He read it and, in the moment of reaction from the depression of his past days, clapped his hands like a child.
Then he considered the date at which she wanted to see him.

Had she so worded her despatch he would have gone that very day; but there was nothing to complain of in her giving him a week's notice.

Pure maiden modesty might have checked her indulgence in a too ardent recall.
Time, however, dragged somewhat heavily along in the interim, and on the second day he thought he would call on his father and tell him of his success in obtaining the appointment.
The elder Mr.Somerset lived in a detached house in the north-west part of fashionable London; and ascending the chief staircase the young man branched off from the first landing and entered his father's painting-room.

It was an hour when he was pretty sure of finding the well-known painter at work, and on lifting the tapestry he was not disappointed, Mr.Somerset being busily engaged with his back towards the door.
Art and vitiated nature were struggling like wrestlers in that apartment, and art was getting the worst of it.

The overpowering gloom pervading the clammy air, rendered still more intense by the height of the window from the floor, reduced all the pictures that were standing around to the wizened feebleness of corpses on end.