In the initial conversation between Vera and Mr. Nuttel, she gathers that he knows very little about her aunt and family. In the four years since Mr. Nuttel's sister stayed at the nearby rectory, Vera finds a large amount of space to fill with her creative freedom. Mr. Nuttel is too gullible and nervous to consider whether the self-possessed teenage girl in front of him is trustworthy. Nonetheless, he experiences a moment of perceptiveness just before Vera begins to recount her tall tale, when he looks around the room and gets an inkling that men live there.

He was wondering whether Mrs Sappleton was in the married or widowed state. An undefinable something about the room seemed to suggest masculine habitation.

Besides offering some of the only description of the story's physical setting, the second sentence foreshadows the big reveal that there are men living in the house. Instead of trusting this gut instinct, however, Mr. Nuttel latches onto Vera's story and decides he was mistaken. He accepts her claim that there once were men living there who have been dead for three years. His impression of masculine habitation instead contributes to the pitiful impression he and the reader have of Mrs Sappleton—she has turned the house into a sort of shrine to the men, leaving it untouched since the tragedy.

In the end, it is revealed that men do in fact live in the house. Nuttel's impression of masculine habitation, one of the few instances in which he exhibits awareness, served as a precursory hint that Vera's story is false.