“He’s here?” demanded Sophia, lifting her eyes to possible bedrooms.

“Yes,” said Mr. Boldero.  “I suppose you would wish to see him?”

“Yes,” said Sophia.

“You haven’t seen him for a long time, your sister told me?” Mr. Boldero murmured, sympathetically.

“Not since ’seventy,” said Sophia.

“Eh, dear!  Eh, dear!” ejaculated Mr. Boldero.  “I fear it’s been a sad business for ye, Mrs. Scales.  Not since ’seventy!” He sighed.  “You must take it as well as you can.  I’m not one as talks much, but I sympathize, with you.  I do that!  I wish my wife had been here to receive you.”

Tears came into Sophia’s eyes.

“Nay, nay!” he said.  “You must bear up now!”

“It’s you that make me cry,” said Sophia, gratefully.  “You were very good to take him in.  It must have been exceedingly trying for you.”

“Oh,” he protested, “you mustn’t talk like that.  I couldn’t leave a Boldero on the pavement, and an old man at that! . . .  Oh, to think that if he’d only managed to please his uncle he might ha’ been one of the richest men in Lancashire.  But then there’d ha’ been no Boldero Institute at Strangeways!” he added.

They both sat silent a moment.

“Will you come now?  Or will you wait a bit?” asked Mr. Boldero, gently.  “Just as you wish.  I’m sorry as my wife’s away, that I am!”

“I’ll come now,” said Sophia, firmly.  But she was stricken.

He conducted her up a short, dark flight of stairs, which gave on a passage, and at the end of the passage was a door ajar.  He pushed the door open.  “I’ll leave you for a moment,” he said, always in the same very restrained tone.  “You’ll find me downstairs, there, if you want me.”  And he moved away with hushed, deliberate tread.

Sophia went into the room, of which the white blind was drawn.  She appreciated Mr. Boldero’s consideration in leaving her.  She was trembling.  But when she saw, in the pale gloom, the face of an aged man peeping out from under a white sheet on a naked mattress, she started back, trembling no more—­rather transfixed into an absolute rigidity.  That was no conventional, expected shock that she had received.  It was a genuine unforeseen shock, the most violent that she had ever had.  In her mind she had not pictured Gerald as a very old man.  She knew that he was old; she had said to herself that he must be very old, well over seventy.  But she had not pictured him.  This face on the bed was painfully, pitiably old.  A withered face, with the shiny skin all drawn into wrinkles!  The stretched skin under the jaw was like the skin of a plucked fowl.  The cheek-bones stood up, and below them were deep hollows, almost like egg-cups.  A short, scraggy white beard covered the lower part of the face.  The hair was scanty, irregular, and quite white; a little white hair grew in the ears.  The shut mouth obviously hid toothless gums, for the lips were sucked