You don't believe me?" I pressed.
She turned right and left in her distress. "How can you be sure?"
This drew from me, in the state of my nerves, a flash of impatience.
"Then ask Flora--SHE'S sure!" But I had no sooner spoken
than I caught myself up. "No, for God's sake, DON'T!"
She'll say she isn't--she'll lie!"
Mrs. Grose was not too bewildered instinctively to protest.
"Ah, how CAN you?"
"Because I'm clear. Flora doesn't want me to know."
"It's only then to spare you."
"No, no--there are depths, depths! The more I go over it,
the more I see in it, and the more I see in it, the more I fear.
I don't know what I DON'T see--what I DON'T fear!"
Mrs. Grose tried to keep up with me. "You mean you're afraid
of seeing her again?"
"Oh, no; that's nothing--now!" Then I explained.
"It's of NOT seeing her."
But my companion only looked wan. "I don't understand you."
"Why, it's that the child may keep it up--and that the child assuredly
WILL--without my knowing it."
At the image of this possibility Mrs. Grose for a moment collapsed,
yet presently to pull herself together again, as if from the positive
force of the sense of what, should we yield an inch, there would
really be to give way to. "Dear, dear--we must keep our heads!
And after all, if she doesn't mind it--!" She even tried a grim joke.
"Perhaps she likes it!"
"Likes SUCH things--a scrap of an infant!"
"Isn't it just a proof of her blessed innocence?" my friend bravely inquired.
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