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“Those rugs–”

“Remnants,” she sighed, and showed me how artfully they had been pieced together.

“The curtains–”

“Remnants.”

“At all events the sofa–”

She raised its drapery, and I saw that the sofa was built of packing-cases.

“The desk–”

I really thought that I was safe this time, for could I not see the drawers with their brass handles, the charming shelf for books, the pigeon-holes with their coverings of silk?

“She made it out of three orange-boxes,” said the lady, at last a little awed herself.

I looked around me despairingly, and my eye alighted on the holland covering. “There is a fine chandelier in that holland bag,” I said coaxingly.

She sniffed and was raising an untender hand, when I checked her. “Forbear, ma’am,” I cried with authority, “I prefer to believe in that bag. How much to be pitied, ma’am, are those who have lost faith in everything.” I think all the pretty things that the little nursery governess had made out of nothing squeezed my hand for letting the chandelier off.

“But, good God, ma’am,” said I to madam, “what an exposure.”

She intimated that there were other exposures upstairs.

“So there is a stair,” said I, and then, suspiciously, “did she make it?”

No, but how she had altered it.

The stair led to Mary’s bedroom, and I said I would not look at that, nor at the studio, which was a shed in the garden.

“Did she build the studio with her own hands?”

No, but how she had altered it.

“How she alters everything,” I said. “Do you think you are safe, ma’am?”