzes, porcelains, pottery, things of jade and alabaster, sconces, candlesticks and censers, with here and there on the walls lovely little "primitives" of untold value. The most exotic taste had ordered the distribution and arrangement of all these objects. There was no suggestion of crowding, nothing haphazard or bizarre in the exposition of treasure, nothing to indicate that a cheap intelligence revelled in rich possessions. You would have sat down upon the first chair that offered repose and you would have said you had wandered inadvertently into a palace. Then, emboldened by an interest that scorned politeness, you would have got up to inspect the riches at close range,--and you would have found price-marks everywhere to overcome the impression that Aladdin had been rubbing his lamp all the way up the dingy, tortuous stairs.