The result of our having everything out was simply to reduce
our situation to the last rigor of its elements. She herself had
seen nothing, not the shadow of a shadow, and nobody in the house
but the governess was in the governess's plight; yet she accepted
without directly impugning my sanity the truth as I gave it to her,
and ended by showing me, on this ground, an awestricken tenderness,
an expression of the sense of my more than questionable privilege,
of which the very breath has remained with me as that of the sweetest
of human charities.
What was settled between us, accordingly, that night, was that we
thought we might bear things together; and I was not even sure that,
in spite of her exemption, it was she who had the best of the burden.
I knew at this hour, I think, as well as I knew later, what I was
capable of meeting to shelter my pupils; but it took me some time
to be wholly sure of what my honest ally was prepared for to keep
terms with so compromising a contract. I was queer company enough--
quite as queer as the company I received; but as I trace over
what we went through I see how much common ground we must have
found in the one idea that, by good fortune, COULD steady us.
It was the idea, the second movement, that led me straight out,
as I may say, of the inner chamber of my dread. I could take
the air in the court, at least, and there Mrs.
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