Clanricarde Place is a little nook of Queen Anne houses--genuine Queen
Anne, be it understood--between Piccadilly and St. James's Palace, and
hardly five minutes' walk from Arlington Street. It is a quiet little
_cul de sac_ in the very heart of the fashionable world; and here of an
afternoon might be seen the carriages of Madame Seraphine's customers,
blocking the whole of the carriage way, and choking up the narrow
entrance to the street, which widened considerably at the inner end.
Madame Seraphine's house was at the end, a narrow house, with tall
old-fashioned windows curtained with amber satin. It was a small, dark
house, and exhaled occasional odours of garlic and main sewer: but the
staircase was a gem in old oak, and the furniture in the triple
telescopic drawing rooms, dwindling to a closet at the end, was genuine
Louis Seize.
Seraphine herself was the only shabby thing in the house--a wizened
little woman, with a wicked old Jewish face, and one shoulder higher
than the other, dressed in a shiny black moire gown, years after moires
had been exploded, and with a rag of old lace upon her sleek black
hair--raven black hair, and the only good thing about her appearance.
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