“I saw from that bust of Dalou’s that she wouldn’t be _facile_,” she reflected. “Looks as if she thought pumpkins of herself; if she’s cheeky to me it will be the worse for her.” Katherine was very cold, very pale, very still; the men did not get on with her, and soon abandoned the attempt to do so. The ladies, after staring hard, scarcely noticed her or her mother, but chattered amongst themselves like sparrows on a house roof after rain. With swelling heart she felt their gaze fixed on her; two of them put up their eyeglasses. She wore a plain silver-colored woolen gown, but their experienced eye recognized the cut of a famous _faiseur_, and the natural lines of her form were unusually perfect. “_Très bien mise; très simple, mais très bien_,” said a Parisienne, Duchesse de Saint-Avit, quite audibly, gazing at her as if she were some curious piece of carving like the fireplace. “_Elle n’est pas mal du tout_,” returned a foreign diplomatist quite audibly also, as though he were in the stalls of a theatre. “Sullen, is she?” thought Mouse, toasting one of her pretty feet on the fender. “Gives herself airs, does she? That’s old Fram’s doing, I expect.” Ignoring her as an unknown quantity, to be seen to at leisure and annihilated if needful, she turned to her host, who was standing awkwardly behind the brilliant throng. “Got my telegram about the Bird rooms?” she said sharply. She would have spoken more civilly to an hotel-keeper. The Bird rooms were a set of three rooms, bed, dressing, and sitting-room; their walls painted with birds and flowers on a pale-blue ground, their silk hangings and furniture of corresponding color and design; and many birds in Chelsea and Battersea, majolica, terra de pipa, and other china and pottery, on the tables and cabinets. She did not care a straw about the birds; but they were the warmest, cosiest rooms in the house facing full south, and were detached from observation in a manner which was agreeable and convenient; and she had sent a brief dispatch that morning to command their reservation for herself. Country houses are always selected with regard to their conveniences for innocent and unobserved intercourse. The Bird rooms were duly assigned to her, and Mr. Massarene himself had walked through them that morning to make sure that they were thoroughly warmed, that the writing-table was properly furnished, and that the rarest flowers had been gathered for the vases on the table; he with eagerness assured her that her word had been law. “I hope you haven’t altered anything _there_?” she said, taking up her gloves. “It’s very absurd, you know, to put Turkish screens and lamps in an old Tudor room like this. They’ve smartened the place up,” she said to her friends, looking about her. “That open work cedar wood screen wasn’t across that door in Gerald’s time, nor those great bronze lamps hanging over there. Where’d you get them, Billy? They look like Santa Sophia.”