The pathway, after a very few minutes' walking, brought him close to the
house, towards which, and especially towards one particular window, he
directed many covert glances. It was a dreary, silent building, with
echoing courtyards, desolated turret-chambers, and whole suites of rooms
shut up and mouldering to ruin.
The terrace-garden, dark with the shade of overhanging trees, had an air
of melancholy that was quite oppressive. Great iron gates, disused for
many years, and red with rust, drooping on their hinges and overgrown
with long rank grass, seemed as though they tried to sink into the
ground, and hide their fallen state among the friendly weeds. The
fantastic monsters on the walls, green with age and damp, and covered
here and there with moss, looked grim and desolate. There was a sombre
aspect even on that part of the mansion which was inhabited and kept
in good repair, that struck the beholder with a sense of sadness; of
something forlorn and failing, whence cheerfulness was banished. It
would have been difficult to imagine a bright fire blazing in the dull
and darkened rooms, or to picture any gaiety of heart or revelry that
the frowning walls shut in.
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