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She seemed to be looking for something and he roused himself to ask what she wanted. "Only the last number of the Horoscope. I thought I'd left it on this table." He said nothing, and she went on: "You haven't seen it?" "No," he returned coldly. The magazine was locked in his desk. His wife had moved to the mantel-piece. She stood facing him and as he looked up he met her tentative gaze.
The panel-mirrors which surrounded him, majestically duplicated on every side his enormous person; bags filled with gold covered the table; around him, the furniture, the wainscot, the doors, the locks, the mantel-piece, the ceiling were gilded; so was his coat. I do not know but that his brain was gilded too.
Looking at a clock which stood upon the mantel-piece, I perceived that it was past eleven; whereupon I said to myself, "I am wasting my time foolishly and unprofitably, forgetting that I am now in the big world, without anything to depend upon save my own exertions"; and then I adjusted my dress, and, locking up the bundle of papers which I had not read, I tied up the other, and, taking it under my arm, I went down stairs; and, after asking a question or two of the people of the house, I sallied forth into the street with a determined look, though at heart I felt somewhat timorous at the idea of venturing out alone into the mazes of the mighty city, of which I had heard much, but of which, of my own knowledge, I knew nothing.
The cabinet had been replaced and the shelves set back upon it; but the latter were empty, and neither on them nor on the adjacent mantel-piece did I see the clock. This set me thinking, and I made up my mind to have another look at that clock.
She looked up, turning lazily in her chair, to note the darkening of the air without the double windows. "Ah!" she said aloud to herself in French, "when will it be tea-time?" As she spoke the words, the bells of a sleigh suddenly stopped with a rattle beneath the window. Immediately the countess rose and went to the mirror over the mantel-piece.
Floyd watching by Harriet's bed, and in imagination he saw the girl lying there white and unconscious. Suddenly, however, the shadow disappeared. The figure rose into the light and crossed the room. It was Harriet. She wore the same gown she had worn an hour before. She stood for a moment in the light, as if placing something on the mantel-piece, and then resumed her seat at the table.
But as Madame Dépine's eyes roved from these to the mantel-piece, she caught sight of an oval miniature of an elegant young woman, who was jewelled in many places, and corresponded exactly with her idea of a Princess! To disguise her access of respect, she said abruptly, "It must be very noisy here from the steam-trams." "It is what I love, the bustle of life," replied Madame Valière, simply.
At last a voice cried, "Come in," and I turned the handle. At first glance I could only make out a confused chaos, impossible to describe, amidst which my aunt was bustling about clad in pink fleshings. Clad, did I say? very airily. The furniture, the carpet, the mantel-piece were encumbered, almost buried under a heterogeneous mass of things.
"Oh, yes every time " she drawled, nonchalant. "Here, let's write it down," said Lilly. He found a blue pencil and printed in large letters on the old creamy marble of the mantel-piece panel: LOVE IS LIFE. Julia suddenly rose and flung her arms asunder wildly. "Oh, I hate love. I hate it," she protested. Jim watched her sardonically. "Look at her!" he said. "Look at Lesbia who hates love."
Cornelia paced the little room backward and forward she could never keep still when she was talking about what interested her, and now paused by the window, now before the mantel-piece, now leaned for a moment on the foot-board of Sophie's bed. She was very happy; indeed, this may have been the happiest hour of her life, past or to come.
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