A Reversion to Type by E.M. Delafield

Rose Aviolet came down to breakfast late, and entered the dining-room awkwardly. Even at her utmost self-confidence she did not possess the art of coming into a room, and at Squires she was not self-confident at all.

The dining-room was large and high, with heavy furniture of Spanish mahogany, crimson curtains across the embrasures of the bow-windows and wide, crimson-cushioned sills, and a crimson flock paper against which hung enormous oil-portraits in gilt frames. On the sideboard stood massive silver dishes, engraved with the Aviolet crest, each dish with a little blue flame burning beneath it, and on other, lesser sideboards were respectively placed the apparatus of tea and coffee, and a selection of fruit arranged on a dessert service of intrinsically hideous Crown Derby. A log fire burnt on the open hearth.