Page:Ethel Churchill 3.pdf/72

70 suppressed sob, that she was weeping. When they arrived at home, the light showed Ethel so pale, so worn out, that she thought all attempt at any intercession were best deferred to the morrow. It must, also, be confessed, that she felt too weary for much eloquence as a pleader. The golden sunshine of noon, as it fell slanting over the windows of Lady Marchmont's dressing-closet the following morning, lighted up as pretty a piece of artificial life, as could ever have furnished painter with an interior. Fantastic figures, and bright birds and flowers on the paper, recalled nothing that had ever been seen before—the fantastic reigned predominant; so it did in the china scattered profusely round. I never could enter into the passion for china; it is an affection born of ostentation. Those stiff shepherdesses; those ill-shaped teapots; those monsters, which take every shape but a graceful one; those little, round cups make no appeal to my imagination; they suggest nothing but ideas of trade; they are redolent of the auction