“The children?”

“I can’t leave them now.”

“You’re afraid⁠—?”

I spoke boldly. “I’m afraid of him .”

Mrs. Grose’s large face showed me, at this, for the first time, the faraway faint glimmer of a consciousness more acute: I somehow made out in it the delayed dawn of an idea I myself had not given her and that was as yet quite obscure to me. It comes back to me that I thought instantly of this as something I could get from her; and I felt it to be connected with the desire she presently showed to know more. “When was it⁠—on the tower?”

“About the middle of the month. At this same hour.”