"
On the marble top of the chest of drawers was a costly malachite
tray, with a dozen coffee cups magnificently painted and made, no
doubt, at Sevres. On the chimney shelf stood the omnipresent
Empire clock: a warrior driving the four horses of a chariot,
whose wheel bore the numbers of the hours on its spokes. The
tapers in the tall candlesticks were yellow with smoke, and at
each corner of the shelf stood a porcelain vase crowned with
artificial flowers full of dust and stuck into moss.
In the middle of the room Hippolyte remarked a card-table ready
for play, with new packs of cards. For an observer there was
something heartrending in the sight of this misery painted up
like an old woman who wants to falsify her face. At such a sight
every man of sense must at once have stated to himself this
obvious dilemma--either these two women are honesty itself, or
they live by intrigue and gambling. But on looking at Adelaide, a
man so pure-minded as Schinner could not but believe in her
perfect innocence, and ascribe the incoherence of the furniture
to honorable causes.
"My dear," said the old lady to the young one, "I am cold; make a
little fire, and give me my shawl."
Adelaide went into a room next the drawing-room, where she no
doubt slept, and returned bringing her mother a cashmere shawl,
which when new must have been very costly; the pattern was
Indian; but it was old, faded and full of darns, and matched the
furniture.
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