Ten days of poor Milly's absence, and of my solitude, had already passed, when my uncle sent for me to his room.
When old Wyat stood at the door, mumbling and snarling her message, my heart died within me.
It was late—just that hour when dejected people feel their anxieties most—when the cold grey of twilight has deepened to its darkest shade, and before the cheerful candles are lighted, and the safe quiet of the night sets in.
When I entered my uncle's sitting-room—though his window-shutters were open and the wan streaks of sunset visible through them, like narrow lakes in the chasms of the dark western clouds—a pair of candles were burning; one stood upon the table by his desk, the other on the chimneypiece, before which his tall, thin figure stooped. His hand leaned on the mantelpiece, and the light from the candle just above his bowed head touched his silvery hair. He was looking, as it seemed, into the subsiding embers of the fire, and was a very statue of forsaken dejection and decay.
'Uncle!' I ventured to say, having stood for some time unperceived near his table.
'Ah, yes, Maud, my dear child—my dear child.'
He turned, and with the candle in his hand, smiling his silvery smile of suffering on me. He walked more feebly and stiffly, I thought, than I had ever seen him move before.
'Sit down, Maud—pray sit there.'
I took the chair he indicated.