Chapter 11: Four Centuries, Briefly Summarised

He was standing in the portrait gallery when he admitted it to himself.

This was, in itself, unremarkable. He had admitted things to himself in the portrait gallery before — the necessity of relocating from Vienna in 1743, the inadvisability of his Florentine interlude in the fifteenth century, the specific strategic error that had required him to spend eighteen months as a Venetian merchant of indifferent reputation before the relevant parties had sufficient other matters to occupy their attention. The portrait gallery at Thornfield Abbey had a quality of enforced honesty that he had noticed on his first survey of the property and had interpreted, at the time, as an architectural coincidence.

He was less certain of that interpretation now.