THE SENSE OF THE PAST
the outland gentleman who had suddenly become the providence of their compact round world. It was a world clearly that they desired to remain shut up in, and a happy instinct had admonished them that they best appeased fortune by holding their breath. They could scarce have done better had they known of spells and superstitions and been possessed with a recipe for causing them to flourish. They even stayed downstairs too consistently to give their new patron his chance of expressing to them how honestly he judged them to keep his house.
That was what struck him afresh after he had mounted the large old stair and begun to pass from room to room: there was something in his impression so indefinably prepared by other hands that acknowledgment surely ought somehow and somewhere to be made. It all came back of course soon enough to thanking Mr. Pendrel, and this in truth Ralph sufficiently did by his mere attitude from point to point. That was the question on the whole as to which he was easiest; wherever he paused to draw a long breath and again look round he felt his gratitude carry and his appreciation in a singular degree picked up and noted. Not yet for that matter had it so affected him this evening as returning richly upon himself. The cold rain was on his window-pane, and it damped the great London hum. These squares of old glass were small and many and the frames
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