The entrance hall was spacious, and shaped like an alcove; there was a door on the right, and another on the left; in the center was a wide staircase, leading to the rooms above; farther along the passage was a masked door, leading to the rooms below.
"Upstairs or downstairs first?" I inquired.
"Downstairs," my wife replied.
The stairs to the basement were very dark, and my wife, prepared for all such emergencies, produced a candle and matches. Lighting the candle we descended to the stone passage. There was a dreary and gloomy kitchen; there was a large scullery, a larder and all necessary offices, cobwebbed and musty; also two rooms which could be used as living rooms. The glass-paneled doors of both these rooms opened out into the back garden, which was in worse condition and more choked up with weeds, and rank grass, and monstrous creepers than the ground in front of the house; two greenhouses were at the extreme end, and there were some trees dotted about, but whether they were fruit trees it was impossible to say without a closer examination.
"I don't think," said my wife, "we will go over the garden just now. It looks as if it was full of creeping things."
"The rooms we have seen are not much better, Maria."
"They are not, indeed; I never saw a place in such a dreadful state."
I was more than ordinarily depressed. As a rule these expeditions invariably had a dispiriting effect upon me, but I had never felt so melancholy as I did on this occasion. I made no inquiry into my wife's feelings; I considered it best that she should work out the matter for herself; the chances of my emerging a victor from the contest in which we were engaged would be all the more promising.
We ascended to the hall, and then I observed to my wife that we had forgotten to examine the stabling and the wine cellar; we had even neglected the coal cellars.
"We won't bother about them to-day," she said, and despite my despondency I inwardly rejoiced.