I had no drop again till the next day, for I was carried triumphantly
through the following hours by my introduction to the younger of my
pupils. The little girl who accompanied Mrs. Grose appeared to me on
the spot a creature so charming as to make it a great fortune to have
to do with her. She was the most beautiful child I had ever seen, and I
afterward wondered that my employer had not told me more of her. I
slept little that night—I was too much excited; and this astonished me
too, I recollect, remained with me, adding to my sense of the
liberality with which I was treated. The large, impressive room, one of
the best in the house, the great state bed, as I almost felt it, the
full, figured draperies, the long glasses in which, for the first time,
I could see myself from head to foot, all struck me—like the
extraordinary charm of my small charge—as so many things thrown in. It
was thrown in as well, from the first moment, that I should get on with
Mrs. Grose in a relation over which, on my way, in the coach, I fear I
had rather brooded. The only thing indeed that in this early outlook
might have made me shrink again was the clear circumstance of her being
so glad to see me. I perceived within half an hour that she was so
glad—stout, simple, plain, clean, wholesome woman—as to be positively
on her guard against showing it too much. I wondered even then a little
why she should wish not to show it, and that, with reflection, with
suspicion, might of course have made me uneasy.

But it was a comfort that there could be no uneasiness in a connection
with anything so beatific as the radiant image of my little girl, the
vision of whose angelic beauty had probably more than anything else to
do with the restlessness that, before morning, made me several times
rise and wander about my room to take in the whole picture and
prospect; to watch, from my open window, the faint summer dawn, to look
at such portions of the rest of the house as I could catch, and to
listen, while, in the fading dusk, the first birds began to twitter,
for the possible recurrence of a sound or two, less natural and not
without, but within, that I had fancied I heard. There had been a
moment when I believed I recognized, faint and far, the cry of a child;
there had been another when I found myself just consciously starting as
at the passage, before my door, of a light footstep. But these fancies
were not marked enough not to be thrown off, and it is only in the
light, or the gloom, I should rather say, of other and subsequent
matters that they now come back to me. To watch, teach, “form” little
Flora would too evidently be the making of a happy and useful life. It
had been agreed between us downstairs that after this first occasion I
should have her as a matter of course at night, her small white bed
being already arranged, to that end, in my room. What I had undertaken
was the whole care of her, and she had remained, just this last time,
with Mrs. Grose only as an effect of our consideration for my
inevitable strangeness and her natural timidity. In spite of this
timidity—which the child herself, in the oddest way in the world, had
been perfectly frank and brave about, allowing it, without a sign of
uncomfortable consciousness, with the deep, sweet serenity indeed of
one of Raphael’s holy infants, to be discussed, to be imputed to her,
and to determine us—I feel quite sure she would presently like me. It
was part of what I already liked Mrs. Grose herself for, the pleasure I
could see her feel in my admiration and wonder as I sat at supper with
four tall candles and with my pupil, in a high chair and a bib,
brightly facing me, between them, over bread and milk. There were
naturally things that in Flora’s presence could pass between us only as
prodigious and gratified looks, obscure and roundabout allusions.

“And the little boy—does he look like her? Is he too so very
remarkable?”

One wouldn’t flatter a child. “Oh, miss, _most_ remarkable. If you
think well of this one!”—and she stood there with a plate in her hand,
beaming at our companion, who looked from one of us to the other with
placid heavenly eyes that contained nothing to check us.

“You _will_ be carried away by the little gentleman!”

“Well, that, I think, is what I came for—to be carried away. I’m
afraid, however,” I remember feeling the impulse to add, “I’m rather
easily carried away. I was carried away in London!”

I can still see Mrs. Grose’s broad face as she took this in. “In Harley
Street?”

“Well, miss, you’re not the first—and you won’t be the last.”

“Oh, I’ve no pretension,” I could laugh, “to being the only one. My
other pupil, at any rate, as I understand, comes back tomorrow?”

“Not tomorrow—Friday, miss. He arrives, as you did, by the coach, under
care of the guard, and is to be met by the same carriage.”

I forthwith expressed that the proper as well as the pleasant and
friendly thing would be therefore that on the arrival of the public
conveyance I should be in waiting for him with his little sister; an
idea in which Mrs. Grose concurred so heartily that I somehow took her
manner as a kind of comforting pledge—never falsified, thank
heaven!—that we should on every question be quite at one. Oh, she was
glad I was there!

