mona lisa smile

mona lisa smile
I proceeded: at last my way opened, the trees thinned a little;
presently I beheld a railing, then the house- scarce, by this dim
light, distinguishable from the trees, so dank and green were its
decaying walls. Entering a portal, fastened only by a latch, I stood
amidst a space of enclosed ground, from which the wood swept away in a
semicircle. There were no flowers, no garden-beds; only a broad
gravel-walk girdling a grass-plat, and this set in the heavy frame
of the forest. The house presented two pointed gables in its front;
mona lisa smile
the windows were latticed and narrow: the front door was narrow too,
one step led up to it. The whole looked, as the host of the
Rochester Arms had said, 'quite a desolate spot.' It was as still as a
church on a week-day: the pattering rain on the forest leaves was
the only sound audible in its vicinage.
'Can there be life here?' I asked.
Yes, life of some kind there was; for I heard a movement- that
narrow front-door was unclosing, and some shape was about to issue
from the grange.
It opened slowly: a figure came out into the twilight and stood
mona lisa smile