Besides, there were twenty-eight pictures upon the walls--one in oils of the late Mr. Dumby (for Aunt Marcia was really Mrs. Clement Dumby), painted, to all appearances, immediately after the misguided gentleman who married Aunt Marcia had been drowned, and before he had been wiped dry,--and for the rest, everywhere the eye was affronted by engravings framed in gilt and red-plush of "Sanctuary," "Le Hamac," "Martyre Chretienne," "The Burial of Latane," and other Victorian outrages. Then on an easel there was a painting of a peacock, perched upon an urn, against a gilded background; this painting irrelevantly deceived your expectations, for it was framed in blue plush. Also there were "gift-books" on the centre table, and a huge volume, again in red plush, with its titular "Album" cut out of thin metal and nailed to the cover. This album contained calumnious portraits of Aunt Marcia's family, the most of them separately enthroned upon the same imitation rock, in all the pride of a remote, full-legged and starchy youth, each picture being painfully "coloured by hand." 6 "Do you know why I want to marry you?" I demanded of Rosalind, in such surroundings, apropos of a Mrs. Vokins who had taken a house in Lichfield for the winter, and had been at school somewhere in the backwoods with Aunt Marcia, and was "dying to meet me." She answered, in some surprise: "Why, because you have the good taste to be heels over head in love with me, of course." I took possession of her hands. "If there is anything certain in this world of uncertainties, it is that I am not the least bit in love with you. Yet, only yesterday--do you remember, dear?" She answered, "I remember." "But I cannot, for the life of me, define what happened yesterday. I merely recall that we were joking, as we always do when together, and that on a wager I loosened your hair. Then as it tumbled in great honey-coloured waves about you, you were silent, and there came into your eyes a look I had never seen before. And even now I cannot define what happened, Rosalind! I only know I caught your face between my hands, and for a moment held it so, with fingers that have not yet forgotten the feel of your soft, thick hair,--and that for a breathing space your eyes looked straight into mine. Something changed in me then, my lady. Something changed in you, too, I think." Then Rosalind said, "Don't, Jaques--!" She was horribly embarrassed. "For I knew you willed me to possess you, and that possession would seem as trivial as a fiddle in a temple.... Yet, too, there was a lustful beast, somewhere inside of me, which nudged me to--kiss you, say! But nothing happened. I did not even kiss you, my beautiful and wealthy Rosalind." "Don't keep on talking about the money," she wailed. "Why, you can't believe I think you mercenary!"