conference and isolation of which I have just given you a specimen; and
singular and even awful as were sometimes my _tête-a-têtes_ with my father,
I had grown so accustomed to his strange ways, and had so unbounded a
confidence in his affection, that they never depressed or agitated me in
the manner you might have supposed. I had a great deal of quite a different
sort of chat with good old Mrs. Rusk, and very pleasant talks with Mary
Quince, my somewhat ancient maid; and besides all this, I had now and then
a visit of a week or so at the house of some one of our country neighbours,
and occasionally a visitor--but this, I must own, very rarely--at Knowl.

There had come now a little pause in my father's revelations, and my fancy
wandered away upon a flight of discovery. Who, I again thought, could this
intending visitor be, who was to come, armed with the prerogative to make
my stay-at-home father forthwith leave his household goods--his books and
his child--to whom he clung, and set forth on an unknown knight-errantry?
Who but Uncle Silas, I thought--that mysterious relative whom I had
never seen--who was, it had in old times been very darkly hinted to me,
unspeakably unfortunate or unspeakably vicious--whom I had seldom heard my
father mention, and then in a hurried way, and with a pained, thoughtful
look. Once only he had said anything from which I could gather my father's
opinion of him, and then it was so slight and enigmatical that I might have
filled in the character very nearly as I pleased.

It happened thus. One day Mrs. Rusk was in the oak-room, I being then about
fourteen. She was removing a stain from a tapestry chair, and I watched the
process with a childish interest. She sat down to rest herself--she had
been stooping over her work--and threw her head back, for her neck was
weary, and in this position she fixed her eyes on a portrait that hung
before her.