CHAPTER LXIX

And so on the following day Angela and Pigott returned to the Abbey House, but they both felt that it was a sad home-coming.  Indeed, if there had been no other cause for melancholy, the sight of Philip’s face was enough to excite it in the most happy-minded person.  Not that Angela saw much of him, however, for they still kept to their old habit of not living together.  All day her father was shut up in his room transacting business that had reference to the accession of his property and the settlement of George’s affairs; for his cousin had died intestate, so he took his personalty and wound up the estate as heir-at-law.  At night, however, he would go out and walk for miles, and in all weathers—­he seemed to dread spending the dark hours at home.

When Angela had been back about a month in the old place, she accidentally got a curious insight into her father’s mental sufferings.

It so happened that one night, finding it impossible to sleep, and being much oppressed by sorrowful thoughts, she thought that she would read the hours away.  But the particular book she wanted to find was downstairs, and it was two o’clock in the morning, and chilly in the passages.  However, anything is better than sleeplessness, and the tyranny of sad thoughts and empty longings; so, throwing on her dressing-gown, she took a candle, and set off, thinking as she went how she had in the same guise fled before her husband.

She got her book, and was returning, when she saw that there was still a light in her father’s study, and that the door was ajar.  At that moment it so happened that an unusually sharp draught coming down one of the passages of the rambling old house, caught her candle and extinguished it.  Making her way to the study-door, she pushed it open to see if anybody was there previous to asking for a light.  At first she could see nobody.  On the table, which was covered with papers, there stood two candles, a brandy-bottle, and a glass.  She was just moving to the candle to get a light, when her eye fell on what she at first believed to be a heap of clothes huddled together on the floor in the corner of the room.  Further examination showed that it was a man—­she could distinctly see the backs of his hands.  Her first ideas was that she had surprised a thief, and she stopped, feeling frightened and not knowing what to do.  Just then the bundle straightened itself a little and dropped its hands, revealing to her wondering gaze her own father’s face, which wore the same awful look of abject fear which she had seen upon it when he passed through the hall beneath her just before Isleworth broke into flame on the night of her marriage.  The eyes appeared to be starting from the sockets in an effort to clearly realize an undefinable horror, the hair, now daily growing greyer, was partially erect, and the pallid lips, half-opened, as though to speak words that would not come.  He saw her too, but did not seem surprised at her presence.  Covering up his eyes again with one hand, he shrank further back into his corner, and with the other pointed to a large leather arm-chair in which Pigott had told her her grandfather had died.