The walls were panelled with oak, which had been stained a curious green, that was not olive nor ash-green but partook of both--the veritable colour, indeed, of the grey-green olive trees that one sees on some terrace of the Italian Alps at dawn. The pictures were very few, considering the size of the room, and they were all quite modern--"In the movement"--as shrewd Mr. Amberley was himself. A portrait of Mrs. Amberley by William Nicholson, which was quite famous in its way, displayed all the severe pregnancy and almost solemn reserve of this painter. There was a pastel of Prydes' which showed--rather suggested--a squalid room in which a gentleman of 1800, with a flavour of Robert Macaire about him, stood in the full rays of the wine and honey-coloured light of an afternoon sun. Upon yet another panel was a painting upon silk by Charles Conder, inspired of course, by Watteau, informed by that sad and haunting catching after a fairyland never quite reached, which is the distinctive note of Conder's style, and which might well have served for an illustration to a grotesque fantasy of Heine. Mrs. Amberley loved this painting. She had a Pater-like faculty of reading into--or from--a picture, something which the artist never thought about at all, and she used to call this little masterpiece "An Ode of Horace in Patch, Powder and Peruque!" She adored these perfectly painted little snuff-box deities who wandered through shadowy mists of amethyst and rouge-de-fer in a fantastic wood. It is extremely interesting to discover, know of, or to sit at ease in a room which, in its way, is historic, and this is what the Amberleys' guests always felt, and were meant to feel. In its present form, and with its actual decorations, this celebrated room only dated from some fifteen years back. The Waggon-roof alone remained unaltered from its earlier periods. The Publishing house of Ince and Amberley had been a bulwark of the Victorian era, and not without some growing celebrity in the earlier Georgian Period. Lord Byron had spoken well of the young firm once, Rogers was believed to have advanced them money, and when that eminent Cornish pugilist "The Lamorna Cove" wrote his reminiscences they were published by Ince and Amberley, while old Lord Alvanley himself contributed a preface. From small beginnings came great things. The firm grew and acquired a status, and about this time, or possibly a little later, the dining-room at Bryanstone Square had come into being. Its walls were not panelled then in delicate green. They were covered with rich plum-coloured paper festooned by roses of high-gilt. In the pictures, with their heavy frames of gold, the dogs and stags of Landseer were let loose, or the sly sleek gipsies of Mr. Frith told rustic fortunes beneath the spreading chestnut trees.