I only knew that I grew older and that it did not matter since there was nobody to care . One day they brought Father in , white-lipped and groaning . His mare had thrown him , and he was never to walk again , although he lived for five years . Those five years had been the happiest of my life . For the first time I was necessary to someone -- there was something for me to do which nobody else could do so well . I was Father 's nurse and companion ; and I found my pleasure in tending him and amusing him , soothing his hours of pain and brightening his hours of ease . People said I `` did my duty '' toward him . I had never liked that word `` duty , '' since the day I had ridden past Alan Fraser in the beech wood . 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 -- XXXXX he was very bitter against us .
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