Of the positive identity of the apparition I would assure myself as soon as the small clock of my courage should have ticked out the right second; meanwhile, with an effort that was already sharp enough, I transferred my eyes straight to little Flora, who, at the moment, was about ten yards away. My heart had stood still for an instant with the wonder and terror of the question whether she too would see; and I held my breath while I waited for what a cry from her, what some sudden innocent sign either of interest or of alarm, would tell me. I waited, but nothing came; then, in the first place--and there is something more dire in this, I feel, than in anything I have to relate--I was determined by a sense that, within a minute, all sounds from her had previously dropped; and, in the second, by the circumstance that, also within the minute, she had, in her play, turned her back to the water. This was her attitude when I at last looked at her--looked with the confirmed conviction that we were still, together, under direct personal notice. She had picked up a small flat piece of wood, which happened to have in it a little hole that had evidently suggested to her the idea of sticking in another fragment that might figure as a mast and make the thing a boat. This second morsel, as I watched her, she was very markedly and intently attempting to tighten in its place. My apprehension of what she was doing sustained me so that after some seconds I felt I was ready for more. Then I again shifted my eyes--I faced what I had to face. VII I got hold of Mrs. Grose as soon after this as I could; and I can give no intelligible account of how I fought out the interval. Yet I still hear myself cry as I fairly threw myself into her arms: “They _know_--it’s too monstrous: they know, they know!” “And what on earth----?” I felt her incredulity as she held me. “Why, all that _we_ know--and heaven knows what else besides!” Then, as she released me, I made it out to her, made it out perhaps only now with full coherency even to myself. “Two hours ago, in the garden”--I could scarce articulate--“Flora _saw_!” Mrs. Grose took it as she might have taken a blow in the stomach. “She has told you?” she panted. “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?”