This, unlike the sitting room, looks very much inhabited. Newspapers, an empty mug, a few New Yorkers folded to a specific article. One particularly worn-deep leather chair with an equally worn ottoman in front of it. I believe we have discovered the inner sanctum of Professor Addington. I don’t blame him. It’s a pleasant place. The kind of place where you could lose yourself in the brooding mercurial moods of Mr. Darcy or the endless indecisiveness of Hamlet. They would come here to you. Spend the afternoon.

Stepping back into the depths of the house, I am led through the formal dining room, which is a place for Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter brunch, and maybe the odd dinner party. It’s a deep sort of robin’s-egg blue mixed with jade. A beautiful color, lit by sconces on each side of an enormous, imposing mahogany china cabinet. The deep wood dining table ends at the enormous gold-framed painting at the end of the room. Various proportions of gilded clocks are arrayed on the side table, like gold-wrapped women lounging through time, draped in gilt for eternity.

There is one funny thing here. As I lean in to marvel at the intricate gilding, there’s a rush of cold air, as if someone just opened a window in winter. I stand up, looking for a vent. There’s no clank of the air conditioner. And the feeling is gone.

It’s nothing really, I know. The gold-gilded beauties from the clocks seem utterly bored by the whole affair.

It’s funny in these old houses, there’s no effort to integrate the kitchen with the rest of the space. The general feeling seems to have been that the kitchen was built for servants. For “those people” who have nothing to do with the owners, other than doing everything for them. So, unlike the “open plans” you see everyone salivating over on the endless string of predictable yet somehow fascinating real-estate house-hunting TV shows, these places are closed off like a dirty secret. That’s the place where the little elves make . . . the foods!

This kitchen, shut off from the elegant dining room by a white swinging door, is white white whitey von whitington. The floors are white octagon tile. The cupboards are white. The walls are white. The dining set in the middle of the room . . . you guessed it, white. I am tempted to open the fridge to see if the food is white. Milk. Mayonnaise. White bread.

I suppose I’ll get to that later.

There’s a curious little window to the side, staring out at the back porch, where there is a kind of wrought-iron dining set and a few strategically placed ferns down the stone steps to the sprawling backyard guarded by three distinct towering oak trees.

I have an odd feeling standing here looking out at that patio dinette. As if I am not the first person to stare out this little window. I can picture a dinner conversation, and me spying out over it. And for a reason I don’t quite understand, I move quickly, VOOM, out of the room and up the stairs.