“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 unmistakeable 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?”
“From where they come from! She just appeared and stood there—but not so near.”
“And without coming nearer?”
“Oh, for the effect and the feeling, she might have been as close as you!”
My friend, with an odd impulse, fell back a step. “Was she someone you’ve never seen?”