Let me give you another cup of tea,' said Lady Maulevrier, who had been officiating at her own exquisite tea-table, an arrangement of inlaid woods, antique silver, and modern china, which her friend pronounced a perfect poem.
Indeed, the whole room was poetic, Lady Kirkbank declared, and there are many highly praised scenes which less deserve the epithet.

The dark red walls and cedar dado, the stamped velvet curtains, of an indescribable shade between silver-grey and olive, the Sheraton furniture, the parqueterie floor and Persian prayer-rugs, the deep yet brilliant hues of crackle porcelain and Chinese cloisonne enamel, the artistic fireplace, with dog-stove, low brass fender, and ingle-nook recessed under the high mantelpiece, all combined to form a luxurious and harmonious whole.
Lady Kirkbank admired the _tout ensemble_ in the fitful light of the fire, the dim grey of deepening twilight.
'There never was a more delicious cell!' she exclaimed, 'but still I should feel it a prison, if I had to spend six weeks in the year in it.
I never stay more than six weeks anywhere out of London; and I always find six weeks more than enough.

The first fortnight is rapture, the third and fourth weeks are calm content, the fifth is weariness, the sixth a fever to be gone.

I once tried a seventh week at Pontresina, and I hated the place so intensely that I dared not go back there for the next three years.

But now tell me.