atch the master as he sat at his desk, the
light falling strongly upon his face, intent upon the book or manuscript
before him. Dick contemplated him very long in this attitude. The sense
of watching his every motion, himself meanwhile utterly unseen, was
delicious. How little the master was thinking what eyes were on him!

Well,--there were two things quite certain. One was, that, if he chose,
he could meet the schoolmaster alone, either in the road or in a more
solitary place, if he preferred to watch his chance for an evening or
two. The other was, that he commanded his position, as he sat at his
desk in the evening, in such a way that there would be very little
difficulty,--so far as that went; of course, however, silence is always
preferable to noise, and there is a great difference in the marks left by
different casualties. Very likely nothing would come of all this
espionage; but, at any rate, the first thing to be done with a man you
want to have in your power is to learn his habits.

Since the tea-party at the Widow Rowens's, Elsie had been more fitful and
moody than ever. Dick understood all this well enough, you know. It was
the working of her jealousy against that young schoolgirl to whom the
master had devoted himself for the sake of piquing the heiress of the
Dudley mansion. Was it possible, in any way, to exasperate her irritable
nature against him, and in this way to render her more accessible to his
own advances? It was difficult to influence her at all. She endured his
company without seeming to enjoy it. She watched him with that strange
look of hers, sometimes as if she were on her guard against him,
sometimes as if she would like to strike at him as in that fit of
childish passion. She ordered him about with a haughty indifference
which reminded him of his own way with the dark-eyed women whom he had
known so well of old. All this added a secret pleasure to the other
motives he had for worrying her with jealous suspicions. He knew she
brooded silently on any grief that poisoned her comfort,--that she fed on
it, as it were, until it ran with every drop of blood in her veins,--and
that, except in some paroxysm of rage, of which he himself was not likely
the second time to be the object, or in some deadly vengeance wrought
secretly, against which he would keep a sharp lookout, so far as he was
concerned, she had no outlet for her dangerous, smouldering passions.

Beware of the woman who