places, flowers and vines.  I never saw walls so decorated.  Yellow wall-flowers waved above the picture of the Norway pines; great scarlet thistles branched out each side of the Venetian palace; cool maiden-hair ferns seemed to be growing all around the glowing crimson and yellow picture of the Arabs in the Desert.  Afterward I learned the secret of this beautiful effect; large, flat, wide-mouthed bottles, filled with water, were hung on the backs of the picture frames, and in these the vines and flowers were growing; only a worshipper of flowers would have devised this simple method of at once enshrining them, and adorning the pictures.

In one of the windows stood a superbly-carved gilt table, oblong, and with curiously-twisted legs which bent inward and met a small central shelf half-way between the top and the floor, then spread out again into four strange claw-like vases, which bore each two golden lilies standing upright.  On this stood the most singular piece of wood-carving I ever saw.  It was of very light wood, almost yellow in tint; it looked like rough vine trellises with vines clambering over them; its base was surrounded by a thick bed of purple anemones; the smaller shelf below was also filled with purple anemones, and each of the golden lilies held all the purple anemones it could—­not a shade of any other color but the purple and gold—­and rising above them the odd vine trellises in the pale yellow wood.  As I stood looking at this in mute wonder and delight, but sorely perplexed to make out the design of the carving, I heard a step behind me.  I turned and saw, not my new friend, as I had expected, but her husband.  I thought, in that first instant, I had never seen a manlier face and form, and I think so to-day.  Robert Maynard was not tall; he was not handsome; but he had a lithe figure, square-shouldered, straight, strong, vitalized to the last fibre with the swift currents of absolutely healthy blood, and the still swifter currents of a passionate and pure manhood.  His eyes were blue, his hair and full beard of the bright-brown yellow which we call, rightly or wrongly, Saxon.  He came very quickly toward me with both hands outstretched and began to speak.  “My dear madam,” he said, but his voice broke, and with a sudden, uncontrollable impulse, he turned his back full upon me for a second, and passed his right hand over his eyes.  The next instant he recovered himself and went on.

“I do not believe you will wonder that I can’t speak, and I do not believe you will ever wonder that I do not thank you—­I never shall,” and he raised both my hands to his lips.

“Dora is in bed as you bade her to be,” he continued.  “She is well, but very weak.  She wants to see you immediately, and she has forbidden me to come back to her room without you.  I think, perhaps,” he added hesitatingly, “she is not quite calm enough to talk long.  Forgive me for saying it.  I know you love her already.”