The apartment was in the old quarter across the Seine, and she had found it by chance.  The ancient family of which this hotel had once been the home would scarce have recognized, if they had returned the part of it Honora occupied.  The room in which she mostly lived was above the corner of the quiet street, and might have been more aptly called a sitting-room than a salon.  Its panels were the most delicate of blue-gray, fantastically designed and outlined by ribbings of blue.  Some of them contained her pictures.  The chairs, the sofas, the little tabourets, were upholstered in yellow, their wood matching the panels.  Above the carved mantel of yellowing marble was a quaintly shaped mirror extending to the high ceiling, and flanked on either side by sconces.  The carpet was a golden brown, the hangings in the tall windows yellow.  And in the morning the sun came in, not boisterously, but as a well-bred and cheerful guest.  An amiable proprietor had permitted her also to add a wrought-iron balcony as an adjunct to this room, and sometimes she sat there on the warmer days reading under the seclusion of an awning, or gazing at the mysterious facades of the houses opposite, or at infrequent cabs or pedestrians below.

An archway led out of the sitting-room into a smaller room, once the boudoir of a marquise, now Honora’s library.  This was in blue and gold, and she had so far modified the design of the decorator as to replace the mirrors of the cases with glass; she liked to see her books.  Beyond the library was a dining room in grey, with dark red hangings; it overlooked the forgotten garden of the hotel.

One item alone of news from the outer world, vital to her, had drifted to her retreat.  Newspapers filled her with dread, but it was from a newspaper, during the first year of her retirement, that she had learned of the death of Howard Spence.  A complication of maladies was mentioned, but the true underlying cause was implied in the article, and this had shocked but not surprised her.  A ferment was in progress in her own country, the affairs of the Orange Trust Company being investigated, and its president under indictment at the hour of his demise.  Her feelings at the time, and for months after, were complex.  She had been moved to deep pity, for in spite of what he had told her of his business transactions, it was impossible for her to think of him as a criminal.  That he had been the tool of others, she knew, but it remained a question in her mind how clearly he had perceived the immorality of his course, and of theirs.  He had not been given to casuistry, and he had been brought up in a school the motto of which he had once succinctly stated:  the survival of the fittest.  He had not been, alas, one of those to survive.