UNCLE SILAS

A Tale of Bartram-Haugh




CHAPTER I

_AUSTIN RUTHYN, OF KNOWL, AND HIS DAUGHTER_


It was winter--that is, about the second week in November--and great gusts
were rattling at the windows, and wailing and thundering among our tall
trees and ivied chimneys--a very dark night, and a very cheerful fire
blazing, a pleasant mixture of good round coal and spluttering dry wood, in
a genuine old fireplace, in a sombre old room. Black wainscoting glimmered
up to the ceiling, in small ebony panels; a cheerful clump of wax candles
on the tea-table; many old portraits, some grim and pale, others pretty,
and some very graceful and charming, hanging from the walls. Few pictures,
except portraits long and short, were there. On the whole, I think you
would have taken the room for our parlour. It was not like our modern
notion of a drawing-room. It was a long room too, and every way capacious,
but irregularly shaped.

A girl, of a little more than seventeen, looking, I believe, younger still;
slight and rather tall, with a great deal of golden hair, dark grey-eyed,
and with a countenance rather sensitive and melancholy, was sitting at the
tea-table, in a reverie. I was that girl.