She faltered but a second. “Quint!” she cried. “Quint?” “Peter Quint--his own man, his valet, when he was here!” “When the master was?” 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.” I followed, but halting a little. “Alone?” “Alone with _us_.” Then, as from a deeper depth, “In charge,” she added. “And what became of him?” She hung fire so long that I was still more mystified. “He went too,” she brought out at last. “Went where?” Her expression, at this, became extraordinary. “God knows where! He died.” “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.” VI It took of course more than that particular passage to place us together in presence of what we had now to live with as we could--my dreadful liability to impressions of the order so vividly exemplified, and my companion’s knowledge, henceforth,--a knowledge half consternation and half compassion,--of that liability. There had been, this evening, after the revelation that left me, for an hour, so prostrate--there had been, for either of us, no attendance on any service but a little service of tears and vows, of prayers and promises, a climax to the series of mutual challenges and pledges that had straightway ensued on our retreating together to the schoolroom and shutting ourselves up there to have everything out. The result of our having everything out was simply to reduce our situation to the last rigour of its elements. She herself had seen nothing, not the shadow of a shadow, and nobody in the house but the governess was in the governess’s plight; yet she accepted without directly impugning my sanity the truth as I gave it to her, and ended by showing me, on this ground, an awe-stricken tenderness, an expression of the sense of my more than questionable privilege, of which the very breath has remained with me as that of the sweetest of human charities.