Fires had been lighted in rooms where mould and mildew had long prevailed;
wainscots had been scrubbed and polished till the whole house reeked
of bees-wax and turpentine, to a degree that almost overpowered those
pervading odours of damp and dry rot, which can curiously exist together.
The old furniture had been made as bright as faded fabrics and worm-eaten
wood could be made by labour; and the leaping light of blazing logs,
reflected on the black oak panelling, gave a transient air of cheerfulness
to the spacious dining-parlour where Sir John and his daughter took their
first meal in the old home. And if to Angela's eye, accustomed to the
Italian loftiness of the noble mansions on the Thames, the broad oak
crossbeams seemed coming down upon her head, there was at least an air of
homely snugness in the low darkly coloured room.
On that first evening there had been much to interest and engage her. She
had the old house to explore, and dim childish memories to recall. Here was
the room where her mother died, the room in which she herself had first
seen the light--perhaps not until a month or so after her birth, since
the seventeenth-century baby was not flung open-eyed into her birthday
sunshine, but was swaddled and muffled in a dismal apprenticeship to life.
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