“I'm certain you do!” observed Mrs. Kennyfeck, with an expression of unequivocal contempt. “I am perfectly certain we need not look to you for either information or assistance.”
Poor Mr. Kennyfeck was dumfoundered. The very words were riddles to him, and he turned to each person about him in silent entreaty for explanation; but none came.
“What had you been conversing about?” asked Aunt Fanny, in that encouraging tone lawyers sometimes use to draw out a reluctant or bashful witness.
“Of his money affairs, Miss O'Hara; and I am grieved to say that the subject had so little interest for him, that he started up and left me on suddenly remembering something about a letter.”
“Which something you have totally forgotten,” remarked Mrs. Kennyfeck, tartly.
“And yet it would be a most important fact for us,” observed Aunt Fanny, with judicial solemnity; “a letter, whether to read or to write, of such pressing necessity, implies much.”
“Come, Livy, dear,” said Miss Kennyfeck, rising from the pianoforte, and addressing her sister, who sat reading on the sofa, “my canzonette and your beautiful attitude are so much sweetness thrown away. He's gone without even a thought of either! There, there, don't look so innocently vacant,—you understand me perfectly.”
A very gentle smile was all the younger sister's reply as she left the room.
“Depend upon it, my dear,” said Miss O'Hara to Mrs. Kennyfeck, “that young man had made some unhappy connection; that's the secret of this letter, and when they get into a scrape of the kind it puts marriage out of their heads altogether. It was the same with Captain Morris,”—here she whispered still lower, the only audible words being, “without my ever suspecting,—one evening—a low creature—never set eyes upon—ah, man, man!” And with this exclamation aloud, Aunt Fanny took her candle and retired.
About a minute after, however, she re-entered the drawing-room, and advancing close to her sister, said, with all the solemnity of deep thought,—