Alicia was a little subdued when she found herself in the old library, the room she had known so well in other circumstances. The air of decay, the unused books which she had borrowed and read and talked over, Edward being a little more disposed that way than her brothers, and ready to give her advice about her reading, and receive with reverence her comments which the others took no interest in, impressed her in spite of herself. Her eyes turned to the corner in which there had been a collection of the poets more accessible and readable than any that existed at Penton, where the books were all of a ponderous kind. They were still there, the same little volumes, which it had been so easy to carry about, which had been brought from the Hook in Edward’s pocket, which she had taken with her in the boat and read in the shady corners under the trees among the water-lilies. She could see they were still there, the binding a little tarnished, the line broken, as if several volumes were lost or absent. Who read them now? She gave but one glance and saw everything, then turned her back upon that corner. There was a table in the window which had not been there formerly, a table covered with books and papers such as she was sure Edward Penton did not amuse himself with. It would be the boy whose name had not been mentioned, whom she had taken no notice of, yet of whom, with a jealous, angry consciousness she had felt the presence through all.
“You have made few changes,” she said, involuntarily, as she turned the chair he had placed for her half round, so as not to see the shelf with its range of little volumes. The book-room was perhaps the most comfortable in the house, but for that faint mustiness. The walls were well lined with books. It had been a good collection twenty years ago, and though there had been few additions made, it was still a good collection, and the fading of the gilding and a little raggedness of binding here and there did not injure the appearance of the well-covered walls. Mr. Penton lighted the two candles on the writing-table, which seemed to add two little inquisitive eldritch spectators, blinking their little flames at the human actors in this drama, and watching all they did and said.