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 one was going to throw out Regency beds or Louis XIV tables that had belonged to one's mother because one happened to live in the time of Louis XV. Campaspe held another theory to the effect that all the comfortable furniture of any period was speedily worn out and discarded; only the ball-room chairs, the heavy, carved settles, and other like cheerless lumber, survived the hard usage of one age in sufficiently good condition to pass on to another. As time passed, even the semi-comfortable pieces began to decay, so that, if you were determined to furnish your house in the style of an epoch two or three centuries back you were obliged to rely on solid, stiff-backed chairs, and cupboards and beds, built, apparently, for eternity. In regard to the particular style chosen for the decoration of this particular house, possibly for patriotic reasons, for Mrs. Pollanger was loud in her praise of everything American, but more conceivably because it was fashionable at present and therefore expensive, Campaspe was repelled by its obvious incongruity. The grand piano and the modern, brightly hued dresses of the women, were assuredly ridiculous in this milieu. Perfect taste demanded that this setting should be occupied by men and women dressed in a sober, Puritan fashion, but it demanded in vain.

As Campaspe, flanked by her companions, approached the drawing-room, she drew her cloak of flamingo feathers more closely around the silvergrey of her clinging robe, and hesitated near the