"As it is, I can only keep the rains from entering and the rats from destroying it. Poverty, Madame, is only poetical to those who do not suffer it. Look!" he added, with a laugh, "you will not find a single chair, I fear, that is not in tatters."
She glanced at the great old ebony chair she was resting in, with its rich frayed tapestry seat, and its carved armorial bearings.
"I have suffered much more from the staring, gilded, and satin abominations in a millionaire's drawing-room. You are ungrateful———"
"And you, Madame, judge of pains that have never touched, and cannot touch you. However, I can be but too glad that Palestrina pleases you in any way. It has the sunshine of heaven, though not of fortune."
"And I am sure you would not give it up for all the wealth of the Rothschilds."
"No."
"How lovely this place would look," Madame Mila was saying at the same moment, out of his hearing, to the Princess Olga, "if Owen Jones could renovate it and Huby furnish it. Fancy
