Classicly

Thus abandoned by its sons, and denuded of the strongest elements of life, it may well be supposed that the castle at Penninghame was a melancholy house. What more easy than to conjure up the saddest picture of such a dwelling?

The old man, seated in his desolate home, brooding over perhaps the sins of his sons, perhaps his own—some injudicious indulgence, or untimely severity which had driven them from him; while the sister, worn out by the monotony of her solitary life, shut herself out from all society, and spent her life in longing for the absent, and pleading for them—a sad, solitary woman, with no pleasure in her lot, except that of the past.