However, once on the main floor, dignity takes over entirely. A splendid portrait of Marshal Beres ford looks down on the guests even as they pant up the stairs to the wide hall; the long drawing-room is noble, with splendid views from its six windows; a glazed-in passage leads round a half-square to the great ball-room with its vast gilt mirrors, used for large receptions, and out into a small flagged court from which a flight of stone steps, overhung by the delicate sharply-cut foliage of a big pepper-tree, mounts up into the garden—immensely large for a town house—with its expanse of lawns, shady trees, and brilliant flower-beds. It is, in spite of its inconveniences, one of the most beautiful embassies in the world. The drawing-room, fine as it is, is too long and narrow to receive in with any comfort—people fail to find their way out by the doors at the farther end, and get jammed in a solid block. Lady Loseley, who was as practical as she was short, neat, and pretty, therefore always awaited her guests in a smaller room, also with two doors, opening off the glass passage; this had a marble floor and marble tables, like mortuary slabs, against the walls—one of her predecessors had christened it ‘the morgue’; but it is too square for anyone to get jammed in it, and only a few steps from the long buffet in the great ball-room.
