How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
[It was] a modest house and yet sure of itself, and then looking across at the country beyond. I had no sense of having been here before, but an absolute conviction that I would come here again (1.10)
Arthur makes serious real estate decisions based off of how much he likes the way the outside of a cottage looks. Good thing that one worked out.
Quote #2
The business was beginning to sound like something from a Victorian novel, with a reclusive old woman having hidden a lot of ancient documents somewhere in the depths of her cluttered home. (2.62)
LOL, right? This little quip is a joke on Arthur, because (1) it's supposed to show us how Arthur thinks of himself as oh-so-modern even though the Victorian era is probably only a few years behind him, and (2) it turns out that he is in a Victorian-esque novel.
Quote #3
I decided that he was a man who had made, or come into, money late and unexpectedly, and was happy for the world to know it. (3.13)
For such a young guy, Arthur Kipps makes some pretty snap judgments about people. Good thing Mr. Daily doesn't write him off in the same manner.
Quote #4
He might have been anywhere between thirty-five and fifty-seven years of age, with a blandness… (4.28)
Mr. Jerome is hard to read from the beginning, and he doesn't get any more helpful when he's pressed for info about the mysterious mistress of the night. (Also, seriously? Why not fifty-eight? That seems awfully random.)
Quote #5
She was dressed in deepest black, in the style of full mourning that had rather gone out of fashion... (4.40)
The fact that she's in old-timey clothes is the first hint that she might be from another era, a.k.a. a ghostly being.
Quote #6
I did not stare, even the swift glance I took of the woman showed me enough to recognize that she was suffering from some terrible wasting disease, for not only was she extremely pale… only the thinnest layer of flesh was tautly stretched and strained across her bones… (4.40)
Not hot: when your skin looks like it's straining over your bones and you have a wasting disease. Eat a sandwich and put on some makeup, girl!
Quote #7
Her hands that rested on the pew before her were in a similar state, as though she had been a victim of starvation. (4.40)
Even her hands look ghastly. The woman in black certainly isn't winning any admirers, but she's certainly becoming more and more unsettling to Arthur (and the readers).
Quote #8
In the grayness of the fading light, it had the sheen and pallor not of flesh so much as of bone itself… (5.24)
Here's another good hint that she might not be exactly an earthy being: her flesh looks more like bone than actual skin.
Quote #9
I had not noticed any particular expression on her ravaged face… (5.24)
When Arthur gets a closer look, he finds that the lady in black doesn't look like a poor suffering victim of disease, after all. In fact, she looks—or feels—downright mean. And possibly crazy.
Quote #10
…The flesh shrank from her bones, the color was drained from her, she looked like a walking skeleton—a living specter. (11.115)
Even in life Jennet Humfrye looks like the living dead. She takes that look with her into the afterlife, where it probably goes over a lot better—at least until she comes back and starts her haunting.