The determined reticence of Jasper, however, was not to be so approached.

Impassive, moody, solitary, resolute, so concentrated on one idea, and on its attendant fixed purpose, that he would share it with no fellow-creature, he lived apart from human life.
Constantly exercising an Art which brought him into mechanical harmony with others, and which could not have been pursued unless he and they had been in the nicest mechanical relations and unison, it is curious to consider that the spirit of the man was in moral accordance or interchange with nothing around him.

This indeed he had confided to his lost nephew, before the occasion for his present inflexibility arose.
That he must know of Rosa's abrupt departure, and that he must divine its cause, was not to be doubted.

Did he suppose that he had terrified her into silence?
or did he suppose that she had imparted to any one--to Mr.
Crisparkle himself, for instance--the particulars of his last interview with her?
Mr.Crisparkle could not determine this in his mind.

He could not but admit, however, as a just man, that it was not, of itself, a crime to fall in love with Rosa, any more than it was a crime to offer to set love above revenge.
The dreadful suspicion of Jasper, which Rosa was so shocked to have received into her imagination, appeared to have no harbour in Mr.
Crisparkle's.