salon
n
1 place where customers go to see a hairdresser, beauty consultant, etc (营业性质的)店, 厅, 院
a `beauty salon 美容院* a `hairdressing salon 美发厅.
2 (formerly) regular gathering of notable guests at the house of a lady of high society; room used for this 沙龙(旧时知名人士在上流社会女主人家的例行聚会或聚会场所)
a literary salon, ie with writers and critics as guests 文学沙龙.
The reader's hair stands on end when he reads in the final pages of the novel that the heroine a dear old lady who had always been so kind to everybody, had, in her youth, poisoned every one of her five husbands.