She tried to crouch more and more into the corner, into the hidden
shadow--to sink into the ground out of sight.
Once more he spoke, beseeching her to lift up her face, to let him
hear her speak.
But she only moaned.
'Sylvia!' said he, thinking he could change his tactics, and pique
her into speaking, that he would make a pretence of suspicion and
offence.
'Sylvia! one would think you weren't glad to see me back again at
length. I only came in late last night, and my first thought on
wakening was of you; it has been ever since I left you.' Sylvia took her hands away from her face; it was gray as the face of
death; her awful eyes were passionless in her despair.
'Where have yo' been?' she asked, in slow, hoarse tones, as if her
voice were half strangled within her.
'Been!' said he, a red light coming into his eyes, as he bent his
looks upon her; now, indeed, a true and not an assumed suspicion
entering his mind.
'Been!' he repeated; then, coming a step nearer to her, and taking
her hand, not tenderly this time, but with a resolution to be
satisfied.
'Did not your cousin--Hepburn, I mean--did not he tell you?--he saw
the press-gang seize me,--I gave him a message to you--I bade you
keep true to me as I would be to you.' Between every clause of this speech he paused and gasped for her
answer; but none came. Her eyes dilated and held his steady gaze
prisoner as with a magical charm--neither could look away from the
other's wild, searching gaze. When he had ended, she was silent for
a moment, then she cried out, shrill and fierce,-'Philip!' No answer.
Wilder and shriller still, 'Philip!' she cried.
He was in the distant ware-room completing the last night's work
before the regular shop hours began; before breakfast, also, that
his wife might not find him waiting and impatient.
He heard her cry; it cut through doors, and still air, and great
bales of woollen stuff; he thought that she had hurt herself, that
her mother was worse, that her baby was ill, and he hastened to the
spot whence the cry proceeded.
On opening the door that separated the shop from the sitting-room,
he saw the back of a naval officer, and his wife on the ground,
huddled up in a heap; when she perceived him come in, she dragged
herself up by means of a chair, groping like a blind person, and
came and stood facing him.
The officer turned fiercely round, and would have come towards
Philip, who was so bewildered by the scene that even yet he did not
understand who the stranger was, did not perceive for an instant
that he saw the realization of his greatest dread.