She gave me never a glance. She only fixed the child.”
Mrs. Grose tried to see it. “Fixed her?”
“Ah, with such awful eyes!”
She stared at mine as if they might really have resembled them. “Do you mean of dislike?”
“God help us, no. Of something much worse.”
“Worse than dislike?”—this left her indeed at a loss.
“With a determination—indescribable. With a kind of fury of intention.”
I made her turn pale. “Intention?”
“To get hold of her.” Mrs. Grose—her eyes just lingering on mine—gave a shudder and walked to the window; and while she stood there looking out I completed my statement. “That’s what Flora knows.”
After a little she turned round. “The person was in black, you say?”
“In mourning—rather poor, almost shabby. But—yes—with extraordinary beauty.” I now recognised to what I had at last, stroke by stroke, brought the victim of my confidence, for she quite visibly weighed this. “Oh, handsome—very, very,” I insisted; “wonderfully handsome. But infamous.”
