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Hardly less plain was it that my brain was not yet settled; for, as I gazed at the blue arm-chair, it appeared to grow familiar; so did a certain scroll-couch, and not less so the round centre-table, with a blue-covering, bordered with autumn-tinted foliage; and, above all, two little footstools with worked covers, and a small ebony-framed chair, of which the seat and back were also worked with groups of brilliant flowers on a dark ground.
The occasion of this belligerent demonstration was afforded at the Christmas festival, held yearly at Beauseincourt, by Colonel and Mrs. La Vigne in the great, many-windowed drawing-room with its waxed parquet its ebony-framed mirrors, its pier consoles, and faded damask furniture.
Next Chiquita swam lazily downward, made a brief scarlet flutter on the beach, seized an elaborate double mirror set in gilded wood. Peachy followed; she chose a heart-shaped glass, ebony-framed. Last of all, Julia came floating slowly down. She took the only one that was left: it was, of course, the smallest; it was framed in carved ivory.
She was looking at herself in the ebony-framed mirror that hung opposite the door, much interested in her strange appearance, when the Indian boy entered, following Mistress Lettice. She saw his face in the glass and recognized him as the son of a Powhatan chief. She turned and faced him, but knew that he did not recognize her.
I was a little shamefaced to see march past, taking their share of the fine and tranquil smile distributed by Marie, some women who had formerly been my mistresses Madame Lacaille, nervous, subtle, mystical; big Victorine and her good-natured rotundity, who had welcomed me any time and anywhere; and Madeleine Chaine; and slender Antonia above all, with the Italian woman's ardent and theatrical face, ebony-framed, and wearing a hat of Parisian splendor.
He remembered the room well, with its ebony-framed etchings on the walls, bookcases and blue china over the draped mantelpiece, even to a large case of elaborately carved Indian chessmen in bullock-carts and palanquins, on horses and elephants, which stood in the window-recess. It was the very room to which he had been shown when he first called about sending his son to the school.
Here reclining about on cushions of silk and velvet were several beautiful girls in various attitudes of indolence and ease, one laughing, black-haired houri was amusing herself with a tame bird which flew to and from her uplifted finger, another in a half-sitting posture, played cup-and-ball with much active and graceful dexterity, some were working at gold and silver embroidery, others, clustered in a semicircle round a large osier basket filled with myrtle, were busy weaving garlands of the fragrant leaves, and one maiden, seemingly younger than the rest, and of lighter and more delicate complexion, leaned somewhat pensively against an ebony-framed harp, as though she were considering what sad or suggestive chords she should next awaken from its responsive strings.
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