He would have answered for it at
the end of a quarter of an hour that some of the glass cases
contained swords and epaulettes of ancient colonels and generals;
medals and orders once pinned over hearts that had long since
ceased to beat; snuff-boxes bestowed on ministers and envoys;
copies of works presented, with inscriptions, by authors now
classic. At bottom of it all for him was the sense of her rare
unlikeness to the women he had known. This sense had grown, since
the day before, the more he recalled her, and had been above all
singularly fed by his talk with Chad in the morning. Everything in
fine made her immeasurably new, and nothing so new as the old house
and the old objects. There were books, two or three, on a small
table near his chair, but they hadn't the lemon-coloured covers
with which his eye had begun to dally from the hour of his arrival
and to the opportunity of a further acquaintance with which he had
for a fortnight now altogether succumbed. On another table, across
the room, he made out the great _Revue_; but even that familiar face,
conspicuous in Mrs. Newsome's parlours, scarce counted here as a
modern note. He was sure on the spot--and he afterwards knew he was
right--that this was a touch of Chad's own hand.
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