Then leaving the library, she roamed through the house, pausing on the
first landing to gaze on the picture of the fine gentleman in a red coat,
his hand for ever on his sword. She remembered how she used to wonder whom
he was going to kill, and how sure she used to feel that at last he would
grant his adversary his life. And close by was the picture of the
wind-mill, set on the edge of the down, with the shepherd driving sheep in
the foreground. Her whole life seemed drenched with tears at the thought of
parting with these things. Every room was full of memories for her. She was
a little girl when she came to live at Ashwood, and the room at the top of
the stairs had been her nursery. There were the two beds; both were now
dismantled and bare. It was in the little bed in the corner that she used
to sleep; it was in the old four-poster that her nurse slept. And there was
the very place, in front of the fire, where she used to have her tea. The
table had disappeared, and the grate, how rusty it was! In the far corner,
by the window, there used to be a press, in which nurse kept tea and sugar.
That press had been removed. The other press was there still, and throwing
open the doors she surveyed the shelves. She remembered the very peg on
which her hat and jacket used to hang. And the long walks in the great
park, which was to her, then, a world of wonderment!

She wandered about the old corridor, in and out of odd rooms, all
associated with her childhood--quaint old rooms, many of them lumber rooms,
full of odd corners and old cupboards, the meaning of which she used to
strive to divine. How their silence and mystery used to thrill her little
soul! Faded rooms whose mystery had departed, but whose gloom was haunted
with tenderest recollections. In one corner was the reading-chair in which
Mr. Burnett used to sit. At that time she used to sit on his knee, and when
the chair gave way beneath their weight, he had said she was too big a girl
to sit on his knee any longer. The words had seemed to her a little cruel.