There was a moment of silence.
“Some day, Lydia, you will tell me about Mr Brood's other wife.”
“She died many years ago,” said the girl evasively.
“I know,” said Mrs Brood. “Still, I should like to hear more of the woman he could not forget in all those years—until he met me.”
She grew silent and preoccupied, a slight frown marking her forehead as she resumed her examination of the room and its contents.
It is quite impossible adequately to describe the place in which the two women met for the first time. Suffice to say, it was long, narrow, and, being next below the roof, low-ceilinged. The walls were hung with rich, unusual tapestries whose subdued tones seemed to lure one back to the undimmed glory of Solomon's days, to the even more remote realms of those gods and goddesses on whom our fancy thrives despite the myths they were.
Silks of a weight and lustre that taxed credulity; golden threads interweaving gems of the purest ray; fringe and galloons with the solemn waste of ages in their thin, lovely sheen; over all the soft radiance of an Arabian Night and the gentle touch of a Scheherazade. Here hung transported the fabulous splendours of Ind, the shimmering treasures of Ming, and the loot of the Forty Thieves.
The ceiling, for want of a better name, was no less than a canopy constructed out of a single rug of enormous dimensions and incalculable value, gleaming with the soft colours of the rainbow, shedding a serene iridescence over the entire room to shame the light of day.
The furniture, the trappings, the ornaments throughout were of a most unusual character. A distinctly regal atmosphere prevailed. No article there but had come from the palace of a ruler in the East, from the massive gold and lacquered table to the tiniest piece of bronze or the lowliest hassock. Chairs that had served as thrones, chests that had contained the treasures of potentates, robes that had covered the bodies of kings and queens, couches on which had nestled the favourites of sultans, screens and mirrors that had reflected the jewels of an empire—all were here to feed the senses with dreams imperial.
Great lanterns hung suspended beside the shrine at the end of the room, but were now unlighted. On the table at which Brood professed to work stood a huge lamp with a lacelike screen of gold. When lighted, a soft, mellow glow oozed through the shade to create a circle of golden brilliance over a radius that extended but little beyond the edge of the table, yet reached to the benign countenance of Buddha close by.