Chapter 32

The very rooms in which they dwelt differed from Sylvia’s rooms or the rooms of her friends. There, a certain fashion of expensive simplicity was beginning to make itself felt; a certain taste was arising, which tended to eliminate unnecessary objects. Here, the overcrowded rooms preserved the unhappy confusion of an earlier day. Little silver models of carriages and sedan-chairs, silver vinaigrettes, and diminutive silver fans, tiny baskets in silver filigree, littered the tables under the presiding rotundity of t…