Charlotte's death was the one chance of redemption; and to that event he
looked as to a figure in a mathematical proposition. Of this girl
herself, with all her wealth of beauty and goodness, of hope and love, he
had scarcely any definite idea. She had so long been no more to him than
an important figure in the mathematics of his life, that he had lost the
power to behold her in any other light.
The hardness of his nature was something lower than absolute cruelty of
heart. It was less human than the half-insane ferocity of a Nero. It was
a calm indifference to the waste of human life, which, displayed upon a
larger field of operation, would have made a monster cold and passionless
as Sphinx or Chimaera.
"I must see Ann Woolper," he said to himself, presently, "she will not
dare to exclude me from that room."
He listened to the striking of the Bayswater clocks. Two o'clock. Within
and without the house reigned a profound silence. The room immediately
over Mr. Sheldon's study was Charlotte's room, and here there had been
for a long time no sound of life or movement.
"Asleep, I dare say," muttered Mr. Sheldon, "invalid and nurse both."
He exchanged his boots for slippers, which he kept in a little cupboard
below the bookshelves, among old newspapers, and went softly from the
room. The gas was burning dimly on the stairs and on the landing above.
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