It was obvious that he hadn't gone to bed.
"No, not yet," said the Warden. And he added, "Do you want me?"
"I ought not to want you, dear," she said, "for I know you must be very tired."
Then she came up to the fireplace and stood looking down at her brother. She saw that the spring and the hope had gone out of his face. He looked older.
"I have put Gwen to bed in my room, but even that has not quieted her," said Lady Dashwood, speaking slowly.
The Warden's face in the twilight looked set. He did not glance at his sister now.
"She has lost her self-control. Do you know what the silly child thinks she saw?"
Here Lady Dashwood paused, and waited for his reply.
"I hadn't thought. She fancied she saw something—a man!" he answered, in his deep voice.
He hadn't thought! There had been no room in his mind for anything but the doom that was awaiting him. One of his most bitter thoughts in the twilight of that room had been that a woman he could have loved was already under his roof when he took his destiny into his own hands and wrecked it.