[CHAPTER XI]
THE VOICE IN THE NIGHT
The fire burned low, in the study grate.
The black marble clock on the mantel-piece had struck midnight, more slowly and sonorously than it ever sounded the hour by day. Each stroke had seemed a knell—a requiem to bright hopes and golden prospects; and now it slowly and distinctly ticked out the first hour of a new day.
Sarah, and her assistants, had long been sleeping soundly, untroubled by any difficult questions of casuistry.
The one solitary watcher beneath the roof of Brambledene Rectory sat huddled up in the Rector's large armchair, his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands.
His little worn Prayer-book had fallen to the floor, unnoticed. He had been reading the marriage service. The Prayer-book lay on its back, at his feet, open at the Burial of the Dead, as if in silent suggestion that that solemn office had an important bearing on the case.
The fire burned low; yet David did not bestir himself to give it any attention. The hot embers sank together, in the grate, with that sound of finality which implies no further attempt to keep alight—a sitting-down under adverse circumstances, so characteristic of human nature, and so often caused by the absorbed neglect of others.