Run to be tired, just to sit down again.
Anon.
Aunt Sophie, left to herself, got up with a childish curiosity to look around on the elegant chamber to which she had been introduced—the furniture all made of some wood that looked like ivory, and upholstered in rose satin and white lace.
“Too fine to live in,” she said to herself, as she stood before the beautifully draped dressing-table, with its broad and tall mirror filling up all the space between the two front windows, and curtained, like them, with rose silk and white lace, and with its toilet service of Bohemian glass and gold.
She turned from this to the richly festooned alcove, in which stood the luxurious bedstead, and from that view to the inviting chairs and lounges, her wonder and admiration growing with all that she saw.
She was still moving around, when the door opened, and Lilith appeared, ushering in the baroness—Lilith in her simple black silk dress, and Madame Von Bruyin in an elegant negligée of pale mauve velvet, edged with swan’s-down.
She advanced to Aunt Sophie with smiling eyes and outstretched hands, exclaiming brightly:
“My dear Mrs. Downie! I am so rejoiced to see you! You have come to us so opportunely! How opportunely you shall soon know. Why, only to-day we were to write to you and ask you to come. You have only anticipated our very great desire to see you.”
“Indeed you are very good to say so, ma’am, I’m sure. It was the sinner who made me come, whether or no; and I was so awful ’fraid I was intruding,” said the child-like old lady, in simple truth, as she placed both her plump little hands in the warm, welcoming clasp of her hostess.
“You are looking so well; and Lilith tells me you had a fine voyage.”