“You do know, you dear thing,” I replied; “only you haven’t my dreadful boldness of mind, and you keep back, out of timidity and modesty and delicacy, even the impression that, in the past, when you had, without my aid, to flounder about in silence, most of all made you miserable. But I shall get it out of you yet! There was something in the boy that suggested to you,” I continued, “that he covered and concealed their relation.”

“Oh, he couldn’t prevent⁠—”

“Your learning the truth? I daresay! But, heavens,” I fell, with vehemence, a-thinking, “what it shows that they must, to that extent, have succeeded in making of him!”

“Ah, nothing that’s not nice now !” Mrs. Grose lugubriously pleaded.

“I don’t wonder you looked queer,” I persisted, “when I mentioned to you the letter from his school!”