Lucius Davoren, Volume I by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Ten o'clock the next morning beheld Lucius again at the tall gate. He was admitted without question, and the open door of the parlour showed him Lucille-in a gray stuff gown, a large linen apron, and a white muslin cap, like a French grisette's-rubbing the oaken wainscot with a beeswaxed cloth; while a small tub of water on the table and some china cups and saucers set out to drain, showed that she had been washing the breakfast things. This circumstance explained the spotless neatness of all he had seen-the shining wainscot, the absence of a grain of dust upon any object in the room. She came out to wish him good-morning, nowise abashed.

‘I daresay your English young ladies would think this very shocking,' she said. ‘I ought to be practising Czerny's _Exercises de Facilité_, ought I not, at this time in the morning?'