PART II.
“It doesn't seem as if Uncle Sylvester was any the more comfortable for having his own private bedding with him,” said Kitty Lane, entering Marie's room early the next morning. “Bridget found him curled up in his furs like a cat asleep on the drawing-room sofa this morning.”
Marie started; she remembered her last night's vision. But some instinct—she knew not what—kept her from revealing it at this moment. She only said a little ironically:—
“Perhaps he missed the wild freedom of his barbaric life in a small bedroom.”
“No. Bridget says he said something about being smoked out of his room by a ridiculous wood fire. The idea! As if a man brought up in the woods couldn't stand a little smoke. No—that's his excuse! Marie!—do you know what I firmly believe?”
“No,” said Marie quickly.
“I firmly believe that poor man is ashamed of his past rough life, and does everything he can to forget it. That's why he affects those ultra-civilized and effeminate ways, and goes to the other extreme, as people always do.”
“Then you think he's really reformed, and isn't likely to take an impulse to rob and murder anybody again?”
“Why, Marie, what nonsense!”
Nevertheless, Uncle Sylvester appeared quite fresh and cheerful at breakfast. It seemed that he had lit the fire before undressing, but the green logs were piled so far into the room that the smoke nearly suffocated him. Fearful of alarming the house by letting the smoke escape through the door, he opened the window, and when it had partly dispersed, sought refuge himself from the arctic air of his bedroom in the drawing-room. So far the act did not seem inconsistent with his sanity, or even intelligence and consideration for others. But Marie fixed upon him a pair of black, audacious eyes.