"Well, are you so sure of the little gentleman?"
"I'm not sure of anything but _you_. But I have, since last evening, a new hope. I think he wants to give me an opening. I do believe that--poor little exquisite wretch!--he wants to speak. Last evening, in the firelight and the silence, he sat with me for two hours as if it were just coming."
Mrs. Grose looked hard, through the window, at the grey, gathering day. "And did it come?"
"No, though I waited and waited, I confess it didn't, and it was without a breach of the silence or so much as a faint allusion to his sister's condition and absence that we at last kissed for good-night. All the same," I continued, "I can't, if her uncle sees her, consent to his seeing her brother without my having given the boy--and most of all because things have got so bad--a little more time."
My friend appeared on this ground more reluctant than I could quite understand. "What do you mean by more time?"
"Well, a day or two--really to bring it out. He'll then be on _my_ side--of which you see the importance. If nothing comes, I shall only fail, and you will, at the worst, have helped me by doing, on your arrival in town, whatever you may have found possible." So I put it before her, but she continued for a little so inscrutably embarrassed that I came again to her aid. "Unless, indeed," I wound up, "you really want _not_ to go."
I could see it, in her face, at last clear itself; she put out her hand to me as a pledge. "I'll go--I'll go. I'll go this morning."
I wanted to be very just. "If you _should_ wish still to wait, I would engage she shouldn't see me."
"No, no: it's the place itself. She must leave it." She held me a moment with heavy eyes, then brought out the rest. "Your idea's the right one. I myself, Miss----"
The look she gave me with it made me jump at possibilities. "You mean that, since yesterday, you _have_ seen----?"
She shook her head with dignity. "I've _heard_----!"
"From that child--horrors! There!" she sighed with tragic relief. "On my honour, Miss, she says things----!" But at this evocation she broke down; she dropped, with a sudden sob, upon my sofa and, as I had seen her do before, gave way to all the grief of it.
It was quite in another manner that I, for my part, let myself go. "Oh, thank God!"