Yet he felt no withdrawal from Mercy: probably nothing she could do would ever drive him from her.

He would die, if worst came to worst, lying by her side and looking up in her eyes, like a dog at the feet of its master who had shot him.
Mercy was much moved by this tone of patience in his letters: it touched her, as the look of patient endurance on his face used to touch her.

It also irritated her, it was so foreign to her own nature.
"How can he help answering these things I say ?" she would exclaim.

"He has no right to refuse to talk with me about such a vital matter." If any one had said to Mercy, "He has as much right to refuse to discuss the question as you have to force it upon him," she could not have seen the point fairly.
But all Stephen's patience, gentleness, and firmness did not abate one jot or tittle of Mercy's conviction that he was doing a dishonest thing.

Oh the contrary, his quiet appeared to her more and more like a callous satisfaction; and his occasional cheerfulness, like an exultation over his ill-gotten gains.