The Perpetual Curate by Margaret Oliphant

It was the next morning after this when Mrs. Hadwin's strange lodger first appeared in the astonished house. He was the strangest lodger to be taken into a house of such perfect respectability, a house in Grange Lane; and it came to be currently reported in Carlingford after a time, when people knew more about it, that even the servants could not tell when or how he arrived, but had woke up one morning to find a pair of boots standing outside the closed door of the green room, which the good old lady kept for company, with sensations which it would be impossible to describe.

Such a pair of boots they were too -- muddy beyond expression, with old mud which had not been brushed off for days -- worn shapeless, and patched at the sides; the strangest contrast to a handsome pair of Mr. Wentworth's, which he, contrary to his usual neat habits, had kicked off in his sitting-room, and which Sarah, the housemaid, had brought and set down on the landing, close by these mysterious and unaccountable articles. When the bell of the green room rang an hour or two later, Sarah and the cook, who happened to be standing together, jumped three yards apart and stared at each other; the sound gave them both "a turn. " But they soon got perfectly well used to that bell from the green room. It rung very often in the day, for "the gentleman" chose to sit there more than half his time; and if other people were private about him, it was a great deal more than he was about himself. He even sent the boots to be mended, to Sarah's shame and confusion.