The tea things were on a wagon beside the center table; there were a
number of used cups and crumpled napkins, and whiskey glasses, in
evidence, but Mrs. Grove was alone. She had been about to have them
removed, she told him, when he rang. "No, I am not in a hurry; and it's
such a disagreeable day you ought to have a highball."
She was in black, a dress that he found unbecoming, with a collar high
about her throat and wide sleeves heavily embroidered in carmine. "You
will hate that one," she said of the chair he selected; "I can't think
why chairs have to be so very uncomfortable--these either swallow you
whole or, like a toboggan slide, drop you on the floor." Lee drew up a
tabourette for his glass and ash tray. The banal idea struck him that,
although he had met Mrs. Grove only yesterday, he knew her well; rather
he had a sense of ease, of the familiar, with her. The sole evidence
she gave of an agreement in his feeling was that she almost totally
neglected to talk. She smoked, absorbed in a frowning abstraction. A
floor lamp behind them was lighted, and there was an illumination at
the mantel, but the depths of the library were wrapped in obscurity:
its sombreness had increased, the air was heavy with the dust of
leather, a vague funereal oppressiveness.
Lee's sense of familiarity increased, but his ease left him, driven
away by the strength of a feeling not exactly of being at home but of
returning to an old powerful influence.
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