was possibly a little disordered in
his mind. But no such suspicion for a moment troubled me. I was quite sure
that he spoke of a real person who was coming, and that his journey was
something momentous; and when the visitor of whom he spoke did come, and he
departed with him upon that mysterious excursion, I perfectly understood
his language and his reasons for saying so much and yet so little.

You are not to suppose that all my hours were passed in the sort of
conference and isolation of which I have just given you a specimen; and
singular and even awful as were sometimes my _tete-a-tetes_ with my father,
I had grown so accustomed to his strange ways, and had so unbounded a
confidence in his affection, that they never depressed or agitated me in
the manner you might have supposed. I had a great deal of quite a different
sort of chat with good old Mrs. Rusk, and very pleasant talks with Mary
Quince, my somewhat ancient maid; and besides all this, I had now and then
a visit of a week or so at the house of some one of our country neighbours,
and occasionally a visitor--but this, I must own, very rarely--at Knowl.

There had come now a little pause in my father's revelations, and my fancy
wandered away upon a flight of discovery. Who, I again thought, could this
intending visitor be, who was to come, armed with the prerogative to make
my stay-at-home father forthwith leave his household goods--his books and
his child--to whom he clung, and set forth on an unknown knight-errantry?
Who but Uncle Silas, I thought--that mysterious relative whom I had
never seen--who was, it had in old times been very darkly hinted to me,
unspeakably unfortunate or unspeakably vicious--whom I had seldom heard my
father mention, and then in a hurried way, and with a pained, thoughtful
look. Once only he had said anything from which I could gather my father's
opinion of him, and then it was so slight and enigmatical that I might have
filled in the character very nearly as I pleased.

It happened thus. One day Mrs. Rusk was in the oak-room, I being then about
fourteen. She was removing a stain from a tapestry chair, and I watched the
process with a childish interest. She sat down to rest herself--she had
been stooping over her work--and threw her head back, for her neck was
weary, and in this position she fixed her eyes on a portrait that hung
before her.

It was a full-length, and represented a singularly handsome young man,
dark, slender, e