sentences:  Through her father and her worldly, cheerful cousin, Lady Monica Knollys, she gradually learns more regarding her uncle, Silas Ruthyn, a black sheep of the family whom she has never met; once an infamous rake and gambler, he is now apparently a fervently reformed Christian.His reputation has been tainted by the suspicious suicide of a man to whom Silas owed an enormous gambling debt, which took place within a locked, apparently impenetrable room in Uncle Silas's mansion at Bartram-Haugh.In the first part of the novel, Maud's father hires a French governess, Madame de la Rougierre, as a companion for her.