The boys had spoken idly, but hunted Grizel, who knew so much less and so much more than any of them, believed it all.
It was she who had stood so near Gavinia in the ruined house.

She had only gone there to listen to human voices.

When she discovered from the talk of her friends that she had left a light burning at Double Dykes and the door open, fear of the suspicions this might give rise to had sent her to the house on the heels of the two boys, and it was she who had stolen past them in the mist to put out the light and lock the door.
Then she had returned to her mamma's side.
The doctor was among the listeners, almost the only dry-eyed one, but he was not dry-eyed because he felt the artless story least.

Again and again he rose from his chair restlessly, and Grizel thought he scowled at her when he was really scowling at himself; as soon as she had finished he cleared the room brusquely of all intruders, and then he turned on her passionately.
"Think shame of yoursel'," he thundered, "for keeping me in the dark," and of course she took his words literally, though their full meaning was, "I shall scorn myself from this hour for not having won the poor child's confidence." Oh, he was a hard man, Grizel thought, the hardest of them all.

But she was used to standing up to hard men, and she answered, defiantly: "I did mean to tell you, that day you sent me with the bottle to Ballingall, I was waiting at the surgery door to tell you, but you were cruel, you said I was a thief, and then how could I tell you ?" This, too, struck home, and the doctor winced, but what he said was, "You fooled me for a whole week, and the town knows it; do you think I can forgive you for that ?" "I don't care whether you forgive me," replied Grizel at once.
"Nor do I care whether you care," he rapped out, all the time wishing he could strike himself; "but I'm the doctor of this place, and when your mother was ill you should have come straight to me.