Her father muttered something, but not angrily, and she soon busied herself about him, doing some little thing for his comfort, as was her wont. But as she did so she could not but remember that she had undertaken to be a spy upon him, to secrete his key, and to search surreptitiously for that which he was supposed to be keeping fraudulently. As she sat by him empty-handed--for it was Sunday night, and as a Christian she never worked with a needle upon the Sunday--she told herself that she could not do it. Could there be any harm done were she to ask him now, openly, what papers he kept in that desk? But she desired to obey her lover where obedience was possible, and he had expressly forbidden her to ask any such question. She sat, therefore, and said no word that could tend to ease her suffering; and then, when the time came, she went suffering to her bed. On the next day there seemed to come to her no opportunity for doing that which she had to do. Souchey was in and out of the house all the morning, explaining to her that they had almost come to the end of the flour and of the potatoes which he had bought, that he himself had swallowed on the previous evening the last tip of the great sausage-- for, as he had alleged, it was no use a fellow dying of starvation outright--and that there was hardly enough of chocolate left to make three cups. Nina had brought out her necklace and had asked Souchey to take it to the shop and do the best with it he could; but Souchey had declined the commission, alleging that he would be accused of having stolen it; and Nina had then prepared to go herself, but her father had called her, and he had come out into the sitting-room and had remained there during the afternoon, so that both the sale of the trinket and the search in the desk had been postponed. The latter she might have done at night, but when the night came the deed seemed to be more horrid than it would be even in the day.