I fancied
there was a cool consciousness of success behind all the deferential
phraseology of Captain Oakley, which nettled me extremely. No; there could
be no doubt. I tapped softly at the door.
'What is it _now_, Miss?' snarled the querulous old woman, with her
shrivelled fingers on the door-handle.
'Can I see my uncle for a moment?'
'He's tired, and not a word from him all day long.'
'Not ill, though?'
'Awful bad in the night,' said the old crone, with a sudden savage glare in
my face, as if _I_ had brought it about.
'Oh! I'm very sorry. I had not heard a word of it.'
'No one does but old Wyat. There's Milly there never asks neither--his own
child!'
'Weakness, or what?'
'One o' them fits. He'll slide awa' in one o' them some day, and no one but
old Wyat to know nor ask word about it; that's how 'twill be.'
'Will you please hand him this note, if he is well enough to look at it,
and say I am at the door?'
She took it with a peevish nod and a grunt, closing the door in my face,
and in a few minutes returned--
'Come in wi' ye,' said Dame Wyat, and I appeared.
Uncle Silas, who, after his nightly horror or vision, lay extended on a
sofa, with his faded yellow silk dressing-gown about him, his long white
hair hanging toward the ground, and that wild and feeble smile lighting his
face--a glimmer I feared to look upon--his long thin arms lay by his sides,
with hands and fingers that stirred not, except when now and then, with a
feeble motion, he wet his temples and forehead with eau de Cologne from a
glass saucer placed beside him.
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