Chapter: Adept as she was, in all the arts of cunning and dissimulation, the
girl Nancy could not wholly conceal the effect which the knowledge of
the step she had taken, wrought upon her mind.  She remembered that
both the crafty Jew and the brutal Sikes had confided to her schemes,
which had been hidden from all others: in the full confidence that she
was trustworthy and beyond the reach of their suspicion.  Vile as those
schemes were, desperate as were their originators, and bitter as were
her feelings towards Fagin, who had led her, step by step, deeper and
deeper down into an abyss of crime and misery, whence was no escape;
still, there were times when, even towards him, she felt some
relenting, lest her disclosure should bring him within the iron grasp
he had so long eluded, and he should fall at last--richly as he merited
such a fate--by her hand.

But, these were the mere wanderings of a mind unable wholly to detach
itself from old companions and associations, though enabled to fix
itself steadily on one object, and resolved not to be turned aside by
any consideration.  Her fears for Sikes would have been more powerful
inducements to recoil while there was yet time; but she had stipulated
that her secret should be rigidly kept, she had dropped no clue which
could lead to his discovery, she had refused, even for his sake, a
refuge from all the guilt and wretchedness that encompasses her--and
what more could she do! She was resolved.

Though all her mental struggles terminated in this conclusion, they
forced themselves upon her, again and again, and left their traces too.
She grew pale and thin, even within a few days.  At times, she took no
heed of what was passing before her, or no part in conversations where
once, she would have been the loudest.  At other times, she laughed
without merriment, and was noisy without a moment afterwards--she sat
silent and dejected, brooding with her head upon her hands, while the
very effort by which she roused herself, told, more forcibly than even
these indications, that she was ill at ease, and that her thoughts were
occupied with matters very different and distant from those in the
course of discussion by her companions.

It was Sunday night, and the bell of the nearest church struck the
hour.  Sikes and the Jew were talking, but they paused to listen.  The
girl looked up from the low seat on which she crouched, and listened
too.  Eleven.

'An hour this side of midnight,' said Sikes, raising the blind to look
out and returning to his seat.  'Dark and heavy it is too. A good night
for business this.'

'Ah!' replied Fagin.  'What a pity, Bill, my dear, that there's none
quite ready to be done.'

'You're right for once,' replied Sikes gruffly.  'It is a pity, for I'm
in the humour too.'

Fagin sighed, and shook his head despondingly.

'We must make up for lost time when we've got things into a good train.
That's all I know,' said Sikes.

'That's the way to talk, my dear,' replied Fagin, venturing to pat him
on the shoulder.  'It does me good to hear you.'

'Does you good, does it!' cried Sikes.  'Well, so be it.'

'Ha! ha! ha!' laughed Fagin, as if he were relieved by even this
concession.  'You're like yourself to-night, Bill.  Quite like
yourself.'

'I don't feel like myself when you lay that withered old claw on my
shoulder, so take it away,' said Sikes, casting off the Jew's hand.

'It make you nervous, Bill,--reminds you of being nabbed, does it?'
said Fagin, determined not to be offended.

'Reminds me of being nabbed by the devil,' returned Sikes. 'There never
was another man with such a face as yours, unless it was your father,
and I suppose _he_ is singeing his grizzled red beard by this time,
unless you came straight from the old 'un without any father at all
betwixt you; which I shouldn't wonder at, a bit.'

Fagin offered no reply to this compliment:  but, pulling Sikes by the
sleeve, pointed his finger towards Nancy, who had taken advantage of
the foregoing conversation to put on her bonnet, and was now leaving
the room.

'Hallo!' cried Sikes.  'Nance.  Where's the gal going to at this time
of night?'

'Not far.'

'What answer's that?' retorted Sikes.  'Do you hear me?'

'I don't know where,' replied the girl.

'Then I do,' said Sikes, more in the spirit of obstinacy than because
he had any real objection to the girl going where she listed.
'Nowhere.  Sit down.'

