He forgot his ruffled temper of the morning, and by the time they had returned for tea, was his brilliant self again, and quite ready to sit in a low chair at his hostess's side, while she leaned back among the cushions of her sofa, in her own sitting-room, whither she had enticed him during that nondescript hour before dinner, when each person could do what he pleased.
"Is not Cora sweet ?" she said, smoothing the brocade beneath her hand.
Her sitting-room had been arranged by the artist who had done the house, as a perfect bower of Italian Sixteenth Century art.

Mr.Jephson, the artist, had assured her that this period would make a perfect background for her fresh and rather voluptuous coloring; it had not become so _banal_ as any of the French Louis'.

And so Arabella had been instructed to drum into her head the names of the geniuses of that time, and their works, and she could now babble sweetly all about Giorgione, Paolo Veronese and Titian's later works without making a single mistake.

And while the pictures bored her unspeakably, she took a deep pleasure in her own cleverness about them, and delighted in tracing the influence Paolo Veronese must have had upon Boucher, a hint from Arabella which she had announced as an inspiration of her own.
She had tea-gowns made to suit this period, and adopted the stately movements which were evidently the attribute of that time.
John Derringham thought her superb.

If he had been really in love with her, he might have seen through her--and not cared--just as if she had not attracted him at all, he would certainly have taken her measure and enjoyed laying pitfalls for her.