The clergyman smiled, and something hovered on his lips, which he suppressed.
"Were you," the old maid resumed, "at Mrs. Macnab's last night?
Charming music?"
"Charming! How pretty that Mrs. Butler is! and how humble! Knows her station—so unlike professional people."
"Yes, indeed!—What attention a certain banker paid her!"
"He! he! he! yes; he is very fatherly—very!"
"Perhaps he will marry again; he is always talking of the holy state of matrimony—a holy state it may be—but Heaven knows, his wife, poor woman, did not make it a pleasant one."
"There may be more causes for that than we guess of," said the clergyman, mysteriously. "I would not be uncharitable, but—"
"But what?"
"Oh, when he was young, our great man was not so correct, I fancy, as he is now."
"So I have heard it whispered; but nothing against him was ever known."