It was in the middle of October when Arthur fairly commenced his
repairs, but so many men did he employ, and so rapidly was the work
pushed on, that the first of January found everything finished and
Arthur installed in his suite of rooms, which a prince might have
envied, so richly and tastefully were they fitted up. Beautiful pictures
and rich tapestry covered the walls in the first room, where the floor
was inlaid with colored woods in lovely Mosaic designs, and the centre
was covered with a costly Oriental rug, which Arthur had bought at a
fabulous price in Paris, where it had once adorned a room in the
Tuileries. But the gem of the whole was the library, where the statuary
stood in the niches, and where, from the large bow-window at the south,
a young girl's face looked upon the scene with an expression of shy
surprise and half regret in the soft blue eyes, as if their owner
wondered how she came there, and was always thinking of the fields and
forests of far-away Germany. For it was decidedly a German face of the
higher type, and such as is seldom found among the lower or even middle
classes. And yet you instinctively felt that it belonged to the latter,
notwithstanding the richness of the dress, from the pearl-embroidered
cap set jauntily on the reddish golden hair to the velvet bodice and the
satin peasant waist.
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