"And when Cromwell stayed here," she babbled on, "he occupied the very
rooms upstairs that used to be mine. But my brother thinks it safer for
me to sleep on the ground floor now in case of fire."

And this sentence has stayed in my memory only because of the sudden way
her brother interrupted her and instantly led the conversation on to
another topic. The passing reference to fire seemed to have disturbed
him, and thenceforward he directed the talk himself.

It was difficult to believe that this lively and animated old lady,
sitting beside me and taking so eager an interest in the affairs of
life, was practically, we understood, without the use of her lower
limbs, and that her whole existence for years had been passed between
the sofa, the bed, and the bath-chair in which she chatted so naturally
at the dinner table. She made no allusion to her affliction until the
dessert was reached, and then, touching a bell, she made us a witty
little speech about leaving us "like time, on noiseless feet," and was
wheeled out of the room by the butler and carried off to her apartments
at the other end of the house.

And the rest of us were not long in following suit, for Dr. Silence and
myself were quite as eager to learn the nature of our errand as our host
was to impart it to us. He led us down a long flagged passage to a room
at the very end of the house, a room provided with double doors, and
windows, I saw, heavily shuttered. Books lined the walls on every side,
and a large desk in the bow window was piled up with volumes, some open,
some shut, some showing scraps of paper stuck between the leaves, and
all smothered in a general cataract of untidy foolscap and loose-half
sheets.