"You have indeed, Miss Nash," Dadd corroborated, "and none of us didn't believe you."
"Dadd was the second footman," Miss Nash explained further. "He was one of the two who lifted you down that morning. Now he's the butler; but he's never had my faith."
She glided away again. Dadd threw open a door. Tom found himself in a large sunny room, of which the bow-window was filled with flowers.
There was no one there, which was so far a relief. It gave him time to collect himself. Except for apartments in museums, or in some château he had visited in France, he had never been in a room so stately or so full of costly beauty. He knew the beauty was costly in spite of his lack of experience.
On the wall opposite the bow-window stretched a blue-green Flemish tapestry, with sad-eyed, elongated figures crowding on one another within an intricate frame of flowers, foliage, and fruits. A white-marble mantelpiece, bearing in shallow relief three garlanded groups of dancing Cupids, supported a clock and a pair of candelabra in biscuit de Sèvres mounted in ormolu. Above this hung a full-length eighteenth-century lady—Reynolds, Romney, Gainsborough—he was only guessing—looking graciously down on a cabinet of European porcelains, on another of miniatures, and another of old fans. Bronzes were scattered here and there, with bits of iridescent Spanish luster, and two or three plaques of Limoges enamel intense in color. Since there was room for everything, the profusion was without excess, and not too carefully thought out. A work-basket filled with sewing materials and knitting stood on a table strewn with recent magazines and books.
He was so long alone that he was growing nervous when Lily dropped into the room as if she had happened there accidentally. She sauntered up to him, however, offering her hand with a long, serpentine lifting of the arm, casual and negligent.
"How-d'ye-do? Mamma's late. I don't know whether she's in the house or not. Perhaps she's forgotten. She often does." She picked up a silver box of cigarettes. "Have one?"
On his declining she lighted one for herself, dropping into a big upright chair and crossing her legs. It was the year when young ladies liked to display their ankles and calves nearly up to the knee. Lily, whose skirt was of unrelieved black, wore violet silk stockings, with black slippers which had bright red buckles set in paste. Over her shoulders a violet scarf, with bright red bars, hung loosely. In sitting, her sinuous figure drooped a little forward, the elbow of the hand which held the cigarette supported on her knee.
Though she hadn't asked him to sit down, he took a chair of his own accord, waiting for her to speak again. When she did so, after an interval of puffing out tiny rings of blue smoke, her voice was languid and monotonous, and yet with overtones of passionate self-will.