MRS.

REDMAIN'S DRAWING-ROOM.
A few years ago, a London drawing-room was seldom beautiful; but size is always something, and, if Mrs.Redmain's had not harmony, it had gilding--a regular upholsterer's drawing-room it was, on which about as much taste had been expended as on the fattening of a prize-pig.
Happily there is as little need as temptation to give any description of it, with its sheets of glass and steel, its lace curtains, crude-colored walls and floor and couches, and glittering chandeliers of a thousand prisms.

Everybody knows the kind of room--a huddle of the chimera ambition wallowing in the chaos of the commonplace--no miniature world of harmonious abiding.

The only interesting thing in it was, that on all sides were doors, which must lead out of it, and might lead to a better place.
It was about eleven o'clock of a November morning--more like one in March.

There might be a thick fog before the evening, but now the sun was shining like a brilliant lump of ice--so inimical to heat, apparently, that a servant had just dropped the venetian blind of one of the windows to shut his basilisk-gaze from the sickening fire, which was now rapidly recovering.