The
fluid trickled away in rivulets, but the ascending odors made amends for
the untimely loss, and you felt that it might all be for the best, and
haply a bill for medical attendance avoided. But the butler brooded over
the scene of the calamity in hopeless despair; and you perceived that it
would be necessary for him deeply to infringe upon his master's stores
of cordial before his former serenity might be regained.
It was now after eleven, and Roseton's carriage waited. He entered,
simply saying to the footman who lifted him in, 'To Mundus;' and shortly
the vehicle stopped before the most palatial mansion in the entire
extent of the Fifth Avenue.
I pause a moment before I attempt the portraiture of the young wife of
Mundus. Her shadow has indeed flitted once before across these pages
(see Chapter Four of the Novel), but the dim outlines of a shadow may be
traced by a hand that is powerless to paint the living, breathing
figure. The boudoir where she sat was draped with the fairest pinks of
the Saxony loom, and the carpet confessed an original Axminster
workmanship. With this one, the pattern was created and extinguished,
and, though it cost Mundus five thousand dollars, he drew his check for
the bill with a smile.
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