— 2 — CARNATION-PINKJacquetta, the Italian girl, lay in a closet close to her mistress’s bedchamber, a rich but gloomy little room with old-fashioned furnishings, which included a dark tapestry in indigo blue and mignonette green of a hundred years ago, showing a hunt — a monstrous fat beast being pursued by lean hounds through a dense vegetation of enormous leaves and flowers.
The overcast light of the March day had receded early from this northward-looking chamber; the curtains had been drawn over the window and a lamp lit. The girl lay in a narrow bed, the curtains of white serge, embroidered with foxgloves and acorns in russet and purple wool, were drawn back; a nun in a dark robe knelt praying beside the bed; at the end of it stood a middle-aged man, whom Desgrez took to be the docto
