The
walls were hung with flowered damask, whose yellow, faded to brown, united
with the reddish colour of the carved wainscoting and the carved oaken
beams. For the rest, it reminded me more of an Italian room than an English
one. The furniture was Tuscan of the early seventeenth century, inlaid and
carved; there were a couple of faded allegorical pictures, by some
Bolognese master, on the walls; and in a corner, among a stack of dwarf
orange-trees, a little Italian harpsichord of exquisite curve and
slenderness, with flowers and landscapes painted upon its cover. In a
recess was a shelf of old books, mainly English and Italian poets of the
Elizabethan time; and close by it, placed upon a carved wedding-chest, a
large and beautiful melon-shaped lute. The panes of the mullioned window
were open, and yet the air seemed heavy, with an indescribable heady
perfume, not that of any growing flower, but like that of old stuff that
should have lain for years among spices.
"It is a beautiful room!" I exclaimed. "I should awfully like to paint you
in it"; but I had scarcely spoken the words when I felt I had done wrong.
This woman's husband could not bear the room, and it seemed to me vaguely
as if he were right in detesting it.
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