“Well,” reflected Hephzibah, pausing for breath on her hurried walk back to the Parsonage, “I am glad that I told her she was a liar. Still—”
Queer stories about the Jonker Gerard had been rife in the servants’ hall. The domestics of the Trossart household had added their occasional items. It was pretty well known that Helena would have married her cousin but for some sudden impediment. Judging by appearances and gossip, there was nothing absolutely improbable in Adeline’s story. In fact, Adeline very nearly believed it herself. Hephzibah wished that vigorous denial could prove it untrue.
And then the child! Hephzibah screwed her wrinkled face up till it looked like an enormous spider. That woman Lady of the Manor! That woman! Hephzibah shook her head as she hurried along. “Who is thine handmaid,” she said, aloud, “that she should do this thing?”
She was late, and she found the Freule waiting, shawled and gaitered and exceedingly nervous, in the dim drawing-room, amid driblets of unwilling conversation with Juffrouw Josine. Louisa looked vehement reproaches, and longed for courage to speak them; but Hephzibah was too violently excited by her afternoon’s adventure to notice such trifles as these. The pair marched off through the damp twilight.
“Red Riding-hood and the Wolf,” said Josine.
“Hephzibah,” began the Freule presently, in a trembling voice, “I wish you would walk on the other side of the road. One can’t tell where you may have been.”
Hephzibah obeyed with silent protest.
“Hephzibah,” hazarded the Freule a few minutes later, unable to bear any longer the gray atmosphere of disapproval, “what is this terrible secret you said you would tell me the other day? You have alluded to it several times lately, and always declared you dared not mention it in the house. Well, we are alone now, on the road.”
“Oh, it’s of no account,” muttered Hephzibah. “And I couldn’t shout it across, besides,” she added, in a lower key.
“Well, come a little nearer, if you like, but not nearer, mind you, than the middle.”