What I felt the next day was, I suppose, nothing that could be fairly
called a reaction from the cheer of my arrival; it was probably at the
most only a slight oppression produced by a fuller measure of the
scale, as I walked round them, gazed up at them, took them in, of my
new circumstances. They had, as it were, an extent and mass for which I
had not been prepared and in the presence of which I found myself,
freshly, a little scared as well as a little proud. Lessons, in this
agitation, certainly suffered some delay; I reflected that my first
duty was, by the gentlest arts I could contrive, to win the child into
the sense of knowing me. I spent the day with her out-of-doors; I
arranged with her, to her great satisfaction, that it should be she,
she only, who might show me the place. She showed it step by step and
room by room and secret by secret, with droll, delightful, childish
talk about it and with the result, in half an hour, of our becoming
immense friends. Young as she was, I was struck, throughout our little
tour, with her confidence and courage with the way, in empty chambers
and dull corridors, on crooked staircases that made me pause and even
on the summit of an old machicolated square tower that made me dizzy,
her morning music, her disposition to tell me so many more things than
she asked, rang out and led me on. I have not seen Bly since the day I
left it, and I daresay that to my older and more informed eyes it would
now appear sufficiently contracted. But as my little conductress, with
her hair of gold and her frock of blue, danced before me round corners
and pattered down passages, I had the view of a castle of romance
inhabited by a rosy sprite, such a place as would somehow, for
diversion of the young idea, take all color out of storybooks and
fairytales. Wasn’t it just a storybook over which I had fallen adoze
and adream? No; it was a big, ugly, antique, but convenient house,
embodying a few features of a building still older, half-replaced and
half-utilized, in which I had the fancy of our being almost as lost as
a handful of passengers in a great drifting ship. Well, I was,
strangely, at the helm!

This came home to me when, two days later, I drove over with Flora to
meet, as Mrs. Grose said, the little gentleman; and all the more for an
incident that, presenting itself the second evening, had deeply
disconcerted me. The first day had been, on the whole, as I have
expressed, reassuring; but I was to see it wind up in keen
apprehension. The postbag, that evening—it came late—contained a letter
for me, which, however, in the hand of my employer, I found to be
composed but of a few words enclosing another, addressed to himself,
with a seal still unbroken. “This, I recognize, is from the headmaster,
and the headmaster’s an awful bore. Read him, please; deal with him;
but mind you don’t report. Not a word. I’m off!” I broke the seal with
a great effort—so great a one that I was a long time coming to it; took
the unopened missive at last up to my room and only attacked it just
before going to bed. I had better have let it wait till morning, for it
gave me a second sleepless night. With no counsel to take, the next
day, I was full of distress; and it finally got so the better of me
that I determined to open myself at least to Mrs. Grose.

“What does it mean? The child’s dismissed his school.”

She gave me a look that I remarked at the moment; then, visibly, with a
quick blankness, seemed to try to take it back. “But aren’t they all—?”

“Sent home—yes. But only for the holidays. Miles may never go back at
all.”

Consciously, under my attention, she reddened. “They won’t take him?”

At this she raised her eyes, which she had turned from me; I saw them
fill with good tears. “What has he done?”

I hesitated; then I judged best simply to hand her my letter—which,
however, had the effect of making her, without taking it, simply put
her hands behind her. She shook her head sadly. “Such things are not
for me, miss.”

My counselor couldn’t read! I winced at my mistake, which I attenuated
as I could, and opened my letter again to repeat it to her; then,
faltering in the act and folding it up once more, I put it back in my
pocket. “Is he really _bad_?”

The tears were still in her eyes. “Do the gentlemen say so?”

“They go into no particulars. They simply express their regret that it
should be impossible to keep him. That can have only one meaning.” Mrs.
Grose listened with dumb emotion; she forbore to ask me what this
meaning might be; so that, presently, to put the thing with some
coherence and with the mere aid of her presence to my own mind, I went
on: “That he’s an injury to the others.”

At this, with one of the quick turns of simple folk, she suddenly
flamed up. “Master Miles! _him_ an injury?”

