He stopped suddenly and looked at me, half alarmed.
This made me laugh more heartily, and he grasped my hand with the serious air of a physician feeling the pulse of his patient.
Being assured there was no danger, he indulged in a little offhand cachinnation himself and was, I judged, well pleased with the trial, for he repeated it frequently afterward, and greatly to his amusement.
The word "woman," and others related to it, puzzled him not a little, for he had never seen a woman, except through the medium of my own mind and that of his father.

The subject interested him, and he gave much serious thought to it, questioning me closely at some of our interviews, as if dissatisfied with the idea conveyed to him.

Our discussions, however, had reached some slumbering chord in him, which, once touched, stirred his blood with its vibrations.

I do not think his isolation could have lasted much longer, for he became restless and eager to see the world.
Rayel was greatly depressed by his father's illness.

For months after that night, the excitement of which had so hastened the failure of the old man's strength, the silence of the great house was rarely broken by the sound of our voices.