He said something in his clear, gentle, but cold voice, and, taking both my hands, led me affectionately to a chair near his own.  He was a miserable invalid, he told me, after speaking a little eulogy of his brother and examining me closely, respecting his illness and its symptoms.  At last, remarking that I must be fatigued, he rose and kissed me with a solemn tenderness, and, placing his hand on a large Bible, bade me “Remember that book; in it lives my only hope.  Consult it, my beloved niece, day and night as the only oracle.”

“I’m awful afraid of the governor, I am,” said Cousin Milly, when we had left him.  “I was in a qualm.  When he spies me a-napping maybe he don’t fetch me a prod with his pencil-case over the head.”

But Milly was a pretty and a clever creature in spite of her uncouth dialect, and I liked her very much.  We spent much time taking long country rambles and exploring the old house, many of whose rooms were closed and shuttered.  Of my uncle we saw little.  He was “queerish,” Milly said, and I learnt afterwards he took much laudanum.

My other cousin, Dudley, I did not meet till later.  To my horror, I beheld in him one of the party of ruffians who had terrified me so much the day of the attempted abduction at Knowl; but he stoutly denied ever having been there with an air so confident that I began to think I must be the dupe of a chance resemblance.  My uncle viewed him with a strange, paternal affection.  But dear Cousin Monica had written asking Milly and me to go to her, and we had some of the pleasantest and happiest days of our lives at her house of Elverston, for there Milly met her good little curate, the Rev. Sprigge Biddlepen, and Lord Ilbury.

Uncle Silas was terribly ill when we returned to Bartram-Haugh, the result of an overdose of opium; but for the doctor’s aid he would have died.  Remembering how desperate Lady Knollys had told me his monetary position was, a new and dreadful suspicion began to haunt me.

“Had he attempted to poison himself?”

I remember I was left alone with him while his attendant fetched a fresh candle.  A small thick Bible lay on the mantle-shelf.  I turned over its leaves, and lighted on two or three odd-looking papers—­promissory notes, I believe—­when Uncle Silas, dressed in a long white morning-gown, slid over the end of the bed and stood behind me with a deathlike scowl and simper.  Diving over my shoulder, with his long, thin hand he snatched the Bible from me, and whispered over my head, “The serpent beguiled her, and she did eat.”

It seemed an hour before Wyat came back.  You may be sure I did not prolong my watch.  I had a long, hysterical fit of weeping when I got to my room:  the sorceries of Bartram-Haugh were enveloping.

About this time Dudley began to persecute me with his odious attentions.  I was obliged to complain of him to my uncle.  He was disposed to think well of the match; but I could not consent, and it was arranged that my cousin should go abroad.  And then that night I had the key to some of the mysterious doings at Bartram-Haugh—­the comings and goings in the darkness which had so often startled me—­the face of Madame de la Rougierre peeped into the room.