This was the kind of phrase that frightened her, and whirled her away before she was well aware, to a region of tacit admissions and implications. Had she said more than she meant? more than she even thought? Why, she thought nothing, or had thought nothing until Silas began, but now her sense of undefined well-being was taking shape, emerging from the mist of rustle and cadence, as the coast-line of undiscovered country emerges from the sea mists of dawn. She had been rushed; Silas had rushed her. She thought with terror of how Silas had fastened upon her first words; one could believe that he had only been waiting for her to pronounce them. He had been so ready. He had fired so many questions. He had obliged her to say, or at least to admit, by her silence, anything he wanted. He might not want much yet, but later? later? Apparently he was satisfied for the moment, for he picked up his Braille volume and fell to running his finger tips over the pages, smiling to himself. X I She hoped that the subject would be forgotten. It was not forgotten. That was clear to her, although Silas made no direct allusion; but by his manner he established the existence of a secret between them, and because she dared not say to him, “There is no secret,” the secret remained, growing insidiously. She was nervous and uneasy in his presence. Silas was kinder than ever she had known him, kinder and gentler, also he appeared to be more contented, but she had a terrified suspicion that he was contented only because his mind was occupied, and it seemed horrible to her that she should be the centre of that occupation. She had suddenly become involved in an affair whose existence, she protested to herself, had its being solely as the outcome of Silas’s imagination. She tried to shake it off and to laugh it away, but he held her to it. She had the helpless sensation of being on the end of a rope that he was slowly hauling in, maintaining his purchase over every miserly inch as he gained it. Hambley, soft-footed, insinuating, and urbane, added by his parasitic presence to the uneasiness of the house. The yellow faced, thin little man, with his black hair and his long front teeth like a rodent’s, never had an opinion of his own, but echoed Silas, or cackled with the laughter of approval. He alternately tried to provoke and to propitiate Nan and Morgan, gibed at them when they were civil to him, and fawned on them when they were curt. Nan shuddered when she wondered how many of Silas’s darker thoughts were shared out to his keeping.