He stood alone with the old house in the opening that was enclosed by shrubs and trees so full of leaf that they looked like giant heaps of leaves, and it seemed to him that, if earth might have an enchanted place, he had surely entered it.

Then, remembering that the light would not last long, he fitted the key to the door and went in.
Outside, nature had done her work, but inside the ugly wall-paper and turned bannisters of a modern villa had not been much beautified by dust and neglect.

Still, there is something in the atmosphere of a long neglect that to the mind, if not to the eye, has softening effect.

Alec listened a moment, as it were, to the silence and loneliness of the house, and went into the first dark room.
It was a large room, probably a parlour of some pretension, but the only light came through the door and lit it very faintly.

All the windows of the house were shut with wooden shutters, and Alec, not being aware that, except in the rooms Harkness had occupied, the shutters were nailed, went to a window to open it.