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!”
“I doubt if I looked as queer as you!” she retorted with homely force. “And if he was so bad then as that comes to, how is he such an angel now?”
“Yes, indeed—and if he was a fiend at school! How, how, how? Well,” I said in my torment, “you must put it to me again, but I shall not be able to tell you for some days. Only, put it to me again!” I cried in a way that made my friend stare. “There are directions in which I must not for the present let myself go.” Meanwhile I returned to her first example—the one to
