not ten yards from the windows. The building, of greenish stone,
was in the old English style, not ugly, but small-windowed and
melancholy-looking: the sort of house that must have children,
many flowers, open windows, and little vistas of bright things,
to make it seem a joyous home. In this latter end of autumn,
with a sparse remnant of yellow leaves falling slowly athwart the dark
evergreens in a stillness without sunshine, the house too had an air
of autumnal decline, and Mr. Casaubon, when he presented himself,
had no bloom that could be thrown into relief by that background.

"Oh dear!" Celia said to herself, "I am sure Freshitt Hall would
have been pleasanter than this." She thought of the white freestone,
the pillared portico, and the terrace full of flowers, Sir James
smiling above them like a prince issuing from his enchantment
in a rose-bush, with a handkerchief swiftly metamorphosed
from the most delicately odorous petals--Sir James, who talked
so agreeably, always about things which had common-sense in them,
and not about learning! Celia had those light young feminine tastes
which grave and weatherworn gentlemen sometimes prefer in a wife;
but happily Mr. Casaubon's bias had been different, for he would
have had no chance with Celia.

Dorothea, on the contrary, found the house and grounds all
that she could wish: the dark book-shelves in the long library,
the carpets and curtains with colors subdued by time, the curious
old maps and bird's-eye views on the walls of the corridor,
with here and there an old vase below, had no oppression for her,
and seemed more cheerful than the easts and pictures at the Grange,
which her uncle had long ago brought home from his travels--they
being probably among the ideas he had taken in at one time.