Oh, she let me know as soon as, round the corner of the house, she loomed again into view.

"What in the name of goodness is the matter --?" She was now flushed and out of breath.

"Has anything happened?"

"Through this window? Dreadful!"

"Yes. You must know now. Did I look very queer?"

I considered; I could meet on this, without scruple, any innocence.

"You came for me for church, of course, but I can't go."

My need to respect the bloom of Mrs. Grose's had dropped, without a rustle, from my shoulders, and if I wavered for the instant it was not with what I kept back. I put out my hand to her and she took it; I held her hard a little, liking to feel her close to me.

"You're as white as a sheet. You look awful."

"Do I show it?"

"Well," I said, "I've been frightened." Mrs. Grose's eyes expressed plainly that SHE had no wish to be, yet also that she knew too well her place not to be ready to share with me any marked inconvenience.

There was a kind of support in the shy heave of her surprise.

I said nothing till she came quite near. "With me?" I must have made a wonderful face.

"Only standing there and looking down at me."

Oh, it was quite settled that she MUST share! "Just what you saw from the dining room a minute ago was the effect of that. What I saw -- just before -- was much worse."

"Have you seen him before?"

"You've seen him nowhere but on the tower?"

Mrs. Grose looked round again. "What was he doing on the tower?"

"Oh, very much!"

"I know still less."

"Yes -- once. On the old tower." She could only look at me harder. "Do you mean he's a stranger?"

She thought a minute. "Was he a gentleman?"

"Yet you didn't tell me?"

"No -- for reasons. But now that you've guessed --" Mrs. Grose's round eyes encountered this charge. "Ah, I haven't guessed!" she said very simply. "How can I if YOU don't imagine?"

Mrs. Grose gazed round us in vain. "Then where is he gone?"

"I haven't the least idea."

"And on this spot just now."

I found I had no need to think. "No." she gazed in deeper wonder. "No."

"What extraordinary man?"

"An extraordinary man. Looking in."

"I don't in the very least."

Her hand tightened. "What was it?"

It comes back to me that I thought instantly of this as something I could get from her; and I felt it to be connected with the desire she presently showed to know more.

It only went indeed a little way. "But if he isn't a gentleman -- What IS he?"

"You're afraid --?"

"It's time we should be at church."

"He's -- God help me if I know WHAT he is!"

"The children?"

"It won't do THEM --!" I nodded at the house.

"Nobody -- nobody. I didn't tell you, but I made sure." she breathed a vague relief: this was, oddly, so much to the good.

"Won't it do you good?"

"Then nobody about the place? Nobody from the village?"

"I can't leave them now."

I spoke boldly. "I'm afraid of HIM."

"He's a horror."

"A horror?"

Mrs. Grose looked round once more; she fixed her eyes on the duskier distance, then, pulling herself together, turned to me with abrupt inconsequence.

Mrs. Grose's large face showed me, at this, for the first time, the faraway faint glimmer of a consciousness more acute: I somehow made out in it the delayed dawn of an idea I myself had not given her and that was as yet quite obscure to me.

"Oh, I'm not fit for church!"

She had now let go my hand; she turned away a little. I waited an instant; then I brought out: "Go to church. Goodbye. I must watch."

"I couldn't have come out."

Mrs. Grose at last turned round, and there was still more in her face.

"How long was he here?"

Slowly she faced me again. "Do you fear for them?"

"About the middle of the month. At this same hour."

"Then how did he get in?"

"Neither could I!" I laughed again. "But I did come. I have my duty."

"And how did he get out?" I laughed. "I had no opportunity to ask him! This evening, you see," I pursued, "he has not been able to get in."

"He only peeps?"

"Oh, no, not nearly. I saw him as I see you."

We met in another long look. "Don't YOU?" Instead of answering she came nearer to the window and, for a minute, applied her face to the glass.

"I hope it will be confined to that!"

"You see how he could see," I meanwhile went on. She didn't move.

"When was it -- on the tower?"

"Almost at dark," said Mrs. Grose.

"Till I came out. I came to meet him."

"Nobody?" she echoed.

"So have I mine," she replied; after which she added: "What is he like?"

"I've been dying to tell you. But he's like nobody."

"He has no hat." Then seeing in her face that she already, in this, with a deeper dismay, found a touch of picture, I quickly added stroke to stroke. "He has red hair, very red, close-curling, and a pale face, long in shape, with straight, good features and little, rather queer whiskers that are as red as his hair. His eyebrows are, somehow, darker; they look particularly arched and as if they might move a good deal. His eyes are sharp, strange -- awfully; but I only know clearly that they're rather small and very fixed. His mouth's wide, and his lips are thin, and except for his little whiskers he's quite clean-shaven. He gives me a sort of sense of looking like an actor."

"An actor!" It was impossible to resemble one less, at least, than Mrs. Grose at that moment.

"I've never seen one, but so I suppose them. He's tall, active, erect!" I continued, "but never -- no, never!-- a gentleman."

"Quint?"

"And dressed --?"

I saw the way to help her. "Remarkably!"

"In somebody's clothes. They're smart, but they're not his own." She broke into a breathless affirmative groan: "They're the master's!"

I caught it up. "You DO know him?"she faltered but a second. "Quint!" she cried.

"Alone with US." Then, as from a deeper depth, "In charge," she added.

"You know him then?" she visibly tried to hold herself. "But he IS handsome?"

Gaping still, but meeting me, she pieced it all together. "He never wore his hat, but he did wear -- well, there were waistcoats missed. They were both here -- last year. Then the master went, and Quint was alone."

"And what became of him?" She hung fire so long that I was still more mystified.

I followed, but halting a little. "Alone?"

"When the master was?"

My companion's face had blanched as I went on; her round eyes started and her mild mouth gaped. "A gentleman?" she gasped, confounded, stupefied: "a gentleman HE?"

"Peter Quint -- his own man, his valet, when he was here!"

"Died?" I almost shrieked. She seemed fairly to square herself, plant herself more firmly to utter the wonder of it. "Yes. Mr. Quint is dead."

"He went, too," she brought out at last.

"Went where?"

Her expression, at this, became extraordinary. "God knows where! He died."