'I'm not well.  I told you that before,' rejoined the girl.  'I want a
breath of air.'

'Put your head out of the winder,' replied Sikes.

'There's not enough there,' said the girl.  'I want it in the street.'

'Then you won't have it,' replied Sikes.  With which assurance he rose,
locked the door, took the key out, and pulling her bonnet from her
head, flung it up to the top of an old press.  'There,' said the
robber.  'Now stop quietly where you are, will you?'

'It's not such a matter as a bonnet would keep me,' said the girl
turning very pale.  'What do you mean, Bill?  Do you know what you're
doing?'

'Know what I'm--Oh!' cried Sikes, turning to Fagin, 'she's out of her
senses, you know, or she daren't talk to me in that way.'

'You'll drive me on the something desperate,' muttered the girl placing
both hands upon her breast, as though to keep down by force some
violent outbreak.  'Let me go, will you,--this minute--this instant.'

'No!' said Sikes.

'Tell him to let me go, Fagin.  He had better.  It'll be better for
him.  Do you hear me?' cried Nancy stamping her foot upon the ground.

'Hear you!' repeated Sikes turning round in his chair to confront her.
'Aye!  And if I hear you for half a minute longer, the dog shall have
such a grip on your throat as'll tear some of that screaming voice out.
Wot has come over you, you jade!  Wot is it?'

'Let me go,' said the girl with great earnestness; then sitting herself
down on the floor, before the door, she said, 'Bill, let me go; you
don't know what you are doing. You don't, indeed.  For only one
hour--do--do!'

'Cut my limbs off one by one!' cried Sikes, seizing her roughly by the
arm, 'If I don't think the gal's stark raving mad.  Get up.'

'Not till you let me go--not till you let me go--Never--never!'
screamed the girl.  Sikes looked on, for a minute, watching his
opportunity, and suddenly pinioning her hands dragged her, struggling
and wrestling with him by the way, into a small room adjoining, where
he sat himself on a bench, and thrusting her into a chair, held her
down by force.  She struggled and implored by turns until twelve
o'clock had struck, and then, wearied and exhausted, ceased to contest
the point any further.  With a caution, backed by many oaths, to make
no more efforts to go out that night, Sikes left her to recover at
leisure and rejoined Fagin.

'Whew!' said the housebreaker wiping the perspiration from his face.
'Wot a precious strange gal that is!'

'You may say that, Bill,' replied Fagin thoughtfully.  'You may say
that.'

'Wot did she take it into her head to go out to-night for, do you
think?' asked Sikes.  'Come; you should know her better than me. Wot
does it mean?'

'Obstinacy; woman's obstinacy, I suppose, my dear.'

'Well, I suppose it is,' growled Sikes.  'I thought I had tamed her,
but she's as bad as ever.'

'Worse,' said Fagin thoughtfully.  'I never knew her like this, for
such a little cause.'

'Nor I,' said Sikes.  'I think she's got a touch of that fever in her
blood yet, and it won't come out--eh?'

'Like enough.'

'I'll let her a little blood, without troubling the doctor, if she's
took that way again,' said Sikes.

Fagin nodded an expressive approval of this mode of treatment.

'She was hanging about me all day, and night too, when I was stretched
on my back; and you, like a blackhearted wolf as you are, kept yourself
aloof,' said Sikes.  'We was poor too, all the time, and I think, one
way or other, it's worried and fretted her; and that being shut up here
so long has made her restless--eh?'

'That's it, my dear,' replied the Jew in a whisper.  'Hush!'

As he uttered these words, the girl herself appeared and resumed her
former seat.  Her eyes were swollen and red; she rocked herself to and
fro; tossed her head; and, after a little time, burst out laughing.

'Why, now she's on the other tack!' exclaimed Sikes, turning a look of
excessive surprise on his companion.

Fagin nodded to him to take no further notice just then; and, in a few
minutes, the girl subsided into her accustomed demeanour. Whispering
Sikes that there was no fear of her relapsing, Fagin took up his hat
and bade him good-night.  He paused when he reached the room-door, and
looking round, asked if somebody would light him down the dark stairs.

