I could not connect it with what I did for Father . It was my delight because I loved him . I did not mind the moods and the irritable outbursts that drove others from him . But now he was dead , and I sat in the sullen dusk , wishing that I need not go on with life either . The loneliness of the big echoing house weighed on my spirit . I was solitary , without companionship . I looked out on the outside world where the only sign of human habitation visible to my eyes was the light twinkling out from the library window of Glenellyn on the dark fir hill two miles away . By that light I knew Alan Fraser must have returned from his long sojourn abroad , for it only shone when he was at Glenellyn . He still lived there , something of a hermit , people said ; he had never married , and he cared nothing for society . His companions were books and dogs and horses ; he was given to scientific researches and wrote much for the reviews ; he travelled a great deal . So much I knew in a vague way . I even saw him occasionally in church , and never thought the years had changed him much , save that his face was sadder and sterner than of old and his hair had become iron-grey . People said that he had inherited and cherished the old hatred of the Shirleys -- that he was very bitter against us . I believed it . He had the face of a good hater -- or lover -- a man who could play with no emotion but must take it in all earnestness and intensity . When it was quite dark the housekeeper brought in the lights and handed me a letter which , she said , a man had just brought up from the village post office . I looked at it curiously before I opened it , wondering from whom it was . It was postmarked from a city several miles away , and the firm , decided , rather peculiar handwriting was strange to me . I had no correspondents . After Father 's death I had received a few perfunctory notes of condolence from distant relatives and family friends .
They had hurt me cruelly , XXXXX they seemed to exhale a subtle spirit of congratulation on my being released from a long and unpleasant martyrdom of attendance on an invalid , that quite overrode the decorous phrases of conventional sympathy in which they were expressed .
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