"
From that moment, the restraint he had for the last week or two
laid upon himself thus broken through, he never spoke to her
except with such rudeness that she no longer ventured to address
him even on shop-business; and all the people in the place,
George included, following the example so plainly set them, she
felt, when, at last, in the month of November, a letter from
Hesper heralded the hour of her deliverance, that to take any
formal leave would be but to expose herself to indignity. She
therefore merely told Turnbull, one evening as he left the shop,
that she would not be there in the morning, and was gone from
Testbridge before it was opened the next day.
CHAPTER XXIV.
MRS. REDMAIN'S DRAWING-ROOM.
A few years ago, a London drawing-room was seldom beautiful; but
size is always something, and, if Mrs. Redmain's had not harmony,
it had gilding--a regular upholsterer's drawing-room it was, on
which about as much taste had been expended as on the fattening
of a prize-pig. Happily there is as little need as temptation to
give any description of it, with its sheets of glass and steel,
its lace curtains, crude-colored walls and floor and couches, and
glittering chandeliers of a thousand prisms. Everybody knows the
kind of room--a huddle of the chimera ambition wallowing in the
chaos of the commonplace--no miniature world of harmonious
abiding.
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