"She may be, though the depth is, I believe, nowhere very great. But what I judge most likely is that she's on the spot from which, the other day, we saw together what I told you."
"With that astounding self-possession! I've always been sure she wanted to go back alone. And now her brother has managed it for her."
Mrs. Grose still stood where she had stopped. "You suppose they really _talk_ of them?"
I could meet this with a confidence! "They say things that, if we heard them, would simply appal us."
"Oh, thank you!" my friend cried, planted so firm that, taking it in, I went straight on without her. By the time I reached the pool, however, she was close behind me, and I knew that, whatever, to her apprehension, might befall me, the exposure of my society struck her as her least danger. She exhaled a moan of relief as we at last came in sight of the greater part of the water without a sight of the child. There was no trace of Flora on that nearer side of the bank where my observation of her had been most startling, and none on the opposite edge, where, save for a margin of some twenty yards, a thick copse came down to the water. The pond, oblong in shape, had a width so scant compared to its length that, with its ends out of view, it might have been taken for a scant river. We looked at the empty expanse, and then I felt the suggestion of my friend's eyes. I knew what she meant and I replied with a negative headshake.
My companion stared at the vacant mooring-place and then again across the lake. "Then where is it?"
"Our not seeing it is the strongest of proofs. She has used it to go over, and then has managed to hide it."
"She's not alone, and at such times she's not a child: she's an old, old woman." I scanned all the visible shore while Mrs. Grose took again, into the queer element I offered her, one of her plunges of submission; then I pointed out that the boat might perfectly be in a small refuge formed by one of the recesses of the pool, an indentation masked, for the hither side, by a projection of the bank and by a clump of trees growing close to the water.
"But if the boat's there, where on earth's _she_?" my colleague anxiously asked.
"That's exactly what we must learn." And I started to walk further.