Mrs Jamieson’s drawing-room was cheerful; the evening sun came streaming into it, and the large square window was clustered round with flowers.  The furniture was white and gold; not the later style, Louis Quatorze, I think they call it, all shells and twirls; no, Mrs Jamieson’s chairs and tables had not a curve or bend about them.  The chair and table legs diminished as they neared the ground, and were straight and square in all their corners.  The chairs were all a-row against the walls, with the exception of four or five which stood in a circle round the fire.  They were railed with white bars across the back and knobbed with gold; neither the railings nor the knobs invited to ease.  There was a japanned table devoted to literature, on which lay a Bible, a Peerage, and a Prayer-Book.  There was another square Pembroke table dedicated to the Fine Arts, on which were a kaleidoscope, conversation-cards, puzzle-cards (tied together to an interminable length with faded pink satin ribbon), and a box painted in fond imitation of the drawings which decorate tea-chests.  Carlo lay on the worsted-worked rug, and ungraciously barked at us as we entered.  Mrs Jamieson stood up, giving us each a torpid smile of welcome, and looking helplessly beyond us at Mr Mulliner, as if she hoped he would place us in chairs, for, if he did not, she never could.  I suppose he thought we could find our way to the circle round the fire, which reminded me of Stonehenge, I don’t know why.  Lady Glenmire came to the rescue of our hostess, and, somehow or other, we found ourselves for the first time placed agreeably, and not formally, in Mrs Jamieson’s house.  Lady Glenmire, now we had time to look at her, proved to be a bright little woman of middle age, who had been very pretty in the days of her youth, and who was even yet very pleasant-looking.  I saw Miss Pole appraising her dress in the first five minutes, and I take her word when she said the next day —

“My dear! ten pounds would have purchased every stitch she had on—­ lace and all.”

It was pleasant to suspect that a peeress could be poor, and partly reconciled us to the fact that her husband had never sat in the House of Lords; which, when we first heard of it, seemed a kind of swindling us out of our prospects on false pretences; a sort of “A Lord and No Lord” business.

We were all very silent at first.  We were thinking what we could talk about, that should be high enough to interest My Lady.  There had been a rise in the price of sugar, which, as preserving-time was near, was a piece of intelligence to all our house-keeping hearts, and would have been the natural topic if Lady Glenmire had not been by.  But we were not sure if the peerage ate preserves—­ much less knew how they were made.  At last, Miss Pole, who had always a great deal of courage and savoir faire, spoke to Lady Glenmire, who on her part had seemed just as much puzzled to know how to break the silence as we were.