Anne had not counted his business; for it had not interested her, and to say that Walter was a ship-owner did not define him in the very least.

What remained over of Walter was a secret that this room, his study, must partially reveal.
She remembered how she had first come there, and had looked shyly about her for intimations of his inner nature, and how it was his pipe-rack and his boots that had first suggested that he had a life apart and dealings with the outer world.

Now she rose and went round the room, searching for its secret, and finding no new impressions, only fresh lights on the old.
If the room told her anything it told her how little Majendie had used it, how little he had been able to call anything his own.

The things in it had no comfortable look of service.

He could not have smoked there much, the curtains were too innocent.