“She saw him only twice.”

“Yes, but that’s just the beauty of her passion.”

A little to my surprise, on this, Douglas turned round to me. “It _was_
the beauty of it. There were others,” he went on, “who hadn’t
succumbed. He told her frankly all his difficulty—that for several
applicants the conditions had been prohibitive. They were, somehow,
simply afraid. It sounded dull—it sounded strange; and all the more so
because of his main condition.”

“Which was—?”

“That she should never trouble him—but never, never: neither appeal nor
complain nor write about anything; only meet all questions herself,
receive all moneys from his solicitor, take the whole thing over and
let him alone. She promised to do this, and she mentioned to me that
when, for a moment, disburdened, delighted, he held her hand, thanking
her for the sacrifice, she already felt rewarded.”

“But was that all her reward?” one of the ladies asked. “She never saw him again.”

“Oh!” said the lady; which, as our friend immediately left us again,
was the only other word of importance contributed to the subject till,
the next night, by the corner of the hearth, in the best chair, he
opened the faded red cover of a thin old-fashioned gilt-edged album. The whole thing took indeed more nights than one, but on the first
occasion the same lady put another question. “What is your title?”

“I haven’t one.”

“Oh, _I_ have!” I said. But Douglas, without heeding me, had begun to
read with a fine clearness that was like a rendering to the ear of the
beauty of his author’s hand. I

I remember the whole beginning as a succession of flights and drops, a
little seesaw of the right throbs and the wrong. After rising, in town,
to meet his appeal, I had at all events a couple of very bad days—found
myself doubtful again, felt indeed sure I had made a mistake. In this
state of mind I spent the long hours of bumping, swinging coach that
carried me to the stopping place at which I was to be met by a vehicle
from the house. This convenience, I was told, had been ordered, and I
found, toward the close of the June afternoon, a commodious fly in
waiting for me. Driving at that hour, on a lovely day, through a
country to which the summer sweetness seemed to offer me a friendly
welcome, my fortitude mounted afresh and, as we turned into the avenue,
encountered a reprieve that was probably but a proof of the point to
which it had sunk. I suppose I had expected, or had dreaded, something
so melancholy that what greeted me was a good surprise. I remember as a
most pleasant impression the broad, clear front, its open windows and
fresh curtains and the pair of maids looking out; I remember the lawn
and the bright flowers and the crunch of my wheels on the gravel and
the clustered treetops over which the rooks circled and cawed in the
golden sky. The scene had a greatness that made it a different affair
from my own scant home, and there immediately appeared at the door,
with a little girl in her hand, a civil person who dropped me as decent
a curtsy as if I had been the mistress or a distinguished visitor. I
had received in Harley Street a narrower notion of the place, and that,
as I recalled it, made me think the proprietor still more of a
gentleman, suggested that what I was to enjoy might be something beyond
his promise. I had no drop again till the next day, for I was carried triumphantly
through the following hours by my introduction to the younger of my
pupils. The little girl who accompanied Mrs. Grose appeared to me on
the spot a creature so charming as to make it a great fortune to have
to do with her. She was the most beautiful child I had ever seen, and I
afterward wondered that my employer had not told me more of her. I
slept little that night—I was too much excited; and this astonished me,
too, I recollect, remained with me, adding to my sense of the
liberality with which I was treated. The large, impressive room, one of
the best in the house, the great state bed, as I almost felt it, the
full, figured draperies, the long glasses in which, for the first time,
I could see myself from head to foot, all struck me—like the
extraordinary charm of my small charge—as so many things thrown in. It
was thrown in as well, from the first moment, that I should get on with
Mrs. Grose in a relation over which, on my way, in the coach, I fear I
had rather brooded. The only thing indeed that in this early outlook
might have made me shrink again was the clear circumstance of her being
so glad to see me. I perceived within half an hour that she was so
glad—stout, simple, plain, clean, wholesome woman—as to be positively
on her guard against showing it too much. I wondered even then a little
why she should wish not to show it, and that, with reflection, with
suspicion, might of course have made me uneasy. But it was a comfort that there could be no uneasiness in a connection
with anything so beatific as the radiant image of my little girl, the
vision of whose angelic beauty had probably more than anything else to
do with the restlessness that, before morning, made me several times
rise and wander about my room to take in the whole picture and
prospect; to watch, from my open window, the faint summer dawn, to look
at such portions of the rest of the house as I could catch, and to
listen, while, in the fading dusk, the first birds began to twitter,
for the possible recurrence of a sound or two, less natural and not
without, but within, that I had fancied I heard. There had been a
moment when I believed I recognized, faint and far, the cry of a child;
there had been another when I found myself just consciously starting as
at the passage, before my door, of a light footstep. But these fancies
were not marked enough not to be thrown off, and it is only in the
light, or the gloom, I should rather say, of other and subsequent
matters that they now come back to me. To watch, teach, “form” little
Flora would too evidently be the making of a happy and useful life. It
had been agreed between us downstairs that after this first occasion I
should have her as a matter of course at night, her small white bed
being already arranged, to that end, in my room. What I had undertaken
was the whole care of her, and she had remained, just this last time,
with Mrs. Grose only as an effect of our consideration for my
inevitable strangeness and her natural timidity. In spite of this
timidity—which the child herself, in the oddest way in the world, had
been perfectly frank and brave about, allowing it, without a sign of
uncomfortable consciousness, with the deep, sweet serenity indeed of
one of Raphael’s holy infants, to be discussed, to be imputed to her,
and to determine us—I feel quite sure she would presently like me.