THE NEW HOUSE
stood looking down into the depths of the well-staircase.
"I'm sure mother did want us both to be happy," said Cicely, peering over the banisters. Herbert felt eerily as though she were deferring to the opinion of some unseen presence below them in the darkness.
"Of course she wished us the best, poor mother." He clattered a little ostentatiously past her down the stairs.
"She would have loved this house!" Her voice came softly after him, and he heard her limp hand slithering along the banister-rail.
"Damn the gas-man," he muttered, feeling his way across the hall, where his candle-flames writhed and flickered in a draught. It was enough to give anyone the creeps, thus groping through an echoing, deserted house with a ghost-ridden, lackadaisical woman trailing at his heels. If only they'd had the gas on.
Cicely was a fool: he'd teach her!
At the root of his malaise was a suspicion that the house was sneering at him; that as he repudiated the small brick villa so the
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