She said correspondent, but it was not her mispronunciation that made Egidia wince.
“Well, then,” Jane Anne went on, “last summer there comes a lady—leastwise a very funny lady, to be a lady—to call herself one, I mean—she was a foreigner, with painted cheeks, and something she did to her hair, and she nivver let our Mr. Rivers alone! He didn’t run after her, he really didn’t, but she had made up her mind to have him, and she did. She was married!”
“This is very interesting, and extraordinary!” ejaculated Egidia.
“But she nivver telled him so, nor none of us. She called herself Miss Frick, and first of all she wore a pair of blue spectacles, but trust her, she couldn’t stick to that long, because, you see, he couldn’t rightly see her face while she wore them, and so one fine day, she went and left them off! That’s why Mrs. Popham will have it that she was a spy! A spy! What for? She didn’t want to spy anything. She just wanted Mr. Rivers, and she got him! They used to go jaunting into the Park at all sorts of hours of the night, and loverish things like that!”
“Oh, then it is your opinion they were lovers?”
“Yes, ma’am, I do, and I am going for to say so. It is me that knows best, the lawyer says so.”
“Whose lawyer?”
“Mr. Mortimer Elles’s lawyer! He’s been down to see me times out of number. Aunt was dreadfully fashed; she said it put me out with my work!”
“And this man—the lover—is he a nice man?”
“Oh—ma’am!”