They were alone, the three of them, the absence of Gregory so startlingly unprecedented that despite Silas’s presence she obtained a foretaste of complete and sudden solitude with Linnet. She was admitted, she, the starved, to a feast of dominion. She found herself translated into a world where she, most marvellously,was the object of reverence and solicitude, and under this warmth of spoiling her natural grace expanded even beyond the anticipation of his delight. Aware that those ten days were but a reprieve, she gave herself up to making the most of them,—in so far as was consistent with the narrow rulings of her conscience. Linnet, exasperated at times, but ruefully submissive always, acknowledged and obeyed her imperious orders. She was very happy in her control of him; all the happier, perhaps in the knowledge that she owed it solely to the consent of his chivalry, without which (O exquisite danger!) her security would, like glass, be shivered.
There was, unforgettably, Silas. Silas proclaiming himself a friend, but, nevertheless, remaining a spy, a jailer. Silas who seemed to come upon them with a queer noiselessness; who cried, “Well?” over their shoulders, and who then, suddenly swooping down upon them, swept with his hands to learn whether they were sitting close together, or apart. They were always apart. Angered, he would say, “Well?” again, this time with a forced benevolence in his voice; and sometimes he would amuse himself by walking along between them, hilarious, taking an arm of each. This method of surprising them, thissham benevolence, this reasonless hilarity, struck cold terror into Nan as something indefinably sinister. Once, too, when she met Silas tapping his way over the cobbles towards the letter-box, on the envelope which he carried in his hand she read the name and address of Gregory. (Silas had adapted with delight this method of communication. He rubbed his hands together when he thought of Gregory, in Birmingham, tearing the flap open and scanning the lines of those able, indefinite letters.) But at other times she was puzzled by the hungry interest with which he questioned her, and in which her ear did not detect the usual unalloyed malignity, but rather a wistfulness, a desire to be admitted to a lovely secret, a genuine craving for participation, however humble, however incomplete, and beggarly upon the fringe of riches. At such times an eagerness crept into his face, as he bent forward to question her, his hands hanging loosely interlaced between his knees, the strong cords of his throat standing out in sculptural masses of light and shadow; words came from him almost timidly, as though he feared to presume or to give offence, but must nevertheless urge his examination, irresistibly tempted and allured. Nan, who sat sewing, lookedinto his face with wonderment. Experience taught her mistrust, but instinct taught her a heart-searching pity. There was always that same feeling which she had for Silas, which she could not explain, and which nothing,—no dread, no premonition, no knowledge,—could permanently destroy. It reawakened always at the sound of his yearning voice. Once it led her to put her fingers on his forehead, “How much you’ve missed!”
He sprang away, detected at the very moment when forgetful absorption had suspended his defiance.
“I’ve had all I wanted. Make no mistake. You’re wasting your sloppy pity....”