He spent the interval before his departure in making observations for
himself, prowling round when he might least be expected, entering his
house, suddenly and noiselessly, or even looking in through the
window,—which, being tall, he could do with ease,—and sometimes on these
occasions he saw Nan and Morgan together, talking, in the midst of their
occupations, but he never saw more than that. To see them talking was,
however, a source of exasperation to him; he fancied that the most
tender words were passing between them under his very eyes, an affront,
an outrage, that drove him to gnaw his finger-tips in the same way that
Silas did, and to fly the house lest his black looks should arouse their
vigilance. His behaviour became wild and unaccountable. When he was
alone with Nan, he turned roughly demonstrative, while behind his
caresses lay the intention of finding out whether she would wince. It
was all too clear to him that she did wince. More than once he was upon
the point of questioning her, and again upon the point of refusing to
leave with Calthorpe, but he crushed these impulses. If he remained, he
might never know, so wily and circumspect would they be; if he went,
they would throw off much of their caution before blind Silas. Silas was
a good watch-dog, who in ten days would nose out certainty. To the
suspense of those ten days Gregory would expose himself; a martyrdom
which he undertook in the bleak spirit of a martyr, grimly, without
heroics, in the stern desire to win truth at the cost of pain.
She winced—oh yes! she winced. She turned away from him, said he
bothered her, kept herself unnecessarily busy. The more she evaded him,
the less willing was he to leave her alone; he followed her when she
fled into the scullery, and with a gasp she became aware of his silent
presence as his hands were laid from behind upon her shoulders. This was
a persecution worse than the verbal persecution she had endured from
Silas! She prayed ardently and with terror for the day when he should
go. The ten days’ reprieve stretched luminous as a lifetime—but even
then there would be Silas, Silas honeyed again, when, all her wits cried
to her, he was fifty times more dangerous. She thought that without
Linnet she would have become truly distracted; yet even to Linnet, at
home, she dared not speak overmuch. She could have kissed the forewoman
of her department who again sent her to his room with a message.