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The silence was of that kind which all felt to be more expressive than the loudest, most explicit language could be,–more merciless than any form of verbal accusation. Such silence is a terribly perfect medium, in which souls are compelled to touch each other, resent as they may the contact. Several times Joseph was on the point of rising and rushing from the table. How many more such meals could he stand or could they stand? All of them recognized that the situation had become perceptibly more serious and more pronounced on account of that silent tea-table.

There was in particular not the slightest allusion made by any one to the murder, which, seeing that it had happened but yesterday, and would naturally still have been an engrossing topic, was an omission so pointed as to be an open charge of guilt. There is such a thing as emphasizing a topic by suppressing it, as letters are sunk into stone. The omission impressed Silas as it did Joseph, but, regarding it from his point of view, it did not occur to him but that Joseph was the one solely responsible for it. He, Silas, had refrained from reference to it because his suspicions in regard to Joseph made the topic unendurable. But he could not imagine that Joseph could have had any other motive for his silence on the subject but a guilty conscience,–some secret knowledge of the crime. Thus regarded, it was a terrible confirmation. That a perception that he was suspected might cause an innocent man to act very much as if he were conscious of guilt did not occur to Silas, as, perhaps, it would have failed to occur to most persons in just his position.

After leaving the tea-table the brothers went together into the parlor, according to the family custom. They took their accustomed seats on opposite sides of the fireplace, but there was no conversation. A veil was between them. Both were thinking of the same thing,–thinking of it intensely,–and each knew that the other was thinking of it, and yet neither for worlds could have commanded the courage to speak of it. The suspicion had grown definite in Silas’s mind, and yet, whenever he brought himself to the point of putting it in words, it suddenly seemed impossible, cruel, and absurd. But if Silas found it impossible to speak, far more so it seemed to Joseph.

To charge another with suspecting us is half to confess ourselves worthy of suspicion. It is demoralizing,–it is to abandon the pride of conscious rectitude. To deny an accusation is to concede to it a possibility, a color of reason; and Joseph shrank with unutterable repugnance from that. He felt that he could be torn limb from limb sooner than betray by a word that he recognized the existence of suspicion so abominable. Besides, of what avail would be a denial without evidence to disprove a suspicion which had arisen without evidence? It was a thing too impalpable to contend with. As well fight a fog as seek to destroy by mere denial suspicion so vague, unsubstantial, and subtile, as that which enveloped him. Silas would, of course, eagerly accept his denial; he well knew how he would spring to his side, how warm and firm would be his hand-clasp, and how great, perhaps, his momentary relief. But he was, after all, but human, and no man can control his doubts. Silas would still be unable, when he thought the matter over, to help the feeling that there was, after all, something very strange about his conduct from first to last. It is the subtiler nature of doubt to penetrate the heart more profoundly than confidence, and to underlie it. No generous St. George of faith can reach the nether den where it lurks. Or, rather, is it like the ineradicable witch-grass which, though it be hewed off at the surface, still lives at the root, and springs forth luxuriantly again at the first favoring season?