In the Carlton one might dine like this and accept it as a matter of course.
Appreciation is forced upon us by these suggestions of the wilderness without." "Not all without, either," Cecil de la Borne remarked, raising his eyeglass and pointing to the walls.

"See where my ancestors frown down upon us--you can only just distinguish their bare shapes.

No De la Borne has had money enough to have them renovated or even preserved.
They have eaten their way into the canvases, and the canvases into the very walls.

You see the empty spaces, too.

A Reynolds and a Gainsboro' have been cut out from there and sold.