Although he and his daughter had lived a life of mutual misunderstanding during the last years of her stay at "Les Marches," he felt her absence much more keenly than he had anticipated.
The days that followed were for him days of inexpressible ennui. He would saunter up and down the kitchen for half-an-hour at a time. He conversed with Jacques; he tried to take interest in something; he counted his money, his gold, his god.
Formerly, he found great pleasure in doing so; but now, the sound of the precious metal awoke no feeling of satisfaction within his heart as it used to do, but rung in his ears with a funereal sound. He thought it foretold his doom.
He continued thus for weeks, a miserable, ill-humoured, irritated and troubled man.
The month of August came, warm almost to suffocation. Mr. Rougeant often felt cold. He would sit for hours before the fire, his feet stretched at full length, his hands buried in his pockets, and his drooping chin resting on his bosom. His eyes were closed.
As he sat thus one afternoon, a flood of anger roused him up; he rose, waxed warm, his tottering steps feverishly paced the room for a time, then sunk back into his chair, a passion-beaten, exhausted and perspiring man.
He had strange thoughts sometimes. Willingly would he "have shuffled off his mortal coil; but that the dread of something after death, that undiscovered country, from whose bourne no traveller returns, puzzled his will, and made him rather bear the ills he had, than fly to others that he knew not of."
One day, Mrs. Dorant, whom he had engaged to look after the house, found him meditatively examining a piece of rope, which he held in his hand. She was alarmed and beckoned to her husband, who was near.
He went up to his employer, who, directly he saw that he was being observed, threw the rope away from him excitedly.