There were now clearly so many of these for my poor colleague that she was excusable for being vague. "But--a--which?"
"I ought to have done so on the instant."
"I'll put it before him," I went on inexorably, "that I can't undertake to work the question on behalf of a child who has been expelled----"
"For we've never in the least known what!" Mrs. Grose declared.
"For wickedness. For what else--when he's so clever and beautiful and perfect? Is he stupid? Is he untidy? Is he infirm? Is he ill-natured? He's exquisite--so it can be only _that_; and that would open up the whole thing. After all," I said, "it's their uncle's fault. If he left here such people----!"
"He didn't really in the least know them. The fault's mine." She had turned quite pale.
"The children shan't!" she emphatically returned.
I was silent awhile; we looked at each other. "Then what am I to tell him?"
"You needn't tell him anything. _I'll_ tell him."
I measured this. "Do you mean you'll write----?" Remembering she couldn't, I caught myself up. "How do you communicate?"
"And should you like him to write our story?"
My question had a sarcastic force that I had not fully intended, and it made her, after a moment, inconsequently break down. The tears were again in her eyes. "Ah, Miss, _you_ write!"
"Well--tonight," I at last answered; and on this we separated.
I went so far, in the evening, as to make a beginning. The weather had changed back, a great wind was abroad, and beneath the lamp, in my room, with Flora at peace beside me, I sat for a long time before a blank sheet of paper and listened to the lash of the rain and the batter of the gusts. Finally I went out, taking a candle; I crossed the passage and listened a minute at Miles's door. What, under my endless obsession, I had been impelled to listen for was some betrayal of his not being at rest, and I presently caught one, but not in the form I had expected. His voice tinkled out. "I say, you there--come in." It was a gaiety in the gloom!
I went in with my light and found him, in bed, very wide awake, but very much at his ease. "Well, what are _you_ up to?" he asked with a grace of sociability in which it occurred to me that Mrs. Grose, had she been present, might have looked in vain for proof that anything was "out."