Chapter 17 - Page 2

persiflage, much may be included in their points
of view.

Of these conjectural discussions no one was more clearly aware
than Coombe himself, and the finished facility--even felicity--of
his evasion of any attempt at delicately valued cross examination
was felt to be inhumanly exasperating.

In one of the older Squares which still remained stately, through
the splendour of modern fashion had waned in its neighbourhood,
there was among the gloomy, though imposing, houses one in particular
upon whose broad doorsteps--years before the Gareth-Lawlesses had
appeared in London--Lord Coombe stood oftener than upon any other.
At times his brougham waited before it for hours, and, at others,
he appeared on foot and lifted the heavy knocker with a special
accustomed knock recognized at once by any footman in waiting in
the hall, who, hearing it, knew that his mistress--the old Dowager
Duchess of Darte--would receive this visitor, if no other.

The interior of the house was of the type which, having from the
first been massive and richly sombre, had mellowed into a darker
sombreness and richness as it had stood unmoved amid London years
and fogs. The grandeur of decoration and furnishing had been too
solid to depreciate through decay, and its owner had been of no
fickle mind led to waver in taste by whims of fashion. The rooms
were huge and lofty, the halls and stairways spacious, the fireplaces
furnished with immense grates of glittering steel, which held in
winter beds of scarlet glowing coal, kept scarlet glowing by a
special footman whose being, so to speak, depended on his fidelity
to his task.

There were many rooms whose doors were kept closed because they
were apparently never used; there were others as little used but
thrown open, warmed and brightened with flowers each day, because
the Duchess chose to catch glimpses of their cheerfulness as she
passed them on her way up or downstairs. The house was her own
property, and, after her widowhood, when it was emptied of her
children by their admirable marriages, and she herself became Dowager
and, later, a confirmed rheumatic invalid, it became doubly her
home and was governed by her slightest whim. She was not indeed
an old woman of caprices, but her tastes, not being those of the
later day in which she now lived, were regarded as a shade eccentric
being firmly defined.

"I will not have my house glaring with electricity as if it were
a shop. In my own rooms I will be lighted by wax candles. Large
ones--as many as you please," she said. "I will not be 'rung up'
by telephone. My servants may if they like. It is not my affair
to deprive them of the modern inconveniences, if they find them
convenient. My