Milly whispered to me as we approached--
'Mind how you make a noise; the governor's as sharp as a weasel, and
nothing vexes him like that.'
She was herself toppling along on tiptoe. We paused at a door near the head
of the great staircase, and L'Amour knocked timidly with her rheumatic
knuckles.
A voice, clear and penetrating, from within summoned us to enter. The old
woman opened the door, and the next moment I was in the presence of Uncle
Silas.
At the far end of a handsome wainscoted room, near the hearth in which a
low fire was burning, beside a small table on which stood four waxlights,
in tall silver candlesticks, sat a singular-looking old man.
The dark wainscoting behind him, and the vastness of the room, in the
remoter parts of which the light which fell strongly upon his face and
figure expended itself with hardly any effect, exhibited him with the
forcible and strange relief of a finely painted Dutch portrait. For some
time I saw nothing but him.
A face like marble, with a fearful monumental look, and, for an old man,
singularly vivid strange eyes, the singularity of which rather grew upon me
as I looked; for his eyebrows were still black, though his hair descended
from his temples in long locks of the purest silver and fine as silk,
nearly to his shoulders.
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