“Good gracious!” said Augusta, glancing up the marble steps, “there are six of those great footmen.  What on earth shall I do with them all”—­

“Sack them,” said Eustace, abruptly; “the sight of those overfed brutes makes me sick!”

And then they were bowed in—­and under the close scrutiny of many pairs of eyes, wandered off with what dignity they could command to dress for dinner.

In due course they found themselves at dinner, and such a dinner!  It took an hour and twenty minutes to get through, or rather the six footmen took an hour and twenty minutes to carry the silver dishes in and out.  Never since their marriage had Eustace and Augusta, felt so miserable.

“I don’t think that I like being so rich,” said Augusta rising and coming down the long table to her husband, when at last Johnson had softly closed the door.  “It oppresses me!”

“So it does me,” said Eustace; “and I tell you what it is, Gussie,” he went on, putting his arm round her, “I won’t stand having all these infernal fellows hanging round me.  I shall sell this place, and go in for something quieter.”

And at that moment there came a dreadful diversion.  Suddenly, and without the slightest warning, the doors at either end of the room opened.  Through the one came two enormous footmen laden with coffee and cream, etc., and through the other Johnson and another powdered monster bearing cognac and other liquors.  And there was Augusta with Eustace’s arm round her, absolutely too paralysed to stir.  Just as the men came up she got away somehow, and stood looking like an idiot, while Eustace coloured to his eyes.  Indeed, the only people who showed no confusion were those magnificent menials, who never turned a single powdered hair, but went through their solemn rites with perfectly unabashed countenances.

“I can’t stand this,” said Augusta, feebly, when they had at length departed.  “I am going to bed; I feel quite faint.”

“All right,” said Eustace, “I think that it is the best thing to do in this comfortless shop.  Confound that fellow, Short, why couldn’t he come and dine?  I wonder if there is any place where one could go to smoke a pipe, or rather a cigar—­I suppose those fellows would despise me if I smoked a pipe?  There was no smoking allowed here in my uncle’s time, so I used to smoke in the house-keeper’s room; but I can’t do that now”—­

“Why don’t you smoke here?—­the room is so big it would not smell,” said Augusta.

“Oh, hang it all, no,” said Eustace; “think of the velvet curtains!  I can’t sit and smoke by myself in a room fifty feet by thirty; I should get the blues.  No, I shall come upstairs, too, and smoke there”—­

And he did.

Early, very early in the morning, Augusta woke, got up, and put on a dressing-gown.

The light was streaming through the rich gold cloth curtains, some of which she had drawn.  It lit upon the ewers, made of solid silver, on the fine lace hangings of the bed, and the priceless inlaid furniture, and played round the faces of the cupids on the frescoed ceiling.  Augusta stared at it all and then thought of the late master of this untold magnificence as he lay dying in the miserable hut in Kerguelen Land.  What a contrast was here!