But at such a moment, anxious as she was to prevent the additional evil which would come to them all from illness to herself, she could not pass through to her room till she had spoken to her husband.

He was sitting in the one sitting-room on the left side of the passage as the house was entered, and with him was their daughter Jane, a girl now nearly sixteen years of age.

There was no light in the room, and hardly more than a spark of fire showed itself in the grate.

The father was sitting on one side of the hearth, in an old arm-chair, and there he had sat for the last hour without speaking.

His daughter had been in and out of the room, and had endeavoured to gain his attention now and again by a word, but he had never answered her, and had not even noticed her presence.