My father, my mother, my aunt, all appeared to be separated from me now by some impassable barrier.

Home seemed home no longer with Caroline dead, Uncle George gone, and a forbidden subject of talk perpetually and mysteriously interposing between my parents and me.
Though I never infringed the command my father had given me in his study (his words and looks, and that dreadful scream of my mother's, which seemed to be still ringing in my ears, were more than enough to insure my obedience), I also never lost the secret desire to penetrate the darkness which clouded over the fate of Uncle George.
For two years I remained at home and discovered nothing.

If I asked the servants about my uncle, they could only tell me that one morning he disappeared from the house.

Of the members of my father's family I could make no inquiries.

They lived far away, and never came to see us; and the idea of writing to them, at my age and in my position, was out of the question.