She asked with a little stiffness whether he had good news from Mrs.Elsmere.
'Oh, yes.

As usual, she is doing everything for me,' he said, smiling.
'It is disgraceful that I should be idling here while she is struggling with carpenters and paperers, and puzzling out the decorations of the drawing-room.

She writes to me in a fury about the word "artistic." She declares even the little upholsterer at Churton hurls it at her every other minute, and that if it weren't for me she would select everything as frankly, primevally hideous as she could find, just to spite him.

As it is, he has so warped her judgment that she has left the sitting-room papers till I arrive.

For the drawing-room she avows a passionate preference for one all cabbage-roses and no stalks; but she admits that it may be exasperation.