Smithson had sent down a Bond Street
upholsterer to refit the saloon and Lady Lesbia's cabin. The dark velvet
and morocco which suited a masculine occupant would not have harmonised
with girlhood and beauty; and Mr. Smithson's saloon, as originally
designed, had something of the air of a _tabagie_. The Bond Street man
stripped away all the velvet and morocco, plucked up the Turkey carpet,
draped the scuttle-ports with pale yellow cretonne garnished with orange
pompons, subdued the glare of the skylight by a blind of oriental silk,
covered the divans with Persian saddlebags, the floor with a delicate
Indian matting, and furnished the saloon with all that was most feminine
in the way of bamboo chairs and tea-tables, Japanese screens and fans
of gorgeous colouring. Here and there against the fluted yellow drapery
he fastened a large Rhodes plate; and the thing was done. Lady Lesbia's
cabin was all bamboo and embroidered India muslin. An oval glass, framed
in Dresden biscuit, adorned the side, a large white bearskin covered the
floor.
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