Dora passed the long evening of that day in her father’s room. It was one of those days in which the sun seems to refuse to set, the daylight to depart. It rolled out in afternoon sunshine, prolonged as it seemed for half a year’s time, showing no inclination to wane. When the sun at last went down, there ensued a long interval of day without it, and slowly, slowly, the shades of twilight came on. Mr. Mannering had been very quiet all the afternoon. He had sat brooding, unwilling to speak. The big book came back with Mr. Fiddler’s compliments, and was replaced upon his table, where he sat sometimes turning over the pages, not reading, doing nothing. There are few things more terrible to a looker-on than this silence, this self-absorption, taking no notice of anything outside of him, of a convalescent. The attitude of despondency, the bowed head, the curved shoulders, are bad enough in themselves: but nothing is so dreadful as the silence, the preoccupation with nothing, the eyes fixed on a page which is not read, or a horizon in which nothing is visible. Dora sat by him with a book, too, in which she was interested, which is perhaps the easiest way of bearing this; but the book ended before the afternoon did, and then she had nothing to do but to watch him and wonder what he was thinking of--whether his mind was roving over lands unknown to her, whether it was about the Museum he was thinking, or the doctor’s orders, or the bills, two or three of which had by misadventure fallen into his hands. What was it? He remained in the same attitude, quite still and steady, not moving a finger. Sometimes she hoped he might have fallen asleep; sometimes she addressed to him a faltering question, to which he answered Yes or No. He was not impatient when she spoke to him. He replied to her in monosyllables, which are almost worse than silence. And Dora durst not protest, could not upbraid him with that dreadful silence, as an older person might have done. “Oh, father, talk to me a little!” she once cried in her despair; but he said gently that he had nothing to talk about, and silenced the girl. He had taken the various meals and refreshments that were ordered for him, when they came, with something that was half a smile and half a look of disgust; and this was the final exasperation to Dora. “Oh, father! when you know that you must take it--that it is the only way of getting well again.” “I am taking it,” he said, with that twist of the lip at every spoonful which betrayed how distasteful it was. This is hard to bear for the most experienced of nurses, and what should it be for a girl of sixteen? She clasped her hands together in her impatience to keep herself down. And then there came a knock at the door, and Gilchrist appeared, begging that Miss Dora would put on her hat and go out for a walk with Miss Bethune. “I’ll come and sit with my work in a corner, and be there if he wants anything.”