A favorite passage

"...This writing table, beautiful as it was, was no pretty toy where a woman would scribble little notes, nibbling the end of a pen, leaving it, day after day, in carelessness, the blotter a little askew. The pigeon-holes were docketed, "letters-unanswered," "letters-to-keep," "household," "estate," "menus," "miscellaneous," "addresses"; each ticket written in that same scrawling pointed hand that I knew already...

I opened a drawer at hazard, and there was the writing once more, this time in an open leather book, whose heading "Guests at Manderley" showed at once, divided into weeks and months, what visitors had come and gone, the rooms they had used, the food they had eaten. I turned over the pages, and saw that the book was a complete record of a year, so that the hostess, glancing back, would know to the day, almost to the hour, what guest had passed what night under her roof, and where he had slept, and what she had given him to eat. There was note-paper also in the drawer, thick white sheets, for rough writing, and the note-paper of the house, with the crest, and the address, and visiting cards, ivory-white, in little boxes."

--Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, published 1938