Lesbia began to think that she had a great deal to learn. She began to
wonder even whether, in the event of her having made rather too free use
of Lady Maulevrier's _carte blanche_, it might not be well to make a new
departure in the art of dressing, and to wear untrimmed cashmere gowns,
and rags of limp lace.
After breakfast they all went to look at Mr. Smithson's picture gallery.
His pictures were, as he had told Lesbia, chiefly of the French school,
and there may have been a remote period--say, in the time of good Queen
Charlotte--when such pictures would hardly have been exhibited to young
ladies. His pictures were Mr. Smithson's own unaided choice. Here the
individual taste of the man stood revealed.
There were two or three Geromes; and in the place of honour at the end
of the gallery there was a grand Delaroche, Anne Boleyn's last letter to
the king, the hapless girl-queen sitting at a table in her gloomy cell
in the Tower, a shaft of golden light from the narrow window streaming
on the fair, disordered hair, the face bleached with unutterable woe, a
sublime image of despair and self-abandonment.
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