Jaded after a night of broken sleep and much agitation, I was summoned next
morning to my uncle's room.
He received me _oddly_, I thought. His manner had changed, and made an
uncomfortable impression upon me. He was gentle, kind, smiling, submissive,
as usual; but it seemed to me that he experienced henceforth toward me the
same half-superstitous repulsion which I had always felt from him. Dream,
or voice, or vision--which had done it? There seemed to be an unconscious
antipathy and fear. When he thought I was not looking, his eyes were
sometimes grimly fixed for a moment upon me. When I looked at him, his eyes
were upon the book before him; and when he spoke, a person not heeding what
he uttered would have fancied that he was reading aloud from it.
There was nothing tangible but this shrinking from the encounter of our
eyes. I said he was kind as usual. He was even more so. But there was this
new sign of our silently repellant natures. Dislike it could not be. He
knew I longed to serve him. Was it shame? Was there not a shade of horror
in it?
'I have not slept,' said he. 'For me the night has passed in thought, and
the fruit of it is this--I _cannot_, Maud, accept your noble offer.
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