But of course she was not in a position to estimate the full significance of this remarkable phenomenon.

Further, though she perfectly remembered her mother's observations upon Mr.Cannon's status, they did not in the slightest degree damage him in her eyes--when once those eyes had been set on him again.

They seemed to her inessential.
The essential, for her, was the incontestable natural authority and dignity of his bearing.
She sat down, self-consciously, in the chair--opposite the owner's chair--which she had occupied at her first visit, and thus surveyed, across the large flat desk, all the ranged documents and bundles with the writing thereon upside down.

There also was his blotting-pad, and his vast inkstand, and his pens, and his thick diary.

The disposition of the things on the desk seemed to indicate, sharply and incontrovertibly, that orderliness, that inexorable efficiency, which more than aught else she admired in the external conduct of life.