The yachts of her dearest friends, it is true, constantly passed and repassed up the sound, and many were the opera-glasses levelled at the shore; but what the bare-legged men were doing baffled conjecture and the best glasses. The house inside was, with the exception of one small suite, of the most sumptuous description. A huge hall, paved with marble, and covered as to its walls with superb wood-work of Grinling Gibbons, occupied the centre of the ground-floor, and _en suite_ round it were the rooms for entertaining. Ping-pong being at this moment fashionable, it was to be expected that almost every room had its table, and it was curious to see the hideous little black board on its cheap trestle legs occupying the centre of the great French drawing-room. Old rose-coloured satin was stretched on the walls, an immense Aubusson carpet covered the floor. All the furniture was gems of the early Empire style; the big ormolu clock was by Vernier; great Dresden parrots in gilt mounts held the shaded electric lights, and a statuette by Clodion stood on the Queen's escritoire from the Tuileries. One side of the square block of house was entirely occupied by the picture-gallery, which contained some extremely fine specimens of the great English portrait-school, a few dubious old masters, some good Lancrets, and several very valuable pictures by that very bright young American artist, Sam Wallace. These, as all the world knows, represent scenes from the ballet and such subjects, and he is supposed to have a prodigious eye for colour. Here, too, of course, was an unrivalled place for ping-pong, and Mrs. Palmer had caused to be made a very large court, so that four people could play together. Great grave English footmen, when the game was in progress, were stationed at each end to pick up the balls, and hand them on silver salvers to the server; and they had rather a busy time of it, for the majority of Mrs. Palmer's guests found a difficulty in inducing the ball to go anywhere near the table. But they found it very amusing, and it produced shrieks of senseless laughter. An observant man might have noticed in a dark corner of the hall a small green baize door. It was in shadow of the staircase, and might easily have escaped him altogether; but if he noticed it, it would have struck him as odd that this plain baize door, with three brass initials on it--L. S. P.--should find a place in this magnificence. If it had only been L. S. D., it would have been quite in place, and might have been taken to be the shrine of the tutelary god of the place. Shrine indeed it was, and the tutelary god sat within; for the initials were those of Mrs. Palmer's husband.