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"Good-evening, Gibbons; are my brothers in?"
"Mr. Thomas is in, sir; and Mrs. Burton. They
are in the drawing room."
Arthur went in with a dull sense of oppression.
What a dismal house it was! The flood of life
seemed to roll past and leave it always just above
high-water mark. Nothing in it ever changed--
neither the people, nor the family portraits, nor the
heavy furniture and ugly plate, nor the vulgar
ostentation of riches, nor the lifeless aspect of
everything. Even the flowers on the brass stands
looked like painted metal flowers that had never
known the stirring of young sap within them in
the warm spring days. Julia, dressed for dinner,
and waiting for visitors in the drawing room which
was to her the centre of existence, might have sat
for a fashion-plate just as she was, with her wooden
smile and flaxen ringlets, and the lap-dog on her
knee.
"How do you do, Arthur?" she said stiffly, giving
him the tips of her fingers for a moment, and
then transferring them to the more congenial contact
of the lap-dog's silken coat.


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