Gwynne returned to Lumalitas on the following day and Isabel moved down to Mrs. Hofer's. This had seemed a rather superfluous proceeding to Miss Otis, but Mrs. Hofer would take no denial, and lodged her guest in a suite the luxury of which at first delighted and then stifled her. She liked splendor and luxury in the abstract, but some lingering shade of Puritanism in her resented the enthralment of the higher faculties. Her rooms were upholstered with satin from floor to ceiling, the toilet-table was bedecked with gold, and the furniture had been made for some favorite of Napoleon during the First Empire. Isabel was haunted by a vague sense of impropriety, which she ridiculed but could not stifle.
And for the first time in her life she became weary of flowers. When she arrived there was a
