"Well, she might be quite a success; we must think about her. Come; we've had enough of this." Mrs. Bates turned a careless back upon all her Louis Quinze spendor. "The next thing will be something else."
V
Jane's guide passed swiftly into another large and imposing apartment. "This I call the Sala de los Embajadores; here is where I receive my distinguished guests."
"Good!" cried Jane, who knew Irving's Alhambra by heart. "Only it isn't
Moorish; it's Baroque—and a very good example."
The room had a heavy panelled ceiling of dark wood, with a cartouche in each panel; stacks of seventeenth-century armor stood in the corners, half a dozen large Aubusson tapestries hung on the walls, and a vast fireplace, flanked by huge Atlantes and crowned by a heavy pediment broken and curled, almost filled one whole side. "That fireplace is Baroque all over."
"See here," said Mrs. Bates, suddenly; "are you the woman who read about the Decadence of the Renaissance Forms at the last Fortnightly?"
"I'm the woman," responded Jane, modestly.
"I don't know why I didn't recognize you before. But you sat in an awfully bad light, for one thing. Besides, I had so much on my mind that day. Our dear little Reginald was coming down with something—or so we thought. And the bonnet I was forced to wear—well, it just made me blue. You didn't notice it?"
"I was too flustered to notice anything. It was my first time there."
"Well, it was a good paper, although I couldn't half pay attention to it; it gave me several new notions. All my decorations, then—you think them corrupt and degraded?"