His attitude to the Square and the people in it was that he knew more about them than anyone else did; his attitude to the House, that he knew nothing at all compared with what "They" knew.
In the Square he could see through the lot of them, so superficial were they all; in the House he could only wait, with fingers on lip, for the next revelation that they might vouchsafe to him.
Doors were, for the most part, locked, yet there were many days when fires were lit because the house was an old one, and damp Lady Cathcart had a horror of.
Always for young Henry the house wore its buried and abandoned air.

He was never to see it when the human beings in it would count more than its furniture, and the human life in it more than the house itself.

He had come, a year and a half ago, into the very place that his dreams had, from the beginning, built for him.

Those large, high rooms with the shining floors, the hooded furniture, the windows gaping without their curtains, the shadows and broad squares of light, the little whispers and rattles that doors and cupboards gave, the swirl of the wind as it sprang released from corners and crevices, the lisp of some whisper, "I'm coming! I'm coming! I'm coming!" that, nevertheless, again and again defeated expectation.

How could he but enjoy the fine field of affection that these provided for him?
His mother watched him with maternal pride.