Her thus turning her back on me was fortunately not, for my just
preoccupations, a snub that could check the growth of our mutual esteem.
We met, after I had brought home little Miles, more intimately
than ever on the ground of my stupefaction, my general emotion:
so monstrous was I then ready to pronounce it that such a child
as had now been revealed to me should be under an interdict.
I was a little late on the scene, and I felt, as he stood wistfully
looking out for me before the door of the inn at which the coach had
put him down, that I had seen him, on the instant, without and within,
in the great glow of freshness, the same positive fragrance of purity,
in which I had, from the first moment, seen his little sister.
He was incredibly beautiful, and Mrs. Grose had put her finger on it:
everything but a sort of passion of tenderness for him was swept away
by his presence. What I then and there took him to my heart for was
something divine that I have never found to the same degree in any child--
his indescribable little air of knowing nothing in the world but love.
It would have been impossible to carry a bad name with a greater
sweetness of innocence, and by the time I had got back to Bly with him
I remained merely bewildered--so far, that is, as I was not outraged--
by the sense of the horrible letter locked up in my room, in a drawer.
As soon as I could compass a private word with Mrs. Grose I declared
to her that it was grotesque.

She promptly understood me. "You mean the cruel charge--?"

"It doesn't live an instant. My dear woman, LOOK at him!"

She smiled at my pretention to have discovered his charm.
"I assure you, miss, I do nothing else! What will you say, then?"