tern. He passes his mornings at work on the prints, then comes to my rooms, to teach me drawing—to keep close to me, that is to say; to look and to murmur, while I daub paint on card; to be grave and ostentatiously gallant.
The days fall back in their pattern—except that, where before they had Agnes in them, now they have Sue.
And Sue is not like Agnes. She knows more. She knows her own worth and purpose. She knows she must listen and watch, to see that Mr Rivers does not come too close, or speak too confidentially, to her mistress; but she also knows that when he does come near she is to turn her head aside and be deaf to his whispers. She does turn her head, I see her do it; but I see her, too, steal glances at us from the edge of her eye—study our reflections in the chimney-glass and windows—watch our very shadows! The room, in which I have passed so many captive hours I know it as a prisoner knows his cell—the room seems changed to me now. It seems filled with shining surfaces, each one an eye of hers.
When those eyes meet mine, they are veiled and blameless. But when they meet Richard''s, I see the leap of knowledge or understanding that passes between them; and I cannot look at her.
For of course, though she knows much, what she has is a counterfeit knowledge, and worthless; and her satisfaction in the keeping of it—in the nursing of what she supposes her secret—is awful to me. She does not know she is the hinge of all our scheme, the point about which our plot turns; she thinks I am that point. She does not suspect that, in seeming to mock me, Richard mocks her: that after he has turned to her in private, perhaps to smile, perhaps to grimace, he turns to me, and smiles and grimaces in earnest.