lf forced to acknowledge that
never in my life had my eyes fallen upon a habitation more given over to
neglect or less promising in its hospitality.

Had it not been for the thin circle of smoke eddying up from one of its
broken chimneys, I would have looked upon the place as one which had not
known the care or presence of man for years. There was a riot of
shrubbery in the yard, a lack of the commonest attention to order in the
way the vines drooped in tangled masses over the face of the desolate
porch, that gave to the broken pilasters and decayed window-frames of
this dreariest of facades that look of abandonment which only becomes
picturesque when nature has usurped the prerogative of man and taken
entirely to herself the empty walls and falling casements of what was
once a human dwelling. That any one should be living in it now and that
I, who have never been able to see a chair standing crooked or a curtain
awry, without a sensation of the keenest discomfort, should be on the
point of deliberately entering its doors as an inmate, filled me at the
moment with such a sense of unreality, that I descended from the
carriage in a sort of a dream and was making my way through one of the
gaps in the high antique fence that separated the yard from the gateway,
when Mr. Simsbury stopped me and pointed out the gate.

I did not think it worth while to apologize for my mistake, for the
broken palings certainly offered as good an entrance as the gate, which
had slipped from its hinges and hung but a few inches open. But I took
the course he indicated, holding up my skirts, and treading gingerly for
fear of the snails and toads that incumbered such portions of the path
as the weeds had left visible. As I proceeded on my way, something in
the silence of the spot struck me. Was I becoming over-sensitive to
impressions or was there something really uncanny in the absolute lack
of sound or movement in a dwelling of such dimensions? But I should not
have said movement, for at that instant I saw a flash in one of the
upper windows as of a curtain being stealthily drawn and as stealthily
let fall again, and though it gave me the promise of some sort of
greeting, there was a furtiveness in the action, so in keeping with the
suspicions of Mr. Gryce that I felt my nerves braced at once to mount
the half-dozen uninviting-looking steps that led to the front door.

But no sooner had I done this, with what I am fain to consider my best
air,