The Mating of Lydia

A stately Georgian house, built in a rich classical style, and dating from 1740: so a trained eye would have interpreted the architectural and decorative features faintly disclosed by lamp and fire. But the house and its contents—the house and its condition—were strangely at war. Everywhere the seemly lines and lovely ornament due to its original builders were spoilt or obliterated by the sordid confusion to which some modern owner had brought it. It was not a house apparently, so far as its present use went, but a warehouse. There was properly speaking no furniture in it; only a multitude of packing-cases, boxes of all shapes and sizes, piled upon or leaning against each other.