“The ladies will see your honour,” he said, and conducted me back into the house and up the wide stairs.  I had heard that Arlington Street was known as the street of the King’s ministers, and I surmised that Mr. Manners had rented this house, and its furniture, from some great man who had gone out of office, plainly a person of means and taste.  The hall, like that of many of the great town-houses, was in semi-darkness, but I remarked that the stair railing was of costly iron-work and polished brass; and, as I went up, that the stone niches in the wall were filled with the busts of statesmen, and I recognized among these, that of the great Walpole.  A great copper gilt chandelier hung above.  But the picture of the drawing-room I was led into, with all its colours, remains in the eye of my mind to this day.  It was a large room, the like of which I had never seen in any private residence of the New World, situated in the back of the house.  Its balcony overlooked the fresh expanse of the Green Park.  Upon its high ceiling floated Venus and the graces, by Zucchi; and the mantel, upon which ticked an antique and curious French clock, was carved marble.

On the gilt panels of the walls were wreaths of red roses.  At least a half-dozen tall mirrors, framed in rococos, were placed about, the largest taking the space between the two high windows on the park side.  And underneath it stood a gold cabinet, lacquered by Martin’s inimitable hand, in the centre of which was set a medallion of porcelain, with the head in dark blue of his Majesty, Charles the First.  The chairs and lounges were marquetry,—­satin-wood and mahogany,—­with seats and backs of blue brocade.  The floor was polished to the degree of danger, and on the walls hung a portrait by Van Dycke, another, of a young girl, by Richardson, a landscape by the Dutch artist Ruysdael, and a water-colour by Zaccarelli.

I had lived for four months the roughest of lives, and the room brought before me so sharply the contrast between my estate and the grandeur and elegance in which Dorothy lived, that my spirits fell as I looked about me.  In front of me was a vase of flowers, and beside them on the table lay a note “To Miss Manners, in Arlington Street,” and sealed with a ducal crest.  I was unconsciously turning it over, when something impelled me to look around.  There, erect in the doorway, stood Dolly, her eyes so earnestly fixed upon me that I dropped the letter with a start.  A faint colour mounted to her crown of black hair.

“And so you have come, Richard,” she said.  Her voice was low, and tho’ there was no anger in it, the tone seemed that of reproach.  I wondered whether she thought the less of me for coming.

“Can you blame me for wishing to see you before I leave, Dolly?” I cried, and crossed quickly over to her.

But she drew a step backward.

“Then it is true that you are going,” said she, this time with a plain note of coldness.