Come in with me, and see her. I
should like to see how she strikes you. You can speak to Mrs.
Frostwinch after the lecture."
He hesitated a moment, and then followed her, saying to himself with
suspicious emphasis that the fact that the invitation came from her had
nothing to do with his acceptance. He soon found himself seated in the
great dusky drawing-room of the Frostwinch house, an apartment whose
very walls were incrusted with conservative traditions. It was
furnished with richness, but both with much greater simplicity and
greater stiffness than he had seen in any of the houses he had thus far
been in. The chief decoration, one felt, was the air of the place's
having been inhabited by generations of socially immaculate Boston
ancestors. There was a savor of lineage amounting almost to godliness
in the dark, self-contained parlors; and if pedigree were not in this
dwelling imputed for righteousness, it was evidently held in becoming
reverence as the first of virtues. There are certain houses where the
atmosphere is so completely impregnated with the idea of the departed
as to give a certain effect as a spiritual morgue; and in the drawing-
room of Mrs.
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