She brought me, for the instant, almost round.
"Oh, we must clutch at THAT--we must cling to it!
If it isn't a proof of what you say, it's a proof of--God knows what!
For the woman's a horror of horrors."
Mrs. Grose, at this, fixed her eyes a minute on the ground;
then at last raising them, "Tell me how you know," she said.
"Then you admit it's what she was?" I cried.
"Tell me how you know," my friend simply repeated.
"Know? By seeing her! By the way she looked."
"At you, do you mean--so wickedly?"
"Dear me, no--I could have borne that. She gave me never a glance.
She only fixed the child."
Mrs. Grose tried to see it. "Fixed her?"
"Ah, with such awful eyes!"
She stared at mine as if they might really have resembled them.
"Do you mean of dislike?"
"God help us, no. Of something much worse."
"Worse than dislike?--this left her indeed at a loss.
"With a determination--indescribable. With a kind of fury of intention."
I made her turn pale. "Intention?"
"To get hold of her." Mrs. Grose--her eyes just lingering
on mine--gave a shudder and walked to the window;
and while she stood there looking out I completed my statement.
"THAT'S what Flora knows."
After a little she turned round. "The person was in black, you say?"
"In mourning--rather poor, almost shabby. But--yes--with
extraordinary beauty." I now recognized to what I had at last,
stroke by stroke, brought the victim of my confidence, for she quite
visibly weighed this.
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