“It was the first thing one noticed on entering; there was no escaping it. Confronting the door in the very middle of the hall, it stood there like some grey and massive sentinel--and barred the way. One wondered how it had ever got there, it was so disproportionately large for the house. It was masterful, aggressive, FASCINATING (Marie declared ‘there was no getting away from it--that it LIVED’)--and--it was made of STONE. There was no doubt about it now ‘The Hall’ had indeed been a school; would any one but a pedagogue have a stone staircase? Eugh! my mother felt a twinge of rheumatism the moment she set eyes on it. “It was curiously wanting in proportion; consisting of barely a dozen steps, it was most uncomfortably steep and of a most unnecessary width. I compared it with some strange, squatting animal--a comparison that grew on me the longer I remained in the house. “At the top of the staircase was a gallery, protected by high rails, which I discovered connected the used and disused portions of the house. In the latter there were some rooms we did not care to inhabit; there were a few we were even unable to explore--they were locked. “I felt no curiosity about them; they were certain to be both commonplace, prosaic and dusty: every time I passed them I smelt dust--and I cannot endure a particle of dust. If I had believed any of them to be a library, I might have been tempted to pick the lock; I am passionately fond of books--that is to say, of some books--when I am exiled in the country and it is always raining. “I was in search of a book which I had laid down somewhere, when I crossed the hall one afternoon, and left my mother dozing in a big armchair before the drawing-room fire. “Marie said she had seen it on the oak settle; most likely, for I often took my book and lounged on it. You see I had grown fond of the oak settle naturally, for it was the only piece of furniture in that monster house that stirred in me any friendly feeling whatever. But Marie must have been dreaming, it was certainly not there. I would have called to Marie to come and help me search for it, had I not remembered that she and Eugenie had gone into the village to do a little shopping on their own account. They laugh in their grandest manner at those ‘silly little shops,’ but with a true woman’s instinct they cannot resist ‘buying.’ “I felt indignant, provoked, angry! never had I wanted to read so much and never had I been at such a loss to find a book. “Oh! I recollected there was one upstairs--an ancient and musty edition of ‘Eugene Aram’--(proof positive, this, that the place was once a school; would any one save a schoolmaster read ‘Eugene Aram’)? I had seen it lying on the floor of a disused cupboard--alone and forsaken: a solitary relic of the Academical bookshelf.