The magistrate offered his arm to her ladyship, and the company entered the next room, which was the lady's apartment.
It was an elegant, finely-decorated room, with mahogany and ebony furniture, richly carved and gilded, with huge glass-panelled chests, and heavy silk curtains yet there was a striking difference between this room and those of other ladies; all these expensive draperies, as far as their form and ordering was concerned, did not at all correspond with the usual appanage of a boudoir.
In one corner stood a loom of mahogany, richly inlaid with ivory: it was still covered with some half-finished work, in which flowers, butterflies, and birds had been worked with remarkable refinement.
"You see," said the lady, "this is my work-table. I am responsible also for that table-cloth on which we breakfasted to-day."
Indeed she had received an unusual education.
Beside the loom was a spinning wheel.
"And this is my library," said the lady, pointing to the cupboards against the wall.
Through the glass panels was to be seen a host of every kind of culinary bottles. On the bottom shelf the great folios; every kind of vinegar that grows in hot-houses; the second row was full of preserved cucumbers; and then on the top shelf different sorts of confitures in brilliant perfection; last of all, a row of fruit extracts was visible, in colors as numerous as the bottles that contained them.
"A magnificent library!" said the lawyer. But the magistrate could not yet clearly make out what kind of lady it might be, who called such things a library.
The heavy velvet curtains, which made a kind of tent of the alcove, also had their secret: the young lady; raised the curtain and said naively,