No one could or ever would guess the depth of her attachment to that
sitting-room, nor the extent to which it engrossed her emotional life.
And yet she had only occupied the house for fourteen years out of the
forty-five years of her widowhood, and the furniture had at intervals
been renewed (for Mrs. Maldon would on no account permit herself to
be old-fashioned). Indeed, she had had five different sitting-rooms in
five different houses since her husband's death. No matter. They were
all the same sitting-room, all rendered identical by the mysterious
force of her dreamy meditations on the past. And, moreover, sundry
important articles had remained constant to preserve unbroken the
chain that linked her to her youth. The table which Rachel had so
nicely laid was the table at which Mrs. Maldon had taken her first
meal as mistress of a house. Her husband had carved mutton at it, and
grumbled about the consistency of toast; her children had spilt jam on
its cloth. And when on Sunday nights she wound up the bracket-clock on
the mantelpiece, she could see and hear a handsome young man in a long
frock-coat and a large shirt-front and a very thin black tie winding
it up too--her husband--on Sunday nights.
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