"It is very pretty," Mr. Arbuthnot had remarked, with amiable tolerance; "but I don't approve of it. Its object is plainly to pamper and foster those tendencies of the feminine temperament which are most prominent and least desirable. Nothing could be more apparent than its intention to pander to a taste for luxury and self-indulgence, combined in the most shameless manner with vanity and lightness of mind. It will be becoming to the frivolous creatures, and will exalt and inflate them to that extent that they will spend the greater portion of their time in it, utterly ignoring the superior opportunities for cultivating and improving their minds they might enjoy downstairs on occasions when Richard remains at home, and my own multifarious duties permit me to drop in. It strikes me as offering a premium to feminine depravity and crime." "That expresses it exactly," agreed Richard. Arbuthnot turned him round. "Will you," he said, "kindly give your attention to the length and position of that mirror, and the peculiar advantages to be derived from the fact that the light falls upon it from that particular point, and that its effects are softened by the lace draperies and suggestions of pink and blue? The pink and blue idea is merely of a piece with all the rest, and is prompted by the artfulness of the serpent. If it had been all pink the blondes would have suffered, and if it had been all blue the brunettes would have felt that they were not at their best; this ineffably wily combination, however, truckles to either, and intimates that each combines the attractions of both. Take me away, Richard; it is not for the ingenuous and serious mind to view such spectacles as these. Take me away,--first, however, making a mental inventory of the entirely debasing sofas and chairs and the flagrant and openly sentimental nature of the pictures, all depicting or insinuating the drivelling imbecility and slavery of man,--'The Huguenot Lovers,' you observe, 'The Black Brunswicker,' and others of like nature." Mrs. Sylvestre had thought the room very pretty indeed when she had first taken possession of it, and its prettiness and comfort impressed her anew when, the excitement of the New Year's day at last at an end, she retired to it for the night. When she found herself within the closed doors she did not go to bed at once. Too many impressions had been crowded into the last ten hours to have left her in an entirely reposeful condition of mind and body, and, though of too calm a temperament for actual excitement, she was still not inclined to sleep.