“Dear me! Now that's very curious.”
“Nothing of the sort. Plain common sense.”
“I mean, it's curious because, as a matter of fact, his wife did die a little later, and he did marry again.”
“Told you so,” remarked my aunt.
In this way every case in the Stillwood annals was reviewed, and light thrown upon it by my aunt's insight into the hidden springs of human action. Fortunate that the actors remained mere Mr. X. and Lady Y., for into the most innocent seeming behaviour my aunt read ever dark criminal intent.
“I think you are a little too severe,” Mr. Gadley would now and then plead.
“We're all of us miserable sinners,” my aunt would cheerfully affirm; “only we don't all get the same chances.”
An elderly maiden lady, a Miss Z., residing in “a western town once famous as the resort of fashion, but which we will not name,” my aunt was convinced had burnt down a house containing a will, and forged another under which her children—should she ever marry and be blessed with such—would inherit among them on coming of age a fortune of seven hundred pounds.
The freshness of her views on this, his favourite topic, always fascinated Mr. Gadley.
“I have to thank you, ma'am,” he would remark on rising, “for a most delightful conversation. I may not be able to agree with your conclusions, but they afford food for reflection.”