"Is there anything to mourn about, Aunt Jane?" I asked, pricking-up my ears for useful information which I knew these gossips could supply.
"Ah," sighed Aunt Jane, folding her withered hands, "who knows the wickedness of the heart?"
"Olivia's heart?"
"Dear me, no, Lionel," said Aunt Sophia, scandalized; "she is a good girl,--as good as she is lovely,--and not so silly as her mother," concluded the old lady, with feminine spite.
"Then to whose heart do you allude?"
This question started a duet between the two old ladies.
"Francis Briarfield! You remember, Jane."
"Yes, Sophia! That hussy with the feather boa----"
"Was seen speaking to him in the cathedral by Bishop Jevon's tomb."
"And he seemed very intimate with her."