d the passage, he laid his finger on his lip, and drawing close
to the girl, said, in a whisper.

'What is it, Nancy, dear?'

'What do you mean?' replied the girl, in the same tone.

'The reason of all this,' replied Fagin. 'If _he_'--he pointed with
his skinny fore-finger up the stairs--'is so hard with you (he's a
brute, Nance, a brute-beast), why don't you--'

'Well?' said the girl, as Fagin paused, with his mouth almost touching
her ear, and his eyes looking into hers.

'No matter just now. We'll talk of this again. You have a friend in
me, Nance; a staunch friend. I have the means at hand, quiet and
close. If you want revenge on those that treat you like a dog--like a
dog! worse than his dog, for he humours him sometimes--come to me. I
say, come to me. He is the mere hound of a day, but you know me of
old, Nance.'

'I know you well,' replied the girl, without manifesting the least
emotion. 'Good-night.'

She shrank back, as Fagin offered to lay his hand on hers, but said
good-night again, in a steady voice, and, answering his parting look
with a nod of intelligence, closed the door between them.

Fagin walked towards his home, intent upon the thoughts that were
working within his brain. He had conceived the idea--not from what had
just passed though that had tended to confirm him, but slowly and by
degrees--that Nancy, wearied of the housebreaker's brutality, had
conceived an attachment for some new friend. Her altered manner, her
repeated absences from home alone, her comparative indifference to the
interests of the gang for which she had once been so zealous, and,
added to these, her desperate impatience to leave home that night at a
particular hour, all favoured the supposition, and rendered it, to him
at least, almost matter of certainty. The object of this new liking
was not among his myrmidons. He would be a valuable acquisition with
such an assistant as Nancy, and must (thus Fagin argued) be secured
without delay.

There was another, and a darker object, to be gained. Sikes knew too
much, and his ruffian taunts had not galled Fagin the less, because the
wounds were hidden. The girl must know, well, that if she shook him
off, she could never be safe from his fury, and that it would be surely
wreaked--to the maiming of limbs, or perhaps the loss of life--on the
object of her more recent fancy.

'With a little persuasion,' thought Fagin, 'what more likely than that
she would consent