She was not a liar by nature, but children have streaky days in their moral life, just as men have, and to-day was a very streaky day with Effie. She had awakened that morning predisposed to frowardness; a slight bilious attack had made her fretful, and fretfulness always made her impish. The devil, taking advantage of this pathological condition, had incited her to make an April fool of Mr. Giveen, to steal, and to lie.
"Oh!" said Miss Grimshaw.
They walked away from the post-office, taking the downhill road to the bridge. They walked hurriedly; at least, the girl did—Effie had almost to trot in order to keep up with her.
A nice thing, truly. Here, for months, she had been working for the interests of a man who to-day had taken a child into his confidence, given it a letter to post, and instructions to keep the matter hidden from her. Worse than that, she had a dim suspicion that the letter was to Mr. Dashwood, and had to deal with that "affair."
She had taken the road to the bridge unconsciously, and when she reached it, and found herself at the very place where the affair had occurred, she could have wept from sheer mortification, only for the presence of the culprit at her side.
"Don't tell your father that you told me that, Effie," said Miss Grimshaw, after she had leaned for a moment on the parapet of the bridge, deep in troubled thought.
"No," said Effie, "I won't."
Miss Grimshaw resumed her meditations, and Effie, very quiet and strangely subdued, hung beside her, looking also at the river.
Even in the time of the Roman legionaries lovers had haunted this place. What a story it could have told of lovers and love affairs gone to dust! But from all its wealth of stories, I doubt if it could have matched in involution and cross-purpose the love affair in which figured Mr. French, Mr. Dashwood, and the girl in the Homburg hat, who was now gazing at the wimpling water and listening to the moist wind in the branches of the trees.
She was of the order of people who forgive a blow struck in anger readily, but not a slight, or a fancied slight. French had slighted her, and she would never forgive him. She had helped him, plotted and planned for him, and it had all ended in this!