'Light him down,' said Sikes, who was filling his pipe. 'It's a pity he
should break his neck himself, and disappoint the sight-seers.  Show
him a light.'

Nancy followed the old man downstairs, with a candle.  When they
reached 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 to poison him?  Women have done such things, and
worse, to secure the same object before now.  There would be the
dangerous villain:  the man I hate:  gone; another secured in his
place; and my influence over the girl, with a knowledge of this crime
to back it, unlimited.'

These things passed through the mind of Fagin, during the short time he
sat alone, in the housebreaker's room; and with them uppermost in his
thoughts, he had taken the opportunity afterwards afforded him, of
sounding the girl in the broken hints he threw out at parting.  There
was no expression of surprise, no assumption of an inability to
understand his meaning.  The girl clearly comprehended it.  Her glance
at parting showed _that_.

But perhaps she would recoil from a plot to take the life of Sikes, and
that was one of the chief ends to be attained. 'How,' thought Fagin, as
he crept homeward, 'can I increase my influence with her?  What new
power can I acquire?'

Such brains are fertile in expedients.  If, without extracting a
confession from herself, he laid a watch, discovered the object of her
altered regard, and threatened to reveal the whole history to Sikes (of
whom she stood in no common fear) unless she entered into his designs,
could he not secure her compliance?

'I can,' said Fagin, almost aloud.  'She durst not refuse me then.  Not
for her life, not for her life!  I have it all.  The means are ready,
and shall be set to work.  I shall have you yet!'

He cast back a dark look, and a threatening motion of the hand, towards
the spot where he had left the bolder villain; and went on his way:
busying his bony hands in the folds of his tattered garment, which he
wrenched tightly in his grasp, as though there were a hated enemy
crushed with every motion of his fingers.

 Although Nancy is sure that she's done the right thing by going to Rose Maylie, she's still pretty conflicted about the idea of betraying Sikes and Fagin. She's so stressed out about it that she loses sleep, and becomes "pale and thin" in just a few days. Everyone notices the change in her, but they don't know the cause. It's Sunday night, and the clock strikes eleven. Fagin and Sikes are talking --it's a good night for housebreaking , but there's no work to be done. Fagin tries to be friendly to Sikes, but Sikes insults him. Nancy puts on her bonnet and starts to leave, but Sikes asks her where she's going. She just says, "not far," and insists that she be allowed to go out--she says she's getting cabin fever, sitting cooped up in the small apartment all the time. Sikes suggests that she stick her head out the window if she wants fresh air, and refuses to let her go. Nancy gets hysterical, and Sikes thinks that she's gone crazy. Nancy appeals to Fagin, but Fagin stays out of it. Sikes keeps her in the house by force, and Nancy struggles and begs to go until the clock strikes midnight, and then stops bothering. Sikes goes back out to Fagin, and says it was just the "fever in her blood," or else "woman's obstinacy," but Fagin doesn't seem so sure. He keeps his opinions to himself, though, and takes Nancy aside for a moment on his way out the door. He tells Nancy that he knows that Sikes is terrible to her, and assures her that if she needs any help from him, she'll have it. Nancy doesn't really respond, but lets him out the door and says goodnight. Fagin heads home, thinking it all over: he assumes that Nancy's gotten tired of Sikes's brutality, and has found a new boyfriend that she was going to meet. But the new boyfriend isn't part of the gang, and so Fagin needs to know who it is, so that he can control them both. Fagin has another consideration: he really hates Sikes, and Sikes knows too much about all of his plans. What, he muses, are the odds of using Nancy's new boyfriend as leverage to get Nancy to do away with Sikes? Fagin walks home, considering the best way to persuade/coerce Nancy into killing Sikes--he decides that if he could only figure out who the new boyfriend is, he could threaten to reveal the whole affair to Sikes , and so Nancy would agree to Fagin's plan to save her own life, and the life of her new boyfriend.

