He seemed unlike himself.

His face wore a curious expression of ecstasy and of hatred, also of hope and exultation, whenever he looked steadily at her.
That the final glimmer of a tottering reason was fast leaving the poor, aching head she was too young to realise.

Madness was a word that had only a vague meaning for her.

Though she did not understand her father at the present moment, though she was half afraid of him, she would have rejected with scorn and horror any suggestion that he was mad.
Therefore when he took her hand and, drawing her nearer to the bed and to himself, placed it upon her dead brother's breast, she recoiled at the touch of the inanimate body, so unlike anything she had ever touched before, but she obeyed her father without any question, and listened to his words as to those of a sage.
"Juliette, you are now fourteen, and able to understand what I am going to ask of you.

If I were not chained to this miserable chair, if I were not a hopeless, abject cripple, I would not depute anyone, not even you, my only child, to do that, which God demands that one of us should do." He paused a moment, then continued earnestly: "Remember, Juliette, that you are of the house of Marny, that you are a Catholic, and that God hears you now.