It was such an assurance as the sharp downstrokes of her pen hadn't yet had occasion to give him; but they somehow at the present crisis stood for a probable absoluteness in any decree of the writer.

He looked at Sarah's name and address, in short, as if he had been looking hard into her mother's face, and then turned from it as if the face had declined to relax.

But since it was in a manner as if Mrs.Newsome were thereby all the more, instead of the less, in the room, and were conscious, sharply and sorely conscious, of himself, so he felt both held and hushed, summoned to stay at least and take his punishment.

By staying, accordingly, he took it--creeping softly and vaguely about and waiting for Sarah to come in.

She WOULD come in if he stayed long enough, and he had now more than ever the sense of her success in leaving him a prey to anxiety.