There was such a flood of good faith in it that, though I had not yet
seen the child, my very fears made me jump to the absurdity of the
idea. I found myself, to meet my friend the better, offering it, on the
spot, sarcastically. “To his poor little innocent mates!”

“It’s too dreadful,” cried Mrs. Grose, “to say such cruel things! Why,
he’s scarce ten years old.”

She was evidently grateful for such a profession. “See him, miss,
first. _Then_ believe it!” I felt forthwith a new impatience to see
him; it was the beginning of a curiosity that, for all the next hours,
was to deepen almost to pain. Mrs. Grose was aware, I could judge, of
what she had produced in me, and she followed it up with assurance.
“You might as well believe it of the little lady. Bless her,” she added
the next moment—“_look_ at her!”

I turned and saw that Flora, whom, ten minutes before, I had
established in the schoolroom with a sheet of white paper, a pencil,
and a copy of nice “round O’s,” now presented herself to view at the
open door. She expressed in her little way an extraordinary detachment
from disagreeable duties, looking to me, however, with a great childish
light that seemed to offer it as a mere result of the affection she had
conceived for my person, which had rendered necessary that she should
follow me. I needed nothing more than this to feel the full force of
Mrs. Grose’s comparison, and, catching my pupil in my arms, covered her
with kisses in which there was a sob of atonement.

Nonetheless, the rest of the day I watched for further occasion to
approach my colleague, especially as, toward evening, I began to fancy
she rather sought to avoid me. I overtook her, I remember, on the
staircase; we went down together, and at the bottom I detained her,
holding her there with a hand on her arm. “I take what you said to me
at noon as a declaration that _you’ve_ never known him to be bad.”

She threw back her head; she had clearly, by this time, and very
honestly, adopted an attitude. “Oh, never known him—I don’t pretend
_that!_”

I was upset again. “Then you _have_ known him—?”

On reflection I accepted this. “You mean that a boy who never is—?”

I held her tighter. “You like them with the spirit to be naughty?”
Then, keeping pace with her answer, “So do I!” I eagerly brought out.
“But not to the degree to contaminate—”

“To contaminate?”—my big word left her at a loss. I explained it. “To
corrupt.”

She stared, taking my meaning in; but it produced in her an odd laugh.
“Are you afraid he’ll corrupt _you?_” She put the question with such a
fine bold humor that, with a laugh, a little silly doubtless, to match
her own, I gave way for the time to the apprehension of ridicule.

But the next day, as the hour for my drive approached, I cropped up in
another place. “What was the lady who was here before?”

“The last governess? She was also young and pretty—almost as young and
almost as pretty, miss, even as you.”

“Ah, then, I hope her youth and her beauty helped her!” I recollect
throwing off. “He seems to like us young and pretty!”

“Oh, he _did_,” Mrs. Grose assented: “it was the way he liked
everyone!” She had no sooner spoken indeed than she caught herself up.
“I mean that’s _his_ way—the master’s.”

I was struck. “But of whom did you speak first?”

She looked blank, but she colored. “Why, of _him_.”

There was so obviously no one else that the next moment I had lost my
impression of her having accidentally said more than she meant; and I
merely asked what I wanted to know. “Did _she_ see anything in the
boy—?”

I had a scruple, but I overcame it. “Was she careful—particular?”

Mrs. Grose appeared to try to be conscientious. “About some
things—yes.”

Again she considered. “Well, miss—she’s gone. I won’t tell tales.”

“I quite understand your feeling,” I hastened to reply; but I thought
it, after an instant, not opposed to this concession to pursue: “Did
she die here?”

I don’t know what there was in this brevity of Mrs. Grose’s that struck
me as ambiguous. “Went off to die?” Mrs. Grose looked straight out of
the window, but I felt that, hypothetically, I had a right to know what
young persons engaged for Bly were expected to do. “She was taken ill,
you mean, and went home?”

“She was not taken ill, so far as appeared, in this house. She left it,
at the end of the year, to go home, as she said, for a short holiday,
to which the time she had put in had certainly given her a right. We
had then a young woman—a nursemaid who had stayed on and who was a good
girl and clever; and _she_ took the children altogether for the
interval. But our young lady never came back, and at the very moment I
was expecting her I heard from the master that she was dead.”

“He never told me! But please, miss,” said Mrs. Grose, “I must get to
my work.”

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.