There was
nothing to prevent her coming down to the library when she had got
rid of her travelling clothes, and in this hope he looked into the
room. As soon as the door was open the Senator, who was preparing
his lecture in his mind, at once asked whether no one in England
had an apparatus for warming rooms such as was to be found in every
well-built house in the States. The Paragon hardly vouchsafed him a
word of reply, but escaped up-stairs trusting that he might meet
Miss Trefoil on the way. He was a bold man and even ventured to
knock at her door;--but there was no reply, and, fearing the
Senator, he had to betake himself to his own privacy. Miss Trefoil
had migrated to her mother's room, and there, over the fire, was
holding a little domestic conversation. "I never saw such a barrack
in my life," said Lady Augustus.
"Of course, mamma, we knew that we should find the house such as it
was left a hundred years ago. He told us that himself."
"He should have put something in it to make it at any rate decent
before we came in."
"What's the use if he's to live always at foreign courts?"
"He intends to come home sometimes, I suppose, and, if he didn't,
you would." Lady Augustus was not going to let her daughter marry a
man who could not give her a home for at any rate a part of the
year.
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