"I quite understand your feeling," I hastened to reply; but I thought it,
after an instant, not opposed to this concession to pursue:
"Did she die here?"

"No--she went off."

I don't know what there was in this brevity of Mrs. Grose's that struck
me as ambiguous. "Went off to die?" Mrs. Grose looked straight
out of the window, but I felt that, hypothetically, I had a right
to know what young persons engaged for Bly were expected to do.
"She was taken ill, you mean, and went home?"

"She was not taken ill, so far as appeared, in this house.
She left it, at the end of the year, to go home, as she said,
for a short holiday, to which the time she had put in had
certainly given her a right. We had then a young woman--
a nursemaid who had stayed on and who was a good girl and clever;
and SHE took the children altogether for the interval.
But our young lady never came back, and at the very moment I
was expecting her I heard from the master that she was dead."

I turned this over. "But of what?"

"He never told me! But please, miss," said Mrs. Grose,
"I must get to my work."



III