Flights of fancy gave place, in her mind, to a steady fireside glow,
and I had already begun to perceive how, with the development
of the conviction that--as time went on without a public accident--
our young things could, after all, look out for themselves,
she addressed her greatest solicitude to the sad case presented
by their instructress. That, for myself, was a sound simplification:
I could engage that, to the world, my face should tell no tales,
but it would have been, in the conditions, an immense added
strain to find myself anxious about hers.
At the hour I now speak of she had joined me, under pressure,
on the terrace, where, with the lapse of the season, the afternoon
sun was now agreeable; and we sat there together while, before us,
at a distance, but within call if we wished, the children
strolled to and fro in one of their most manageable moods.
They moved slowly, in unison, below us, over the lawn, the boy,
as they went, reading aloud from a storybook and passing
his arm round his sister to keep her quite in touch.
Mrs. Grose watched them with positive placidity; then I caught
the suppressed intellectual creak with which she conscientiously
turned to take from me a view of the back of the tapestry.
I had made her a receptacle of lurid things, but there was an odd
recognition of my superiority--my accomplishments and my function--
in her patience under my pain.
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