The air was still
with approaching twilight; the sun slipped below the western trees and
shadows gathered under the lilac bushes; the sky was April green.
"Your father has been dead twelve years," Gilda Penny said unexpectedly.
He looked down and saw that she was decrepit, an old woman. Her mouth
had sunken, her ears projected in dry folds from her scant strands of
hair. He recalled Daniel Barnes Penny; the earliest memories of his
mother, a vigorous, brown-faced woman with alert, black eyes,
quick-stepping, dictatorial in the sphere of her house and dependents.
One after the other, like the sun, they were slipping out of the sight
of Myrtle Forge; vanished and remained; passed from falling hand to hand
the unextinguished flame of life. Gilda Penny was merging fast into the
formless dark. She clung with pathetically tense fingers to his arm as
they turned into the house.
He had ordered a carriage immediately after an early supper; and,
informing his coachman of his wish to proceed alone, drove quickly away
through the dusk. He was going to Shadrach Furnace, to meet Susan for
the first time since the unhappy occasion in the Mayor's chamber. He had
decided, stifling his increasing impatience, not to see her until
Essie's trial was over.
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