"You, miss."
"By writing to him that his house is poisoned and his little
nephew and niece mad?"
"But if they ARE, miss?"
"And if I am myself, you mean? That's charming news to be sent him
by a governess whose prime undertaking was to give him no worry."
Mrs. Grose considered, following the children again. "Yes, he do hate worry.
That was the great reason--"
"Why those fiends took him in so long? No doubt, though his
indifference must have been awful. As I'm not a fiend,
at any rate, I shouldn't take him in."
My companion, after an instant and for all answer, sat down again
and grasped my arm. "Make him at any rate come to you."
I stared. "To ME?" I had a sudden fear of what she might do. "'Him'?"
"He ought to BE here--he ought to help."
I quickly rose, and I think I must have shown her a queerer face
than ever yet. "You see me asking him for a visit?" No, with her
eyes on my face she evidently couldn't. Instead of it even--
as a woman reads another--she could see what I myself saw:
his derision, his amusement, his contempt for the breakdown
of my resignation at being left alone and for the fine machinery I
had set in motion to attract his attention to my slighted charms.
She didn't know--no one knew--how proud I had been to serve
him and to stick to our terms; yet she nonetheless took
the measure, I think, of the warning I now gave her.
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