The cuckoo had, however, already laid a few characteristic
eggs in this adopted nest, and a white marble statue of a nude and
ill-fed Virtue, sent over by Rushbrook's Paris agent, and unpacked
that morning, stood in one corner, and materially brought down the
temperature. A Japanese praying-throne of pure ivory, and, above it, a
few yards of improper, colored exposure by an old master, equalized each
other.
"And what is all this affair about the dinner?" suddenly asked a
tartly-pitched female voice with a foreign accent.
Mr. Leyton turned quickly, and was just conscious of a faint shriek, the
rustle of a skirt, and the swift vanishing of a woman's figure from the
doorway. Mr. Leyton turned red. Rushbrook lived en garcon, with feminine
possibilities; Leyton was a married man and a deacon. The incident
which, to a man of the world, would have brought only a smile, fired the
inexperienced Leyton with those exaggerated ideas and intense credulity
regarding vice common to some very good men.
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