But there was no
other change in nature, unless indeed it were a change that I saw with
a stranger sharpness. The gold was still in the sky, the clearness in
the air, and the man who looked at me over the battlements was as
definite as a picture in a frame. That’s how I thought, with
extraordinary quickness, of each person that he might have been and
that he was not. We were confronted across our distance quite long
enough for me to ask myself with intensity who then he was and to feel,
as an effect of my inability to say, a wonder that in a few instants
more became intense. The great question, or one of these, is, afterward, I know, with regard
to certain matters, the question of how long they have lasted. Well,
this matter of mine, think what you will of it, lasted while I caught
at a dozen possibilities, none of which made a difference for the
better, that I could see, in there having been in the house—and for how
long, above all?—a person of whom I was in ignorance. It lasted while I
just bridled a little with the sense that my office demanded that there
should be no such ignorance and no such person. It lasted while this
visitant, at all events—and there was a touch of the strange freedom,
as I remember, in the sign of familiarity of his wearing no hat—seemed
to fix me, from his position, with just the question, just the scrutiny
through the fading light, that his own presence provoked. We were too
far apart to call to each other, but there was a moment at which, at
shorter range, some challenge between us, breaking the hush, would have
been the right result of our straight mutual stare. He was in one of
the angles, the one away from the house, very erect, as it struck me,
and with both hands on the ledge. So I saw him as I see the letters I
form on this page; then, exactly, after a minute, as if to add to the
spectacle, he slowly changed his place—passed, looking at me hard all
the while, to the opposite corner of the platform. Yes, I had the
sharpest sense that during this transit he never took his eyes from me,
and I can see at this moment the way his hand, as he went, passed from
one of the crenelations to the next. He stopped at the other corner,
but less long, and even as he turned away still markedly fixed me. He
turned away; that was all I knew. IV

It was not that I didn’t wait, on this occasion, for more, for I was
rooted as deeply as I was shaken. Was there a “secret” at Bly—a mystery
of Udolpho or an insane, an unmentionable relative kept in unsuspected
confinement? I can’t say how long I turned it over, or how long, in a
confusion of curiosity and dread, I remained where I had had my
collision; I only recall that when I re-entered the house darkness had
quite closed in. Agitation, in the interval, certainly had held me and
driven me, for I must, in circling about the place, have walked three
miles; but I was to be, later on, so much more overwhelmed that this
mere dawn of alarm was a comparatively human chill. The most singular
part of it, in fact—singular as the rest had been—was the part I
became, in the hall, aware of in meeting Mrs. Grose. This picture comes
back to me in the general train—the impression, as I received it on my
return, of the wide white panelled space, bright in the lamplight and
with its portraits and red carpet, and of the good surprised look of my
friend, which immediately told me she had missed me. It came to me
straightway, under her contact, that, with plain heartiness, mere
relieved anxiety at my appearance, she knew nothing whatever that could
bear upon the incident I had there ready for her. I had not suspected
in advance that her comfortable face would pull me up, and I somehow
measured the importance of what I had seen by my thus finding myself
hesitate to mention it. Scarce anything in the whole history seems to
me so odd as this fact that my real beginning of fear was one, as I may
say, with the instinct of sparing my companion. On the spot,
accordingly, in the pleasant hall and with her eyes on me, I, for a
reason that I couldn’t then have phrased, achieved an inward
resolution—offered a vague pretext for my lateness and, with the plea
of the beauty of the night and of the heavy dew and wet feet, went as
soon as possible to my room. Here it was another affair; here, for many days after, it was a queer
affair enough. There were hours, from day to day—or at least there were
moments, snatched even from clear duties—when I had to shut myself up
to think. It was not so much yet that I was more nervous than I could
bear to be as that I was remarkably afraid of becoming so; for the
truth I had now to turn over was, simply and clearly, the truth that I
could arrive at no account whatever of the visitor with whom I had been
so inexplicably and yet, as it seemed to me, so intimately concerned. It took little time to see that I could sound without forms of inquiry
and without exciting remark any domestic complications. The shock I had
suffered must have sharpened all my senses; I felt sure, at the end of
three days and as the result of mere closer attention, that I had not
been practiced upon by the servants nor made the object of any “game.”
Of whatever it was that I knew, nothing was known around me. There was
but one sane inference: someone had taken a liberty rather gross. That
was what, repeatedly, I dipped into my room and locked the door to say
to myself. We had been, collectively, subject to an intrusion; some
unscrupulous traveler, curious in old houses, had made his way in
unobserved, enjoyed the prospect from the best point of view, and then
stolen out as he came. If he had given me such a bold hard stare, that
was but a part of his indiscretion. The good thing, after all, was that
we should surely see no more of him. This was not so good a thing, I admit, as not to leave me to judge that
what, essentially, made nothing else much signify was simply my
charming work. My charming work was just my life with Miles and Flora,
and through nothing could I so like it as through feeling that I could
throw myself into it in trouble. The attraction of my small charges was
a constant joy, leading me to wonder afresh at the vanity of my
original fears, the distaste I had begun by entertaining for the
probable gray prose of my office. There was to be no gray prose, it
appeared, and no long grind; so how could work not be charming that
presented itself as daily beauty? It was all the romance of the nursery
and the poetry of the schoolroom. I don’t mean by this, of course, that
we studied only fiction and verse; I mean I can express no otherwise
the sort of interest my companions inspired. How can I describe that
except by saying that instead of growing used to them—and it’s a marvel
for a governess: I call the sisterhood to witness!—I made constant
fresh discoveries. There was one direction, assuredly, in which these
discoveries stopped: deep obscurity continued to cover the region of
the boy’s conduct at school.