My spirits rose with every word I wrote, and, when I got up from my
chair after sealing and directing my letters, a new and subtle energy
seemed to have infused itself through my frame. "There, I have finished,
Mrs. Clayton," I said, putting aside the implements I had been using.
"Now go, if you please, and bring to me the proprietor of this hotel. I
will give him my letters myself, since I have other business to transact
with him," and I laid my watch and chain on the table before me, ready
for his hand, not having lost sight of my early resolution. "But,
stay--before you go, be good enough to open the lower shutters and throw
up the windows. Cool as the weather is in this climate, I stifle for
air, and this close atmosphere, laden with fragrance, grows oppressive.
Who sent these flowers, by-the-by, Mrs. Clayton? or do they belong to
the magnificence of this idealized hotel?" She made no reply to any
thing I had been saying.
By this time, however, she had lowered the upper sashes of the windows
about a foot, and the fresh air of morning was pouring in, curling the
paper on the centre table and dispersing the noisome fragrance of the
flowers, in which I detected the morbid supremacy of the tuberose and
jasmine.
"I want to see the streets, the people," I said, approaching one of the
windows; "this artistic light is not at all the thing I need.
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