I paused on the threshold, staring about me. I think I fully
expected to see a figure blocked in the shadows against the heavy
sideboard, or looming on the other side beneath his portrait. But the
room was empty; I felt it empty. Through the wide bow-windows that gave
on to the verandah came an uncertain glimmer that even shone reflected
in the polished surface of the dinner-table, and again I perceived the
stiff outline of chairs, waiting tenantless all round it, two larger
ones with high carved backs at either end. The monkey trees on the upper
terrace, too, were visible outside against the sky, and the solemn
crests of the wellingtonias on the terraces below. The enormous dock on
the mantelpiece ticked very slowly, as though its machinery were running
down, and I made out the pale round patch that was its face. Resisting
my first inclination to turn the lights up--my hand had gone so far as
to finger the friendly knob--I crossed the room so carefully that no
single board creaked, nor a single chair, as I rested a hand upon its
back, moved on the parquet flooring. I turned neither to the right nor
left, nor did I once look back.
I went towards the long corridor filled with priceless _objets d'art_,
that led through various antechambers into the spacious music-room, and
only at the mouth of this corridor did I next halt a moment in
uncertainty.
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