The Lower Floor Seemed Given Up To Attendants And Offices, And A Native Woman Was Ironing Clothes Under A Tree.

Upstairs, the house is like a tasteful English country house, with a pleasant English look, as if its furniture and ornaments had been gradually accumulating during a series of years, and possessed individual histories and reminiscences, rather than as if they had been ordered together as "plenishings" from stores.

Indeed, it is the most English-looking house I have seen since I left home, except Bishopscourt at Melbourne. If there were a bell I did not see it; and we did not ring, for the queen received us at the door of the drawing-room, which was open. I had seen her before in European dress, driving a pair of showy black horses in a stylish English phaeton; but on this occasion she was not receiving visitors formally, and was indulging in wearing the native holuku, and her black wavy hair was left to its own devices. She is rather below the middle height, very young- looking for her age, which is thirty-seven, and very graceful in her movements. Her manner is indeed very fascinating from a combination of unconscious dignity with ladylike simplicity. Her expression is sweet and gentle, with the same look of sadness about her eyes that the king has, but she has a brightness and archness of expression which give a great charm to her appearance. She has sorrowed much: first, for the death, at the age of four, of her only child, the Prince of Hawaii, who when dying was baptized into the English Church by the name of Albert Edward, Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales being his sponsors; and secondly, for the premature death of her husband, to whom she was much attached.

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