Finding herself forgotten, Rachel left the absorbed pair and went downstairs to wait for her grandfather. Her glimpse of Nicholas Hart had convinced her that no help could be expected from him.
"I told you he wasn't used to seeing folks," commented the maid who appeared in the hall. "He's touched here," and she indicated her head. "He thinks I mean to destroy a book he's writing about the house-fly, because once I mixed up his papers. Your grandfather's all right that way, is he?" she asked.
"Certainly he is," responded Rachel, and after a few further remarks that elicited no reply, the servant retreated. But from the dining room, where she rather obviously engaged herself with some sewing, she kept strict watch over the stranger.
Rachel, seated on a low settle, threw an indifferent glance about her. Then, almost insensibly her attitude changed. She was seized with an indefinable feeling. This house, with its purely masculine furnishings, for some reason suggested to her mind the image of a life darkened and repressed. The hall, the drawing-room, the dining room were like a succession of gloomy thoughts. Portieres, rich in texture but indeterminate in hue, outlined the doors with their dismal folds; and the drawing-room chairs and armchairs were upholstered in rep of the same shade.
In the drawing-room the mantel-piece was adorned with an ill-assorted collection of candle-sticks, match-safes, inlaid boxes; and in the centre was an elaborate clock of an elegant modern design, violently at odds with the homely daguerreotype of a woman which flanked it on one side and a vase of an ugly pattern on the other. A nude figure, atrociously modelled, supported the vase in the form of a flower and might have been kissing a hand to the patient becapped countenance in the daguerreotype; otherwise the various objects bore no closer relation one to another than the articles on the counter in a shop. On the floor, before a pier-glass, was a plate on a support of twisted wire. Household gods were present in abundance, but chilly, silent, they imparted no charm of life to the vastness of the apartment.
In the dining room, however, this effect was slightly modified. It was the room apparently where the master spent most of his time when at home; and, as if in preparation for his arrival, a discreet fire had been started in the grate. Unlike the more material accessories, the fire did all that it could to impart its own peculiar charm to the room. It leaped as high as possible; its beams were reflected in the polished case of the pianola, its rays were caught by the glass doors of the cupboard which contained the records, its gleams were imprisoned in tangled rainbows in the cut glass and silver of the sideboard. The laughing light, indeed, like an impolite guest, seemed, in the absence of the host, to occupy the table laid staidly for one, and delicately to help itself to the wine, to the fruit, to all that the board held, with rosy, caressing, immaterial fingers.