Delia Featherstonehaugh went into the house—shut the door and slowly mounted the stairs. She could hear her brother and Jerome Caryl talking in the parlor and the old woman who was their only servant moving about below; she avoided both and went straight to her own room.
It was a cheerless poor place; as Delia lit the lamp and looked round a vague, sick longing took her heart.
She had never known a home or wished for one; even when her father was alive they had been desperately poor and she had alternated between a foreign convent and a Scotch lodging, according as the fortunes of her father’s master, the Duke of York, had shifted.
There had been some little prosperity for them when the Duke, as King James, came to the throne; of that now nothing remained save the empty baronetcy that her brother now held and the memory of her father’s death at the Boyne.
Yet she had been happy.
She went on her knees by her bed and buried her face in the pillows; it was strange to feel suddenly tired and lonely; she was half-frightened at the heaviness of her heart.
After a while she rose to her feet with a shudder between shame and fear; she felt restless, distracted, incapable of any continued thought.
She opened the door and looked out.
The house seemed quiet; she crept down-stairs and entered the parlor.
It was empty, but the light still burning. Delia, suddenly aware that she was numb with cold, drew a chair to the fire and held her hands to the flames. Sitting so, she fell into dreams and did not notice when the fire sank and died and the log fell into ashes at her feet; her thoughts were more real than the room; she suddenly called out at them aloud and clasped her hands passionately, then, startled at herself, looked round.