It was this, of a truth, that made her, as she filled out my picture, gape. “Do you mean,” she faltered, “⁠—of the lost?”

“Of the lost. Of the damned. And that’s why, to share them⁠—” I faltered myself with the horror of it.

But my companion, with less imagination, kept me up. “To share them⁠—?”

“She wants Flora.” Mrs. Grose might, as I gave it to her, fairly have fallen away from me had I not been prepared. I still held her there, to show I was. “As I’ve told you, however, it doesn’t matter.”

“Because you’ve made up your mind? But to what?”

“To everything.”

“And what do you call ‘everything’?”

“Why, sending for their uncle.”