THE EUROPEANS.
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explained to no one. As far as any one could see,
it was simply very pleasant. Acton came for her
and drove her to his door, an operation which was
rapidly performed. His house the Baroness mentally
pronounced a very good one; more articulately, she
declared that it was enchanting. It was large and
square and painted brown; it stood in a well-kept
shrubbery, and was approached, from the gate, by
a short drive. It was, moreover, a much more
modern dwelling than Mr. Wentworth's, and was
more redundantly upholstered and expensively orna-
mented. The Baroness perceived that her enter-
tainer had analyzed material comfort to a sufficiently
fine point. And then he possessed the most delight-
ful chinoiseries—trophies of his sojourn in the Ce-
lestial Empire: pagodas of ebony and cabinets of
ivory; sculptured monsters, grinning and leering on
chimney-pieces, in front of beautifully figured hand-
screens; porcelain dinner-sets, gleaming behind the
glass doors of mahogany buffets; large screens, in
corners, covered with tense silk and embroidered
with mandarins and dragons. These things were
scattered all over the house, and they gave Eugenia
a pretext for a complete domiciliary visit. She
liked it, she enjoyed it; she thought it a very nice
place. It had a mixture of the homely and the
liberal, and though it was  almost  a museum the