It was near midnight, and the house, but for the voice, was dead silent. The woman, after admitting him, had preceded him up the flight and vanished. It had never occurred to him that the place contained other than the two with whom he was familiar. He stood, petrified for the moment, and, as the sound of his footstep ceased, so did that of the low and feeble complaint. And then suddenly the woman came to the door and appeared before him.
Bannister had always rather mentally recoiled from this person—her bony sallowness, her silence, the gloom of seeming tragedy in her eyes. He never learned from first to last what was her history; and yet, if tragedy there were connected with it, it had likely proved a tragedy no more heroic than that of lovelessness, and drudgery, and the hard resignation to that lot of unfulfilment which, foredoomed of personal ill-favour, is perhaps, to a woman, the bitterest tragedy of all. She served him, and waited on him well; she did everything efficiently save smile. Yet, for all her unemotional presence, he thought he perceived now, in the guttering light of the landing lamp, a sign of perturbation on her face.
“I was surprised,” he said; “and stopped—no witting eavesdropper. I thought I heard a voice I did not recognize.”
“’Twas Colin’s,” she said.
“Anan?” He used, being country bred, the country expression.
“Colin’s,” she repeated—“the master’s child.”
“I never knew he had one.”
“One.” She responded like an echo.
“And ill?”
“He’s always ill.”