"Why, all that WE know--and heaven knows what else besides!"
Then, as she released me, I made it out to her, made it out perhaps only
now with full coherency even to myself. "Two hours ago, in the garden"--
I could scarce articulate--"Flora SAW!"

Mrs. Grose took it as she might have taken a blow in the stomach.
"She has told you?" she panted.

"Not a word--that's the horror. She kept it to herself!
The child of eight, THAT child!" Unutterable still,
for me, was the stupefaction of it.

Mrs. Grose, of course, could only gape the wider.
"Then how do you know?"

"I was there--I saw with my eyes: saw that she was perfectly aware."

"Do you mean aware of HIM?"

"No--of HER." I was conscious as I spoke that I looked
prodigious things, for I got the slow reflection of them
in my companion's face. "Another person--this time;
but a figure of quite as unmistakable horror and evil:
a woman in black, pale and dreadful--with such an air also,
and such a face!--on the other side of the lake.
I was there with the child--quiet for the hour; and in the midst
of it she came."

"Came how--from where?"