The Salamanca Corpus: Yeoman Fleetwood (1900 ... - Gredos

The Salamanca Corpus: Yeoman Fleetwood (1900)
in his eyes; and yet it was not without a pang that he betook himself to the parlour in
search of the key.
As he mounted the stairs his aunt met him, glancing up at him somewhat indignantly,
for his face was rather white now and unlike itself.
"Ye needn't think, I'm sure, that I want to set foot yon," she remarked in an angry
whisper and with a toss of the head. "I never did, and I never will without it's put back
as it should be. But I couldn't refuse the young lady; so I'll just nip down and be on the
look-out for Madam, and you can take her in yourself."
Simon brushed past her without speaking, and found Rachel awaiting him in the
passage just outside the sitting-room door.
"I hope I'm not giving you a great deal of trouble, Mr. Simon," she said, turning round
with a smile; "but I had a mind to see this room. It is associated with so many happy
hours."
She wondered a little at his silence and his gravity, but forgot the passing impression in
a greater surprise when he had unlocked and thrown open the door, for, though so
carefully secured, the room within had all the appearance of being regularly inhabited.
The windows were wide open; books and work lay about; Mrs. Fleetwood's couch
appeared to have been occupied but recently, for the cushions were piled up as though
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waiting to receive her, and the light shawl seemed placed in readiness to cover her feet.
Rachel had uttered a little laughing cry of astonishment as she stepped past Simon, but
it died upon her lips, and when she turned towards him there were tears in her eyes.
"You have kept it just as it used to be," she said, understanding by a sudden intuition the
meaning of the seriousness which had puzzled her, though she could not realise all that
was in his mind, nor how much of sweetness mingled with his sadness. "I ought not to
have asked you to show it me. Miss Fleetwood told me it was not used now, and I
thought it would be perhaps — like any other shut-up room.”
"No one comes here except me," said Simon; "but I like to keep it just as it was when
she sat here."