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?”