To say
she was so occupied is to say that her solitude did not press upon
her; for her love of knowledge had a fertilizing quality and her
imagination was strong. There was at this time, however, a want of
fresh taste in her situation which the arrival of an unexpected
visitor did much to correct. The visitor had not been announced; the
girl heard her at last walking about the adjoining room. It was in
an old house at Albany, a large, square, double house, with a notice
of sale in the windows of one of the lower apartments. There were
two entrances, one of which had long been out of use but had never
been removed. They were exactly alike- large white doors, with an
arched frame and wide side-lights, perched upon little "stoops" of red
stone, which descended sidewise to the brick pavement of the street.
The two houses together formed a single dwelling, the party-wall
having been removed and the rooms placed in communication. These
rooms, above-stairs, were extremely numerous, and were painted all
over exactly alike, in a yellowish white which had grown sallow with
time. On the third floor there was a sort of arched passage,
connecting the two sides of the house, which Isabel and her sisters
used in their childhood to call the tunnel and which, though it was
short and well-lighted, always seemed to the girl to be strange and
lonely, especially on winter afternoons.
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