CHAPTER XXXII
UNCLE SILAS
I thought my odd cousin was also impressed with a kind of awe, though different in degree from mine, for a shade overcast her face, and she was silent as we walked side by side along the gallery, accompanied by the crone who carried the candle which lighted us to the door of that apartment which I may call Uncle Silas’s presence chamber.
Milly whispered to me as we approached—
‘Mind how you make a noise; the governor’s as sharp as a weasel, and nothing vexes him like that.’
She was herself toppling along on tiptoe. We paused at a door near the head of the great staircase, and L’Amour knocked timidly with her rheumatic knuckles.
A voice, clear and penetrating, from within summoned us to enter. The old woman opened the door, and the next moment I was in the pr
