"'Well, Aunt Liddy does not know very much about the prospective bride; the groom is her friend, he is a young student of the University there,' your mother paused, but did not raise her eyes. 'His name is—Dalton,' Miss Hartney went on with an insinuation of malicious triumph.
"Cousin Bessie!" I cried, leaning forward with quick eagerness and interrupting her story, "Dalton, did you say?"
"Yes, Ernest Dalton," she answered me quietly. "Ernest Dalton whom you now know, and who is the cause of your being with me to-day."
I looked at her vacantly for a moment, and falling back languidly in my seat, muttered faintly, "Go on."
"Where was I?" she resumed, looking wistfully into the space between us; "Oh, yes—where Miss Hartney pronounced Ernest Dalton's name so flourishingly—your mother looked up at her with a blanched face when she said this, and asked:
"'Do you know for certain that what you say is true?'
"'Oh! my dear Amey—really—you frighten me,' her aunt exclaimed, with dilated eyes and recoiling gesture, 'I am sure I can't say whether it is Gospel truth or not, I only know what I heard and what I saw!'
"'What you saw?' your mother interrupted, huskily. 'What did you see, Aunt Winnie?'
"'I saw this Mr. Dalton paying such attentions to a young lady while I was there as would convince anyone of the truth of the rumours that are afloat about him,' she simpered out, half-defiantly.
"'His sister, perhaps' your mother muttered, knocking her ivory pen-handle nervously against her white teeth.