"Has Rivkah been telling you anything?"
"What about, mother?"
"About your intended?"
"How should she know him?"
"If she really knew him, she would hold her tongue. I only mean, did she repeat any gossip? Out of jealousy—when a rich man marries a young girl in his old age, people always talk. I don't know—has no one told you that his last wife died because of the life he led her?"
I answered coolly that I had heard something like it, but that I had forgotten from whom.
"I'm sure it was Rivkah—I wish her mouth were in the back of her head!" (angrily).
"Then why was it," I inquired, "that she died no suddenly?"
"Why? She had a weak heart."
"But—do people die of a weak heart?"