It was not till late next day that I spoke to Mrs. Grose;
the rigor with which I kept my pupils in sight making it often
difficult to meet her privately, and the more as we each felt
the importance of not provoking--on the part of the servants
quite as much as on that of the children--any suspicion
of a secret flurry or that of a discussion of mysteries.
I drew a great security in this particular from her mere
smooth aspect. There was nothing in her fresh face to pass
on to others my horrible confidences. She believed me,
I was sure, absolutely: if she hadn't I don't know what would
have become of me, for I couldn't have borne the business alone.
But she was a magnificent monument to the blessing of a want
of imagination, and if she could see in our little charges nothing
but their beauty and amiability, their happiness and cleverness,
she had no direct communication with the sources of my trouble.
If they had been at all visibly blighted or battered, she would
doubtless have grown, on tracing it back, haggard enough
to match them; as matters stood, however, I could feel her,
when she surveyed them, with her large white arms folded
and the habit of serenity in all her look, thank the Lord's
mercy that if they were ruined the pieces would still serve.
Flights of fancy gave place, in her mind, to a steady fireside glow,
and I had already begun to perceive how, with the development
of the conviction that--as time went on without a public accident--
our young things could, after all, look out for themselves,
she addressed her greatest solicitude to the sad case presented
by their instructress. That, for myself, was a sound simplification:
I could engage that, to the world, my face should tell no tales,
but it would have been, in the conditions, an immense added
strain to find myself anxious about hers.