Susan seated herself on a cushion on the floor—and with how sharp a stab reminded me of Fanny and the old, care-free days of Wuthering Heights.
Surely—in spite of Fanny—life had definitely taken a tinge of Miss Brontë's imagination since then. But it was only the languor of Susan's movements, and that because she seemed a little tired, rather than merely indolent. And if from Fanny's eyes had now stooped a serpent and now a blinded angel; from these clear blue ones looked only a human being like myself. Even as I write that "like myself," I ponder. But let it stay.
"So you really did know him?" Susan persisted. "And it doesn't seem a nightmare even to think of him? And who, I say, made it impossible for him to go on living?" So intense was her absorption in these questions that when they ceased her hands tightened round her knees, and her small mouth remained ajar.
"You said 'what' just now," I prevaricated, looking up at her.
At this her blue eyes opened so wide I broke into a little laugh.
"No, no, no, Miss Monnerie," I hastened to explain, "not me. It isn't my story, though I was in it—and to blame. But please, if you would be so kind, don't mention it again to Mrs Monnerie, and don't think about it any more."
"Not think about it! You must. Besides, thoughts sometimes think themselves. I always supposed that things like that only happened to quite—to different people, you know. Was he?"
"Different?" I couldn't follow her. "He was the curate of St Peter's—a friend of the Pollackes."
"Oh, yes, the Pollackes," said she; and having glanced at me again, said no more.