"Oh, handsome--very, very," I insisted;
"wonderfully handsome. But infamous."
She slowly came back to me. "Miss Jessel--WAS infamous."
She once more took my hand in both her own, holding it
as tight as if to fortify me against the increase of alarm I
might draw from this disclosure. "They were both infamous,"
she finally said.
So, for a little, we faced it once more together; and I found absolutely
a degree of help in seeing it now so straight. "I appreciate,"
I said, "the great decency of your not having hitherto spoken;
but the time has certainly come to give me the whole thing."
She appeared to assent to this, but still only in silence;
seeing which I went on: "I must have it now. Of what did she die?
Come, there was something between them."
"There was everything."
"In spite of the difference--?"
"Oh, of their rank, their condition"--she brought it woefully out.
"SHE was a lady."
I turned it over; I again saw. "Yes--she was a lady."
"And he so dreadfully below," said Mrs. Grose.
I felt that I doubtless needn't press too hard, in such company,
on the place of a servant in the scale; but there was nothing to prevent
an acceptance of my companion's own measure of my predecessor's abasement.
There was a way to deal with that, and I dealt; the more readily
for my full vision--on the evidence--of our employer's late clever,
good-looking "own" man; impudent, assured, spoiled, depraved.
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