“You look very nice, my dear,” said Grace Paradine. She smiled and added, “You always do.”

The skirt cleared the floor and stood out rather stiff. It was of heavy cream satin, and there was nothing at all jeune fille about it. It was worn with a top of cream and gold brocade, high in the neck and long in the sleeve. The red hair was piled as high as it would go in an elaborate arrangement of puffs and curls.

Beside her her sister Irene looked dowdy and washed-out. She had been in the middle of telling Grace Paradine just how much cleverer her Jimmy was than any of the other children in his class at the kindergarten. As soon as Lydia turned away she resumed her narrative.

Lydia caught Phyllida by the arm and swung her round.

“Look at Irene in that old black rag! Isn’t she an awful warning? If I ever begin to feel myself slipping I just take a good strong look at her and it does the trick. She’s still pretty, but it won’t go on-she’s going down the domestic drain just as fast as ever she can. Come along over here and tell me all about everything. Golly-isn’t this an awful room for me- my hair and all this crimson! Pity I didn’t go the whole hog and sport the emerald trouserings. One might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.”

“Uncle James would have had a fit,” said Phyllida. She pulled down a fat velvet cushion with gold tassels which was balancing on the back of one of the brocaded couches and sank gracefully against it. “You can’t really wear anything but black or white in this house. I made up my mind to that years ago.”

The room was very large and very lofty. Its three tall windows were draped in ruby velvet. Between them and over the white marble mantelshelf hung mirrors heavily framed in gold. A ruby carpet covered the floor. Couches, chairs, and stools all flamed in red brocade. Two large chandeliers dispensed a brilliant light broken into rainbows by elaborately cut lustres and drops. Vulgarity had been avoided only by a hairsbreadth, yet somehow it had been avoided. The effect was heavily old-fashioned-a scene from some mid-Victorian novel-but for all the colour, the marble, and the gilding, it had a kind of period dignity. Queen Victoria might have received in it. Prince Albert might have sat at the grand piano and played Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words.