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F only Aggie Heuston had changed those sour-apple curtains in the front drawing-room, Nona thought—if she had substituted deep upholstered armchairs for the hostile gilt seats, and put books in the marqueterie cabinets in place of blue china dogs and Dresden shepherdesses, everything in three lives might have been different

But Aggie had probably never noticed the colour of the curtains or the angularity of the furniture. She had certainly never missed the books. She had accepted the house as it came to her from her parents, who in turn had taken it over, in all its dreary frivolity, from their father and mother. It embodied the New York luxury of the 'seventies in every ponderous detail, from the huge cabbage roses of the Aubusson carpet to the triple layer of curtains designed to protect the aristocracy of the brown-stone age from the plebeian intrusion of light and air.

"Funny," Nona thought again—"that all this ugliness should prick me like nettles, and matter no more to Aggie than if it were in the next street. She's a saint, I know. But what want to find is