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Updated: May 31, 2025
At first we could not understand the strange sight that met our gaze. In the middle of Joe's room was a table, spread with a cloth, and on it saucers from flower-pots, placed at intervals down each side; before each saucer a chair was placed, and in the centre of the table a high basket, from which a Stilton cheese had been unpacked that morning,-this was evidently to represent a tall epergne.
The épergne with its gold and silver fern leaves climbing up a thin stalk of glass to its top dish for fruit had always come out for dinner parties and she liked not innovations. It was indeed as much as Halcyone could do to get all the flowers of the same kind, a nasturtium and a magenta stock had with care to be smuggled away, leaving the sweet peas sole occupants of the sand.
And to this also Miss La Sarthe agreed. So Miss Roberta joyfully found Halcyone out upon the second terrace and imparted to her the good news. They would arrange flowers in the épergne, she suggested a few sweet williams and mignonette and a foxglove or two. A pretty posy fixed in sand, such as she remembered there always was in their gala days. Halcyone was enchanted at the prospect.
On the table stood a couple of little glasses, a decanter containing liqueur and a small epergne, loaded with fruit and pastry. "Is this your study?" asked Bertha. Mechanically her eyes sought for a desk such as violin players use. Emil put his arm round her waist and led her to the piano. He sat down on the piano stool and drew her on to his knees.
I found myself looking between the flowers for a man's face I could imagine was Hector MacNairn's. I looked up and down and saw none I could believe belonged to him. There were handsome faces and individual ones, but at first I saw no Hector MacNairn. Then, on bending forward a little to glance behind an epergne, I found a face which it surprised and pleased me to see.
He found himself seated between Miss La Sarthe and Halcyone and quite enjoying himself. Everything was of the time from the épergne to the way the bread was cut. Halcyone conversed with Mr. Miller, who always felt he must make nursery jokes with her and ask her the names of her dolls. "He can't help it," she told Cheiron one day.
At last, however, those three smug hypocrites retired, and, by good luck, transferred their suffocating epergne to the sideboard; so then father and son looked at one another with that conscious air which naturally precedes a topic of interest; and Wardlaw senior invited his son to try a certain decanter of rare old port, by way of preliminary.
But the nymph? perhaps she came there by her beauty to dignify this use made of the stately old thing. However, she forgot all about fanatics and Mr. Dinwiddie for the present. The looks and smiles of the company were unmistakable. Who would speak first? "How are you to reach the épergne, Daisy?" said her father. "Shall I be the medium?" said Mrs. Gary.
The table was of mahogany covered with a sheet of plate-glass. A large gold épergne glittered in the middle. Suitably dispersed about the rim of the board were six rectangular islands of pale lace, and on each island lay a complete set of the innumerable instruments and condiments necessary to the proper consumption of the meal.
It had a big fireplace, where logs were blazing, for the night had turned cool, and a long table with a big epergne of wrought silver, filled with roses, in its centre. A great silken rug lay under the table, on a polished floor, and the walls were hung with tapestry.
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