little girl saw our visitant even as I
actually saw Mrs. Grose herself, and that she wanted, by just so much as
she did thus see, to make me suppose she didn't, and at the same time,
without showing anything, arrive at a guess as to whether I myself did!
It was a pity that I needed once more to describe the portentous little
activity by which she sought to divert my attention--the perceptible
increase of movement, the greater intensity of play, the singing, the
gabbling of nonsense, and the invitation to romp.

Yet if I had not indulged, to prove there was nothing in it, in this
review, I should have missed the two or three dim elements of comfort
that still remained to me. I should not for instance have been able to
asseverate to my friend that I was certain--which was so much to the
good--that _I_ at least had not betrayed myself. I should not have been
prompted, by stress of need, by desperation of mind--I scarce know what
to call it--to invoke such further aid to intelligence as might spring
from pushing my colleague fairly to the wall. She had told me, bit by
bit, under pressure, a great deal; but a small shifty spot on the wrong
side of it all still sometimes brushed my brow like the wing of a bat;
and I remember how on this occasion--for the sleeping house and the
concentration alike of our danger and our watch seemed to help--I felt
the importance of giving the last jerk to the curtain. "I don't
believe anything so horrible," I recollect saying; "no, let us put it
definitely, my dear, that I don't. But if I did, you know, there's
a thing I should require now, just without sparing you the least bit
more--oh, not a scrap, come!--to get out of you. What was it you had in
mind when, in our distress, before Miles came back, over the letter from
his school, you said, under my insistence, that you didn't pretend for
him that he had not literally EVER been 'bad'? He has NOT literally
'ever,' in these weeks that I myself have lived with him and so closely
watched him; he has been an imperturbable little prodigy of delightful,
lovable goodness. Therefore you might perfectly have made the claim for
him if you had not, as it happened, seen an exception to take. What was
your exception, and to what passage in your personal observation of him
did you refer?"

It was a dreadfully austere inquiry, but levity was not our note, and,
at any rate, before the gray dawn admonished us to separate I had got
my answer. What my friend