"Rather! And, naturally, you take it from her still."
"I don't contradict her. What else can I do?"
"Nothing in the world! You've the cleverest little person to deal with. They've made them--their two friends, I mean--still cleverer even than nature did; for it was wondrous material to play on! Flora has now her grievance, and she'll work it to the end."
"Why, that of dealing with me to her uncle. She'll make me out to him the lowest creature----!"
I winced at the fair show of the scene in Mrs. Grose's face; she looked for a minute as if she sharply saw them together. "And him who thinks so well of you!"
"He has an odd way--it comes over me now," I laughed, "--of proving it! But that doesn't matter. What Flora wants, of course, is to get rid of me."
My companion bravely concurred. "Never again to so much as look at you."
"So that what you've come to me now for," I asked, "is to speed me on my way?" Before she had time to reply, however, I had her in check. "I've a better idea--the result of my reflections. My going _would_ seem the right thing, and on Sunday I was terribly near it. Yet that won't do. It's _you_ who must go. You must take Flora."
My visitor, at this, did speculate. "But where in the world----?"
"Away from here. Away from _them_. Away, even most of all, now, from me. Straight to her uncle."
"No, not 'only'! To leave me, in addition, with my remedy."
She was still vague. "And what _is_ your remedy?"
"Your loyalty, to begin with. And then Miles's."
She looked at me hard. "Do you think he----?"
"Won't if he has the chance, turn on me? Yes, I venture still to think it. At all events, I want to try. Get off with his sister as soon as possible and leave me with him alone." I was amazed, myself, at the spirit I had still in reserve, and therefore perhaps a trifle the more disconcerted at the way in which, in spite of this fine example of it, she hesitated. "There's one thing, of course," I went on: "they mustn't, before she goes, see each other for three seconds." Then it came over me that, in spite of Flora's presumable sequestration from the instant of her return from the pool, it might already be too late. "Do you mean," I anxiously asked, "that they _have_ met?"
At this she quite flushed. "Ah, Miss, I'm not such a fool as that! If I've been obliged to leave her three or four times, it has been each time with one of the maids, and at present, though she's alone, she's locked in safe. And yet--and yet!" There were too many things.