Then he took her by the arm without a word of explanation. “Come with me into the book-room, Anne.” He had not a word even for little Molly, who came fluttering like a little bird across the hall and embraced his leg, and cried, “Fader, fader!” in that little sweet twitter of a voice which was generally music to his ears.
“Take her away,” was all he said, with a hasty pat of her little shining head. His face was as grave as if the profoundest trouble had come upon him, and wore that vague air of resentment which was natural to him. Fate or Fortune or Providence, however you like to call it, had been doing something to Edward Penton again. As a matter of course, it was always doing something to him—crossing his plans, setting them all wrong, paying no attention to his feelings. There was no conscious profanity in this thought, nor did the good man even suppose that he was arraigning the Supreme Disposer of all events. He felt this sincerely, with a sense of injury which was half comic, half tragic. Mrs. Penton was used to it, and used to being upbraided for it, as if she had somehow a secret influence, and if she pleased might have arrested the decisions of fate.
“Well, Edward?” she said, breathless, as he closed the book-room door.
“Well,” he replied. The fire was low, and he took up the poker violently in the first place and poked and raked till he made an end of it altogether. “I think,” he said, “after being out all the morning, I might at least find a decent fire.”
“I’ll make it up in a moment, Edward. A little wood will make it all right.”
“A little wood! and you’ll have to ring the bell for it, and have half a dozen people running and the whole house disturbed, just when I have so much to say to you! No, better freeze than that.” He turned his back to the fire, which, after all, was not quite without warmth, and added, after a moment, not looking at her, contracting his brows, and with a sort of belligerent shiver to let her see that he was cold, and that it was her fault. “My uncle is dead.”
“Is it all over, Edward? I fancied that it must be soon;” and then she added, with a little timidity, “were you in time?
“In time! I was there for hours.” He knew very well what she meant, but it was a sort of pleasure to him to prolong the suspense. “Of course,” he said, slowly, “he could not be expected to recover at his age. Alicia should have known better than to have had—dances and things at his age.”
“Dances! I have had no time to speak to Ally. I didn’t know; oh, how dreadful, Edward, and the old man dying!”
“The old man wasn’t dying then,” he said, pettishly. “How were they to suppose he was going to die? He has often been a great deal worse. He was an old man who looked as if he might have lived forever.”