“To his poor little innocent mates!”

“It’s too dreadful,” cried Mrs. Grose, “to say such cruel things! Why,
he’s scarce ten years old.”

“Yes, yes; it would be incredible.”

She was evidently grateful for such a profession. “See him, miss,
first. _Then_ believe it!” I felt forthwith a new impatience to see
him; it was the beginning of a curiosity that, for all the next hours,
was to deepen almost to pain. Mrs. Grose was aware, I could judge, of
what she had produced in me, and she followed it up with assurance. “You might as well believe it of the little lady. Bless her,” she added
the next moment—“_look_ at her!”

I turned and saw that Flora, whom, ten minutes before, I had
established in the schoolroom with a sheet of white paper, a pencil,
and a copy of nice “round O’s,” now presented herself to view at the
open door. She expressed in her little way an extraordinary detachment
from disagreeable duties, looking to me, however, with a great childish
light that seemed to offer it as a mere result of the affection she had
conceived for my person, which had rendered necessary that she should
follow me. I needed nothing more than this to feel the full force of
Mrs. Grose’s comparison, and, catching my pupil in my arms, covered her
with kisses in which there was a sob of atonement. Nonetheless, the rest of the day I watched for further occasion to
approach my colleague, especially as, toward evening, I began to fancy
she rather sought to avoid me. I overtook her, I remember, on the
staircase; we went down together, and at the bottom I detained her,
holding her there with a hand on her arm. “I take what you said to me
at noon as a declaration that _you’ve_ never known him to be bad.”

She threw back her head; she had clearly, by this time, and very
honestly, adopted an attitude. “Oh, never known him—I don’t pretend
_that!_”

I was upset again. “Then you _have_ known him—?”

“Yes indeed, miss, thank God!”

On reflection I accepted this. “You mean that a boy who never is—?”

“Is no boy for _me!_”

I held her tighter. “You like them with the spirit to be naughty?”
Then, keeping pace with her answer, “So do I!” I eagerly brought out. “But not to the degree to contaminate—”

“To contaminate?”—my big word left her at a loss. I explained it. “To
corrupt.”

She stared, taking my meaning in; but it produced in her an odd laugh. “Are you afraid he’ll corrupt _you?_” She put the question with such a
fine bold humor that, with a laugh, a little silly doubtless, to match
her own, I gave way for the time to the apprehension of ridicule. But the next day, as the hour for my drive approached, I cropped up in
another place. “What was the lady who was here before?”

“The last governess? She was also young and pretty—almost as young and
almost as pretty, miss, even as you.”

“Ah, then, I hope her youth and her beauty helped her!” I recollect
throwing off. “He seems to like us young and pretty!”

“Oh, he _did_,” Mrs. Grose assented: “it was the way he liked
everyone!” She had no sooner spoken indeed than she caught herself up. “I mean that’s _his_ way—the master’s.”

I was struck. “But of whom did you speak first?”

She looked blank, but she colored. “Why, of _him_.”

“Of the master?”

“Of who else?”

There was so obviously no one else that the next moment I had lost my
impression of her having accidentally said more than she meant; and I
merely asked what I wanted to know. “Did _she_ see anything in the
boy—?”

“That wasn’t right? She never told me.”

I had a scruple, but I overcame it. “Was she careful—particular?”

Mrs. Grose appeared to try to be conscientious. “About some
things—yes.”

“But not about all?”

Again she considered. “Well, miss—she’s gone. I won’t tell tales.”

“I quite understand your feeling,” I hastened to reply; but I thought
it, after an instant, not opposed to this concession to pursue: “Did
she die here?”

“No—she went off.”

I don’t know what there was in this brevity of Mrs. Grose’s that struck
me as ambiguous. “Went off to die?” Mrs. Grose looked straight out of
the window, but I felt that, hypothetically, I had a right to know what
young persons engaged for Bly were expected to do. “She was taken ill,
you mean, and went home?”

“She was not taken ill, so far as appeared, in this house. She left it,
at the end of the year, to go home, as she said, for a short holiday,
to which the time she had put in had certainly given her a right. We
had then a young woman—a nursemaid who had stayed on and who was a good
girl and clever; and _she_ took the children altogether for the
interval. But our young lady never came back, and at the very moment I
was expecting her I heard from the master that she was dead.”

I turned this over. “But of what?”

“He never told me! But please, miss,” said Mrs. Grose, “I must get to
my work.”


III

Her thus turning her back on me was fortunately not, for my just
preoccupations, a snub that could check the growth of our mutual
esteem. We met, after I had brought home little Miles, more intimately
than ever on the ground of my stupefaction, my general emotion: so
monstrous was I then ready to pronounce it that such a child as had now
been revealed to me should be under an interdict. I was a little late
on the scene, and I felt, as he stood wistfully looking out for me
before the door of the inn at which the coach had put him down, that I
had seen him, on the instant, without and within, in the great glow of
freshness, the same positive fragrance of purity, in which I had, from
the first moment, seen his little sister. He was incredibly beautiful,
and Mrs. Grose had put her finger on it: everything but a sort of
passion of tenderness for him was swept away by his presence. What I
then and there took him to my heart for was something divine that I
have never found to the same degree in any child—his indescribable
little air of knowing nothing in the world but love. It would have been
impossible to carry a bad name with a greater sweetness of innocence,
and by the time I had got back to Bly with him I remained merely
bewildered—so far, that is, as I was not outraged—by the sense of the
horrible letter locked up in my room, in a drawer. As soon as I could
compass a private word with Mrs. Grose I declared to her that it was
grotesque. She promptly understood me. “You mean the cruel charge—?”

“It doesn’t live an instant. My dear woman, _look_ at him!”

She smiled at my pretention to have discovered his charm. “I assure
you, miss, I do nothing else! What will you say, then?” she immediately
added. “In answer to the letter?” I had made up my mind. “Nothing.”

“And to his uncle?”

I was incisive. “Nothing.”

“And to the boy himself?”

I was wonderful. “Nothing.”

She gave with her apron a great wipe to her mouth. “Then I’ll stand by
you. We’ll see it out.”

“We’ll see it out!” I ardently echoed, giving her my hand to make it a
vow. She held me there a moment, then whisked up her apron again with her
detached hand.