The apartment of Mrs. Amanda Welsh Sampson gave to the experienced eye
evidences of a pathetic struggle to make scanty resources furnish at
least an appearance of luxury. The walls were adorned with amateur
china painting in the shape of dreadful placques and plates in livid
hues; there was abundance of embroidery that should have been
impossible, in garish tints and uneven stitches; much shift had been
made to produce an imposing appearance by means of cheap Japanese fans
and the inexpensive wares of which the potteries at Kioto, corrupted by
foreign influence, turn out such vast quantities for the foreign
market. Against the wall stood an upright piano--if a piano could be
called upright which habitually destroyed the peace of the entire
neighborhood--and over it was placed a scarf upon which apparently some
boarding-school miss had taken her first lesson in painting wild
flowers.
The room was small, and so well filled with furniture that there seemed
little space for the long limbs of Alfred Irons, who, however, had
contrived to make himself comfortable by the aid of various cushions
covered with bright-colored sateens. He had lighted a cigar without
thinking it necessary to ask leave, and had even made himself more easy
by putting one leg across a low chair.
Mrs. Sampson was fully aware that in her struggles with life she had
sometimes provoked laughter, often disapproval, and now and then given
rise to positive scandal, yet she was still accustomed to at least a
fair semblance of respect from the men who came to see her; women, it
is to be noted, being not often seen within her walls, since those who
were willing to come she did not care to receive, and those whom she
invited seldom set her name down on their calling lists.
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