《两个魔法：螺丝在拧紧，覆盖结尾》

Still, she couldn’t shake a nagging curiosity, and asked about the governess who had held the post before her. Mrs. Grose said the woman had been young and pretty, almost as young and pretty as the narrator herself. The narrator joked that Miles seemed to like his governesses young and pretty, and Mrs. Grose nodded, then immediately corrected herself: “Oh, he did— I mean that’s the master’s way.” The narrator was startled, and asked who Mrs. Grose had been talking about first. The housekeeper flushed, then admitted she had meant Miles. When the narrator asked if the previous governess had ever seen anything troubling in the boy, Mrs. Grose grew quiet, said she’d never told her anything, then refused to speak further. “She’s gone. I won’t tell tales,” she said, and when the narrator asked if the woman had died at Bly, Mrs. Grose shook her head: the governess had left at the end of her first year for a short holiday, and when Mrs. Grose had expected her back, the master had written to say she was dead—no explanation of how or why. The narrator let the matter drop, but a faint, unspoken unease lingered as she set off the next day to meet Miles.

III

When the narrator arrived at the inn, Miles was waiting on the step, and the moment she saw him, all lingering doubt about the expulsion letter vanished. He was even more beautiful than Flora, with an air of pure, unjaded innocence that felt almost divine—like he knew nothing in the world but love, no trace of cruelty or cunning to mar his sweet, open face. He was so obviously, overwhelmingly good that the charge against him felt not just wrong, but grotesque. As soon as she had a moment alone with Mrs. Grose, the narrator declared she would say nothing about the letter to anyone: not the headmaster, not Miles’s uncle, not Miles himself. Mrs. Grose agreed at once, and they clasped hands on a vow to “see it out” together, to protect the children no matter what.

The weeks that followed felt like a dream. The narrator was swept up in a wave of infatuation and pity for the two children, so gentle, so lovely, so free of the rough edges of the world. She’d expected governess work to be dull, grinding drudgery, but instead it was all summer air and flower-scented walks, playful lessons that felt less like work and more like play. She stopped worrying about the future, about what would happen when Miles’s holidays ended, and lost herself in the joy of the present. Her favorite part of the day was the quiet hour after the children were in bed, when she would take a solitary walk through the Bly grounds, the sky flushed pink with sunset, the last birds calling from the old trees. She felt tranquil, justified, sure that her discretion and care were making the children happy, and even daydreamed that their uncle might appear at the end of a path one evening, smile at her, and approve of the work she was doing.