Still holding her gold-rimmed glasses to her eyes, she descended the broad stairs to the hall, and from thence she went into the library.  There are two small bookcases filled with sombre volumes, and the busts of Moliere and Shakespeare attempt to justify the appellation.  But there is in the character, I was almost going to say in the atmosphere of the room, that same undefinable, easily recognizable something which proclaims the presence of non-readers.  The traces of three or four days, at the most a week, which John occasionally spent at Thornby Place, were necessarily ephemeral, and the weakness of Mrs Norton’s sight rendered continuous reading impossible.  Sometimes Kitty Hare brought a novel from the circulating library to read aloud, and sometimes John forgot one of his books, and a volume of Browning still lay on the table.  The room was filled with shadow and mournfulness, and in a dusty grate the fire smouldered.

Between this room and the drawing-room, in a recess formed by the bow window, Mrs Norton kept her birds, and still peering through her gold-rimmed glasses, she examined their seed-troughs and water-glasses, and, having satisfied herself as to their state, she entered the drawing-room.  There is little in this room; no pictures relieve the widths of grey colourless wall paper, and the sombre oak floor is spaced with a few pieces of furniture—­heavy furniture enshrouded in grey linen cloths.  Three French cabinets, gaudy with vile veneer and bright brass, are nailed against the walls, and the empty room is reflected dismally in the great gold mirror which faces the vivid green of the sward and the duller green of the encircling elms of the park.

Mrs Norton let her eyes wander, and sighing she went into the dining-room.  The dining-room is always the most human of rooms, and the dining-room in Thornby Place, although allied to the other rooms in an absence of fancy in its arrangement, shows prettily in contrast to them with its white cloth cheerful with flowers and ferns.  The floor is covered with a tightly stretched red cloth, the chairs are set in symmetrical rows; with the exception of a black clock there is no ornament on the chimney-piece, and a red cloth screen conceals the door used by the servants.

Mrs Norton walked with her quiet decisive step to the window, and holding the gold-rimmed glasses to her eyes, she looked into the landscape as if she were expecting someone to appear.  The day was grimy with clouds; mist had risen, and it hung out of the branches of the elms like a veil of white gauze.  Withdrawing her eye from the vague prospect before her, Mrs Norton played listlessly with the tassel of one of the blinds.  “Surely,” she thought, “he cannot have been foolish enough to have walked over the downs such a day as this;” then, raising her glasses again she looked out at the smallest angle with the wall of the house, so that she should get sight of a vista through which any one coming from Shoreham would have to pass.  Presently a silhouette appeared on the sullen sky.  Mrs Norton moved precipitately from the window, and she rang the bell sharply.