r. Of all this family lore I knew but
little and vaguely; only what is to be gathered from the fireside talk of
old retainers in the nursery.

I am sure my father loved me, and I know I loved him. With the sure
instinct of childhood I apprehended his tenderness, although it was never
expressed in common ways. But my father was an oddity. He had been early
disappointed in Parliament, where it was his ambition to succeed. Though a
clever man, he failed there, where very inferior men did extremely well.
Then he went abroad, and became a connoisseur and a collector; took a part,
on his return, in literary and scientific institutions, and also in the
foundation and direction of some charities. But he tired of this mimic
government, and gave himself up to a country life, not that of a sportsman,
but rather of a student, staying sometimes at one of his places and
sometimes at another, and living a secluded life.

Rather late in life he married, and his beautiful young wife died, leaving
me, their only child, to his care. This bereavement, I have been told,
changed him--made him more odd and taciturn than ever, and his temper also,
except to me, more severe. There was also some disgrace about his younger
brother--my uncle Silas--which he felt bitterly.

He was now walking up and down this spacious old room, which, extending
round an angle at the far end, was very dark in that quarter. It was his
wont to walk up and down thus, without speaking--an exercise which used to
remind me of Chateaubriand's father in the great chamber of the Chateau
de Combourg. At the far end he nearly disappeared in the gloom, and then
returning emerged for a few minutes, like a portrait with a background of
shadow, and then again in silence faded nearly out of view.

This monotony and silence would have been terrifying to a person less
accustomed to it than I. As it was, it had its effect. I have known my
father a whole day without once speaking to me. Though I loved him very
much, I was also much in awe of him.

While my father paced the floor, my thoughts were employed about the events
of a month before. So few things happened at Knowl out of the accustomed
routine, that a very trifling occurrence was enough to set people wondering
and conjecturing in that serene household. My father lived in remarkable
seclusion; except for a ride, he hardly ever left the grounds of Knowl; and
I don't think it happened twice in the year that a visitor sojourned