It had put on new blinds and clean paint, and the smell of spring flowers was everywhere.

The rest was familiar.

She had told Majendie that she liked the old things best.

They appealed to her sense of the fit and the refined; they were signs of good taste and good breeding in her husband's family and in himself.

The house was a survival, a protest against the terrible all-invading soul of Scale on Humber.
For another reason, which she could not yet analyse, Anne was glad that nothing had been changed for her coming.