Scott's spying on Catherine is discovered when a slip on the porch interrupts a routine he has built around secrecy, timing, and access to the house's windows. The incident turns his private fixation into a visible breach: Catherine hears him, sees him flee, and leaves him hiding outside while he anticipates Louise Carey's response.

The Routine Behind the Incident

Scott's surveillance takes shape during his confinement in the cellar. Books can occupy him briefly, but his thoughts repeatedly return to Catherine, and he finds it difficult to remain absorbed in reading. The cellar is both a place where Louise Carey expects him to stay and a base from which he can still reach the outside. Because the windows are not secured against his leaving, the possibility of watching Catherine remains open, making the restriction incomplete and intensifying his preoccupation.

Scott brings a small clock downstairs, telling Louise Carey that it will help him keep track of time. In practice, he uses it to estimate when Beth Carey is napping, so that he can leave the cellar and look through the house's windows. The difference between his stated reason and his actual purpose makes the clock part of a private schedule: an ordinary timekeeping object becomes a tool for arranging the surveillance.

The changing season further shapes his routine. As September wanes and colder days keep Catherine and Beth Carey inside more often, Scott has fewer chances to see Catherine in the yard. Instead, he waits for an opportunity to move around the house and peer through its windows. On many afternoons, he spends an hour or more in tense anticipation before crawling out and making a circuit of the house, checking the sills one by one.

Escalation and Secrecy

Scott's response to what he sees is not consistent from day to day. Ordinary scenes leave him dissatisfied; glimpses of Catherine in private moments make him count the outing as a success. When the view offers nothing he wants, he returns to the cellar angry and carries his frustration into the evening, snapping at Louise Carey. The clandestine excursions therefore shape not only his afternoons but also the atmosphere of his home life.

The routine also reaches into the night. Scott waits impatiently for morning and is troubled by his own persistence, yet that self-reproach does not stop him. His dreams repeatedly feature Catherine, and he eventually stops dismissing them. In the morning he eats quickly, returns to the cellar, and waits for the hour when he can go outside again. The cycle narrows his days around anticipation, observation, disappointment, and renewed waiting.

The eventual discovery comes during one of these outings. Scott is on the porch while Catherine is in the kitchen, and he shifts his feet, slips, and lands hard on the boards. The fall creates the sound that his careful movements had been meant to avoid. Catherine calls out from inside, and the ordinary act of listening for an intruder abruptly exposes the person who has been watching her.

Discovery and Immediate Aftermath

Scott jumps down and runs around the house, looking back in fear. At the kitchen window, he sees Catherine staring at his fleeing, childlike figure. The disparity between his intended invisibility and the form she actually sees sharpens the reversal: he has approached the house as an observer, but is now unmistakably present as someone being observed in turn.

He spends the rest of the afternoon shivering behind the water tank, unable to bring himself back into the open. Catherine has not seen him enter the cellar, but Scott becomes convinced that she is looking through the window toward him. The evidence establishes what he sees and fears, not what Catherine does afterward; his certainty belongs to his alarm in the moment rather than to any confirmed pursuit or confrontation.

His thoughts turn to Louise Carey and to the moment she learns what has happened. He imagines her reaction and anticipates the way she will look at him, while cursing himself and feeling wretched. The discovery thus carries consequences beyond the risk of being caught by Catherine: it threatens to make his secret behavior known within the household and to deepen the strain already visible in his interactions with Louise Carey.

Narrative Significance

The scene converts a repeated private act into a decisive exposure through a small physical mistake. Scott has relied on a clock, Beth Carey's nap, the windows, and his ability to move around the house without being noticed. None of those arrangements fails through a planned confrontation; the routine breaks when his foot slips and the porch boards announce him. The event's abruptness contrasts with the long hours of waiting that precede it.

The house's windows divide the scene into watcher and watched, but the fall reverses that arrangement. Scott's smallness makes him appear childlike as he runs, yet it does not erase the violation Catherine recognizes when she sees him. His concealment has depended on being able to approach unseen; once Catherine looks out and finds him, the same domestic boundary that enabled his watching becomes the frame of his exposure. The episode marks the end of his unchallenged routine and leaves its interpersonal consequences unresolved in the immediate aftermath.