CHAPTER XVII
THE OLD WOMAN SPEAKS
Bertha left the room.
She had escaped without a scratch, and was off to dress for a dinner dance to be given that night by the bachelor officers of the Uhlans of the Guard, leaving her grandmother alone with Tom Graves, who had called, armed with a gigantic box of roses, violets, and orchids, to inquire after the health of the two ladies.
Old Mrs. Wedekind lay on the couch in her little boudoir furnished in a style different from the usual neo-German affair, crowded with ornaments that were no decorations, and with decorations that were no ornaments, with bulbous or angular monstrosities in wood or metal that were the fruit of some diseased artist brain from Berlin or Munich. The little octagonal, balconied room spoke of a former generation, both more gentle and more sophisticated. There was a simple rug of taupe and claret velvet, gray panelings of carved tulip wood, a lightly frivolous touch in the figures of women and tiny, paunchy cupids surrounded by love trophies which filled the angles of the cornices. There were some fine old enameled plates framed in dark green velvet, frail Tanagra statuettes and frailer tortoise-shell boxes; a mass of cushions covered with sumptuous Byzantine dalmatics, and a great Sèvres vase topped by a delicate, silvery spray of guelder roses.
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