In the parlors what scenes of
lights and music, sheen of satins, flashing of gems; in the dining
rooms what feastings as in hale England, with all the robust humors
of the warm land, of the warm heart.
Near the middle of the block and shaded by forest trees, stood with
its heirlooms and treasures the home of Isabel's grandmother. Known
to be heiress to this though rich in her own right was Isabel
herself, that grandmother's idol, the only one of its beautiful
women remaining yet to be married; and to celebrate with
magnificence in this house Isabel's marriage to Rowan Meredith had
long been planned by the grandmother as the last scene of her own
splendid social drama: having achieved that, she felt she should be
willing to retire from the stage--and to play only behind the
curtain.
It was the middle of the afternoon of the same Sunday. In the
parlors extending along the eastern side of the house there was a
single sound: the audible but healthful breathing of a sleeper
lying on a sofa in the coolest corner. It was Isabel's grandmother
nearing the end of her customary nap.
Sometimes there are households in which two members suggest the
single canvas of a mediaeval painter, depicting scenes that
represent a higher and a lower world: above may be peaks, clouds,
sublimity, the Transfiguration; underneath, the pursuits and
passions of local worldly life--some story of loaves and fishes and
of a being possessed by a devil. Isabel and her grandmother were
related as parts of some such painting: the grandmother was the
bottom of the canvas.
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