"Well, he didn't like tale-bearing--he hated complaints.
He was terribly short with anything of that kind, and if people
were all right to HIM--"

"He wouldn't be bothered with more?" This squared well enough
with my impressions of him: he was not a trouble-loving gentleman,
nor so very particular perhaps about some of the company HE kept.
All the same, I pressed my interlocutress. "I promise you _I_
would have told!"

She felt my discrimination. "I daresay I was wrong.
But, really, I was afraid."

"Afraid of what?"

"Of things that man could do. Quint was so clever--he was so deep."

I took this in still more than, probably, I showed.
"You weren't afraid of anything else? Not of his effect--?"

"His effect?" she repeated with a face of anguish and waiting
while I faltered.

"On innocent little precious lives. They were in your charge."

"No, they were not in mine!" she roundly and distressfully returned.
"The master believed in him and placed him here because he was
supposed not to be well and the country air so good for him.
So he had everything to say. Yes"--she let me have it--"even
about THEM."