Chapter 3: Cecilia Consults Her Father's Forbidden Shelf

The house was not quiet at half past eleven. It was only Mrs. Hartwell who was quiet, which was distinctive enough to serve as a species of quiet by contrast: she had talked herself into sleep somewhere around ten o'clock with a last comprehensive summary of the Count's annual income, the probable appointment of Lydia's waist, and the injustice of Mrs. Goulding's position vis-à-vis the introduction, and now the upstairs corridor held only the sound of rain against the east windows and the particular creak of the fourth stair that Cecilia had learned, by the age of nine, to step around.

She had not undressed. This seemed, in retrospect, an honest admission of her own intentions, though she had managed for the better part of an hour to pretend to herself that she was simply too warm for sleep and not at all conducting a reconnaissance.

The library was at the back of the house, which was cold in November and always slightly damp and smelled, pleasantly, of old paper and her father's pipe tobacco and something else — something she had always attributed to the bindings, the older ones, the ones on the east shelves above the level where the candlelight reached comfortably. She lit the second lamp from the one she carried and set them both on the reading table and stood in the doubled light for a moment, looking at the room.