I turned about and sat down, leaning my head upon my arms. Then suddenly I
sat up, as for the first time the picture of Uncle Silas's littered
room, and the travelling bags and black boxes plied on the floor by his
table--the desk, hat-case, umbrella, coats, rugs, and mufflers, all ready
for a journey--reached my brain and suggested thought. The _mise en
scene_ had remained in every detail fixed upon my retina; and how I
wondered--'When is he going--how soon? Is he going to carry me away and
place me in a madhouse?'
'Am I--am I mad?' I began to think. 'Is this all a dream, or is it real?'
I remembered how a thin polite gentleman, with a tall grizzled head and a
black velvet waistcoat, came into the carriage on our journey, and said a
few words to me; how Madame whispered him something, and he murmured 'Oh!'
very gently, with raised eyebrows, and a glance at me, and thenceforward
spoke no more to me, only to Madame, and at the next station carried his
hat and other travelling chattels into another carriage. Had she told him I
was mad?
These horrid bars! Madame always with me! The direful hints that dropt from
my uncle! My own terrific sensations!--All these evidences revolved in my
brain, and presented themselves in turn like writings on a wheel of fire.
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