“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.”
She slowly came back to me. “Miss Jessel--_was_ infamous.” She
once more took my hand in both her own, holding it as tight as if
to fortify me against the increase of alarm I might draw from this
disclosure. “They were both infamous,” she finally said.
So, for a little, we faced it once more together; and I found
absolutely a degree of help in seeing it now so straight. “I
appreciate,” I said, “the great decency of your not having hitherto
spoken; but the time has certainly come to give me the whole thing.”
She appeared to assent to this, but still only in silence; seeing which
I went on: “I must have it now. Of what did she die? Come, there was
something between them.”
“There was everything.”
“In spite of the difference----?”
“Oh, of their rank, their condition”--she brought it woefully
out. “_She_ was a lady.”