There is a lengthened pause.
Presently, stooping slightly towards her sister, Miss Penelope says in a mysterious whisper,—
"I wonder, my dear Priscilla, why she married James Beresford a month afterwards."
"Who can read the human heart? Perhaps it was pride drove her into that marriage,—a desire to show George Desmond how lightly she treated his desertion of her. And James was a handsome young fellow, whereas George was——"
"Ugly," says Miss Penelope, with quite an amazing amount of vicious [satisfaction] for her.
"Strikingly so," says Miss Priscilla, acquiescing most agreeably. "But then the Desmond estates mean half the county; and we used to think he was the soul of honor."
"It was our father's expressed desire upon his deathbed that Katherine should marry him."
"Yes, yes; a desire to be held sacred. And Katherine gave her promise to our dying parent. Nothing," says Miss Priscilla, in a solemn tone, "should induce any one to break such an oath. I have often said so to the dear child. But she appeared not only willing, but anxious, to marry George Desmond. His was the traitorous mind."
"I daresay he has had his own punishment," says Miss Penelope, mildly.
"I hope so," says Miss Priscilla, sternly. Then, with a return to sadness, "Twenty years ago it is, and now she has been a twelvemonth dead and in her quiet grave."