Everything is arranged exactly as in the Fromonts' apartments on the floor below; but the taste, that invisible line which separates the distinguished from the vulgar, is not yet refined.

You would say it was a passable copy of a pretty genre picture.

The hostess's attire, even, is too new; she looks more as if she were making a call than as if she were at home.
In Risler's eyes everything is superb, beyond reproach; he is preparing to say so as he enters the salon, but, in face of his wife's wrathful glance, he checks himself in terror.
"You see, it's four o'clock," she says, pointing to the clock with an angry gesture.

"No one will come.

But I take it especially ill of Claire not to come up.