Mr Walker had said to his wife within ten minutes of the departure of
the visitor.

Mrs Crawley would not allow herself to be driven up to the garden gate
before her own house, but had left the carriage some three hundred yards
off down the road and from thence she walked home. It was now quite
dark. It was nearly six in the evening on a wet December night, and
although cloaks and shawls had been supplied to her, she was wet and
cold when she reached her home. But at such a moment, anxious as she was
to prevent the additional evil which would come to them from illness to
herself she could not pass through to her room till she had spoken to
her husband. He was sitting in the one sitting-room on the left side of
the passage as the house was entered, and with him was their daughter
Jane, a girl now nearly sixteen years of age. There was no light in the
room, and hardly more than a spark of fire showed in the grate. The
father was sitting on one side of the hearth, in an old arm-chair, and
there he had sat for the last hour without speaking. His daughter had
been in and out of the room, and had endeavoured to gain his attention
now and again by a word, but he had never answered her, and had not even
noticed her presence. At the moment when Mrs Crawley's step was heard
upon the gravel which led to the door, Jane was kneeling before the fire
with a hand upon her father's arm. She had tried to get her hand into
his, but he had either been unaware of the attempt, or rejected it.

'Here is mamma, at last,' said Jane, rising to her feet as her mother
entered the house.

'Are you all in the dark,' said Mrs Crawley, striving to speak in a
voice that should not sound sorrowful.