There
was Alice, who saw him often enough if she saw him half a dozen times a
year, and whose infrequent comings always disclosed some petty motive
of domestic finance and economics. There was Truesdale, a flippant
and insolent egotist, who had neither affection nor respect for his own
parents, his own family, his own birthplace. There was Roger, who hewed
roughly his own independent course, and who did not scruple to turn his
powers against his own father if crossed in his desires or balked in his
ambitions. And there was--
No; not Jane. "She is the only one of them all who really loves me," he
said. He was standing in one of the upper rooms under the crude light of
a northern window. On the yellow ground beneath him a workman was
stacking up sheets of blue slate in regular piles, and from some remote
quarter of the place came the sharp, metallic hammerings of the last
remaining plumbers. The searching daylight lit up cruelly the hollows of
the old man's eyes, and brought out from his whitened chin and cheeks the
last few threads of dim and dulling red. His tall, thin figure shrank
away from its loose coverings; never before had he seemed so detached, so
impersonal, so slightly poised on any mere physical basis.
He turned to Bingham. "This will be _her_ room--Jane's room. It must be
right, whatever the others are. Jane--cares for me. She has always been a
dutiful daughter; never a trial, never a disappointment--nothing but a
comfort.
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