She believed what other people told her to believe, she hoped what
they told her to hope. She was the very incarnation and express image of
helpless misery.
So, in utter darkness of mind, Mr. Sheldon awaited his destiny. The day
drew very near on which he must find certain sums of ready money, or must
accept the dreary alternative of ruin and disgrace. He had the policies
of assurance in his cash-box, together with the will which made him
Charlotte's sole legatee; he had fixed in his own mind upon the man to
whom he could apply for an advance of four thousand pounds on one of the
two policies, and he relied on getting his banker to lend him money on
the security of the second. But for the one needful event he had yet to
wait. That event was Charlotte Halliday's death.
Of his dreary wanderings in the early morning the household knew nothing.
The time which he chose for these purposeless rambles was just the time
when no one was astir. The watchers in the two rooms above heard neither
his going out nor his coming in, so stealthy were his movements on every
occasion. But without this intermission from the dreadful concentration
of his life, without this amount of physical exercise and fresh air,
Philip Sheldon could scarcely have lived through this period. The
solitude of shipwrecked mariner cast upon a desolate island could hardly
be more lonely than this man's life had been since his return from
Harold's Hill.
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