Once or twice he had been
conscious of a strange sense as of some couchant beast beside him ready
to spring; also of some curious weakening and disintegration in Melrose,
even since he had first known him. He seemed to be more incalculable,
less to be depended on. His memory was often faulty, and his irritability
hardly sane.
Faversham indeed was certain, from his own observation, that the mere
excitement of opening and exploring the huge collections he had
accumulated, during these twenty years, in the locked rooms of the house,
had imposed a sharp nervous strain on a man now past seventy, who for all
the latter part of his life had taken no exercise and smoked incessantly.
Supposing he were suddenly to fall ill and die--what would happen to the
house and its collections, or to the immense fortune, the proportions of
which the new agent was now slowly beginning to appreciate? All sorts of
questions with regard to the vanished wife and child were now rising
insistently in Faversham's mind. Were they really dead, and if so, how
and where? Once or twice, since his acceptance of the agency, Melrose had
repeated to him with emphasis: "I am alone in the world." Dixon and his
wife preserved an absolute silence on the subject, and loyalty to his
employer forbade Faversham to question them or any other of Melrose's
dependents. It struck him, indeed, that Mrs. Dixon had shown a curious
agitation when, that morning, Faversham had conveyed to her Melrose's
instructions to prepare a certain room on the first floor as the agent's
future bedroom.
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