"Guy, Guy!"
"Yes, sir," said Guy, pushing back the door.
"It is not so late but that you can spare me a few minutes. Come in, if you please, and shut the door. I have something to say to you."
Guy, with a disagreeable prevision of what was coming, did as he was told.
His uncle, wrapped in an old red dressing-gown, his velvet cap still on his head, sat in a high-backed chair by the fire. The candles burning on the mantelshelf threw their light on his face, and showed it more yellow, sunken, and furrowed than it appeared by daylight.
Guy stood at the other side of the fire-place, tall and erect, looking down on him.
"Take a chair, can't you?" said the old man, irritably.
Guy drew up a chair.
"I want to know," said his uncle, going at once to the point, "whether anything is yet settled between you and Aldyth?"
"Yes, sir," said Guy, "it is so far settled that Aldyth has declined to be my wife."