“Give me your letter,” said Effie, holding out her hand. There was something threatening, something dangerous, about the girl, which made Mrs. Ogilvie scream out.
“My letter! I am not in the habit of showing my letters to anybody but your father. And even if I was disposed to show it I cannot, for I’ve just been to the post and put it in with my own hand. And by this time it is stamped and in the bag to go away. So you must take my description of it. I will be very happy to tell you all I have said.”
“You have just been to the post to put it in!” Effie repeated the words, her eyes growing larger every moment, her face more ghastly. Then she gave a strange cry like a wounded creature, and turned and flew back towards the village neither pausing nor looking behind her, without a word more. Mrs. Ogilvie stood for a time, her own heart beating a little faster than usual, and a choking sensation in her throat.
“Effie, Effie!” she cried after her—but Effie took no notice. She went along through the dim air like a flying shadow, and soon was out of sight, taking no time either for breath or thought. Where had she gone? wherever she went, what could she do? It was for her good; all through it had been for her good. If she mistook at first, yet after she must come round.
Effie had fled in the opposite direction to Allonby. Where was she going? what could she do? Mrs. Ogilvie made a rapid glance at the possibilities and decided that there was really nothing which the girl could do. She drew a long breath to relieve the oppression which in spite of herself had seized upon her, the sudden panic and alarm.
What could Effie do?—just nothing! She would run and tell her Uncle John, but though the minister was a man full of crotchets he was still more or less a man of sense, and he had never been very keen on the match. He would speak to her sensibly and she would see it when he said it, though not when Mrs. Ogilvie said it: and she would come home.
And then Ronald would get another invitation to his dinner. It was all as simple as A B C.
CHAPTER XX.
Mr. Moubray was in his study, in the gray of the winter’s afternoon. It is never a very cheerful moment. The fire was burning brightly, the room was warm and pleasant, with plenty of books, and many associations; but it was a pensive moment, too dark for reading, when there is nothing to do but to think. And though a man who has begun to grow old, and who is solitary, may be very happy thinking, yet it is a pensive pleasure. He was sitting very quietly, looking out at the shaft of red gold in the west where the sun had disappeared, and watching the light as it stole away, each moment a little less, a little less brilliant, till it sank altogether in the gray.
To eyes “that have kept watch o’er man’s mortality” there is always an interest in that sight: one going out is so like another: the slow lessening, the final disappearance have an interest that never fails. And the minister can scarcely be said to have been thinking. He was watching, as he had watched at many a death-bed, the slow extinction, the going away. Whether it is a sun or a life that is setting, that last ineffable moment of disappearance cannot but convey a thrill to the heart.