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It was as blank a house inside as outside. When the funeral was over, Mr Dombey ordered the furniture to be covered up perhaps to preserve it for the son with whom his plans were all associated and the rooms to be ungarnished, saving such as he retained for himself on the ground floor. Accordingly, mysterious shapes were made of tables and chairs, heaped together in the middle of rooms, and covered over with great winding-sheets. Bell-handles, window-blinds, and looking-glasses, being papered up in journals, daily and weekly, obtruded fragmentary accounts of deaths and dreadful murders. Every chandelier or lustre, muffled in holland, looked like a monstrous tear depending from the ceiling's eye. Odours, as from vaults and damp places, came out of the chimneys. The dead and buried lady was awful in a picture-frame of ghastly bandages. Every gust of wind that rose, brought eddying round the corner from the neighbouring mews, some fragments of the straw that had been strewn before the house when she was ill, mildewed remains of which were still cleaving to the neighbourhood: and these, being always drawn by some invisible attraction to the threshold of the dirty house to let immediately opposite, addressed a dismal eloquence to Mr Dombey's windows.
公館里面和外面一樣單調無趣。葬禮結束以后，董貝先生命令把家具都蒙罩起來——也許是要保留起來給他兒子用的，因為他所有的計劃都和他的兒子聯系著——；除了第一層留給他自己用的房間外，其他所有的房間都不進行布置。因此，桌子和椅子堆在房間的中間，外面用大塊的包尸布遮蓋著，形成了各種神秘離奇的形狀。鈴柄、窗簾、鏡子，由于用雜志、日報和周刊的紙包著，因此被迫對上面登載著的死亡與可怖的謀殺案情進行片斷的報道。每一個用荷蘭麻布包裹起來的枝形吊燈或分枝燭臺，看上去就像是天花板眼睛中掉下的一滴巨大的淚珠。從煙囪中跑出來的氣味就像從地下靈堂或潮濕的地方跑出的一樣。已經逝世和安葬的夫人的肖像被鑲嵌在用可怕的繃帶包扎起來的畫框中，看起來陰森可怖。每刮起一陣風，就從鄰近的馬廄中吹來了幾根稻草，在拐角四周旋轉；當她生病的時候，這些稻草曾經撒在房屋前面，那些發了霉的殘余的稻草至今仍粘附在鄰近的房屋上；它們常常被某種看不見的力量吸引到正對過的、等待出租的、骯臟的房屋的門檻上，現在正以凄涼的聲調，向董貝先生的窗子滔滔不絕地訴說著。
The apartments which Mr Dombey reserved for his own inhabiting, were attainable from the hall, and consisted of a sitting room; a library, which was in fact a dressing-room, so that the smell of hot-pressed paper, vellum, morocco, and Russia leather, contended in it with the smell of divers pairs of boots; and a kind of conservatory or little glass breakfast-room beyond, commanding a prospect of the trees before mentioned, and, generally speaking, of a few prowling cats. These three rooms opened upon one another. In the morning, when Mr Dombey was at his breakfast in one or other of the two first-mentioned of them, as well as in the afternoon when he came home to dinner, a bell was rung for Richards to repair to this glass chamber, and there walk to and fro with her young charge. From the glimpses she caught of Mr Dombey at these times, sitting in the dark distance, looking out towards the infant from among the dark heavy furniture the house had been inhabited for years by his father, and in many of its appointments was old-fashioned and grim she began to entertain ideas of him in his solitary state, as if he were a lone prisoner in a cell, or a strange apparition that was not to be accosted or understood. Mr Dombey came to be, in the course of a few days, invested in his own person, to her simple thinking, with all the mystery and gloom of his house. As she walked up and down the glass room, or sat hushing the baby there which she very often did for hours together, when the dusk was closing in, too she would sometimes try to pierce the gloom beyond, and make out how he was looking and what he was doing. Sensible that she was plainly to be seen by him' however, she never dared to pry in that direction but very furtively and for a moment at a time. Consequently she made out nothing, and Mr Dombey in his den remained a very shade.
董貝先生留給自己居住的房間和前廳連接，它們包括一間起居室，一間圖書室，還有一間暖房或吃早餐的小玻璃房。圖書室實際上是個化妝室，因此熱壓紙、上等皮紙、摩洛哥皮、俄國皮革的氣味與好幾雙靴子的氣味在室內相互競賽。從暖房里可以望見前面提到的那兩株樹和幾只四處覓食的貓。這三間房屋彼此相通。早上，當董貝先生在前面首先提到的那兩間房子中的一間里吃早飯的時候，或者下午，當他回家來吃晚飯的時候，就有人搖鈴，召喚理查茲到這個玻璃房里來，抱著她所撫養的小孩在那里走來走去。她在這些時候可以瞥見董貝先生坐在黑暗的遠處，越過黑暗的笨重的家具（他的父親曾經在這座邸宅中居住多年，它的許多陳設都是老式的，陰沉呆板的），向外望著這個嬰兒。她從這些瞥見中開始產生了對他在孤獨狀態時的一些想法，仿佛他是一個在單人牢房中寂寞無伴的囚徒，或者是一個奇怪的幽靈，不能跟他說話，也不能對他進行了解。
注釋：preserve 1. vt. 保存；保護；維持；腌；禁獵 2. n. 保護區；禁獵地；加工成的食品
例句：
1. On a shelf nearby is coffee, already packed cans to preserve its flavor.
附近一個架子上有咖啡，為了保持香味，是用罐子裝的。
2. She regards negotiating prices with customers as her special preserve.
她把與顧客討價還價看作自己的專長。
