No sound of voices broke the silence, and, although the front door stood invitingly open, there was no sign of any one hovering in the background ready to receive her.
Vaguely chilled--since, of course, they must be expecting her--she rang the bell.

It clanged noisily through the house but failed to produce any more important result than the dislodging of some dust from a ledge above which the bell-wire ran.

Sara watched it fall and lie on the floor in a little patch of fine, greyish powder.
The hall, of which the open door gave view, though of considerable dimensions, was poorly furnished.

The wide expanse of colour-washed wall was broken only by a hat-stand, on which hung a large assortment of masculine hats and coats, all of them looking considerably the worse for wear, and by two straight-backed chairs placed with praiseworthy exactitude at equal distances apart from the aforesaid rather overburdened piece of furniture.

The floor was covered with linoleum of which the black and white chess-board pattern had long since retrogressed with usage into an uninspiring blur.