Books mounted high,--almost to the ceiling,--filling all the spaces left unused by the doors and windows.
Heavy damask curtains shut out the light of day.

She wondered why they had been drawn so early, and whether they were always drawn like this.

Near the big fireplace, with its long mantelpiece over which hung suspended the portrait of an early Knickerbocker gentleman with ruddy, even convivial countenance, stood a long table, a reading lamp at the farther end.

Books, magazines, papers lay in disorder upon this table.
She recalled something that Braden once had told her: his grandfather always "raised Cain" with any one who happened to be guilty of what he called criminal orderliness in putting the table to rights.

He wanted the papers and magazines left just as they were, so that he could put his hand upon them without demanding too much of a servant's powers of divination.
More than one parlour-maid had been dismissed for offensive neatness.
She closed her eyes for a second.