Miss Mackenzie went on to the Cedars, and her mind almost misgave her in going there, as she was driven up through the dull brick lodges, which looked as though no paint had touched them for the last thirty years, up to the front door of the dull brick house, which bore almost as dreary a look of neglect as the lodges. It was a large brick house of three stories, with the door in the middle, and three windows on each side of the door, and a railed area with a kitchen below the ground. Such houses were built very commonly in the neighbourhood of London some hundred and fifty years ago, and they may still be pleasant enough to the eye if there be ivy over them, and if they be clean with new paint, and spruce with the outer care of gardeners and the inner care of housemaids; but old houses are often like old ladies, who require more care in their dressing than they who are younger. Very little care was given to the Cedars, and the place therefore always looked ill-dressed. On the right hand as you entered was the dining-room, and the three windows to the left were all devoted to the hall. Behind the dining-room was Sir John’s study, as he called it, and behind or beyond the hall was the drawing-room, from which four windows looked out into the garden. This might have been a pretty room had any care been taken to make anything pretty at the Cedars. But the furniture was old, and the sofas were hard, and the tables were rickety, and the curtains which had once been red had become brown with the sun. The dinginess of the house had not struck Miss Mackenzie so forcibly when she first visited it, as it did now. Then she had come almost direct from Arundel Street, and the house in Arundel Street had itself been very dingy. Mrs Stumfold’s drawing-rooms were not dingy, nor were her own rooms in the Paragon. Her eye had become accustomed to better things, and she now saw at once how old were the curtains, and how lamentably the papers wanted to be renewed on the walls. She had, however, been drawn from the neighbouring station to the house in the private carriage belonging to the establishment, and if there was any sense of justice in her, it must be presumed that she balanced the good things with the bad.