at it was all over, felt that it was but just his aunt
Leonora should suffer a little for her treatment of him. "Perhaps some
of her favourite colporteurs have fallen back into evil ways. There was
one who had been a terrible blackguard, I remember. It is something that
has happened among her mission people, you may be sure, and nothing
about me."

"You don't know Leonora, Frank. She is very fond of you, though she
does not show it," said Miss Dora, as she led her victim in
triumphantly through the garden-door, from which the reluctant young
man could see Lucy and her sister in their black dresses just arriving
at the other green door from the parish church, where they had
occupied their usual places, according to the ideas of propriety which
were common to both the Miss Wodehouses. Mr Wentworth had to content
himself with taking off his hat to them, and followed his aunts to the
table, where Miss Leonora took her seat much with the air of a judge
about to deliver a sentence. She did not restrain herself even in the
consideration of the presence of Lewis the butler, who, to be sure,
had been long enough in the Wentworth family to know as much about its
concerns as the members of the house themselves, or perhaps a little
more. Miss Leonora sat down grim and formidable in her bonnet, which
was in the style of a remote period, and did not soften the severity
of her personal appearance. She pointed her nephew to a seat beside
her, but she did not relax her features, nor condescend to any
ordinary preliminaries of conversation. For that day even she took
Lewis's business out of his astonished hands, and herself divided the
chicken with a swift and steady knife and anatomical precision; and it
was while occupied in this congenial business that she broke forth
upon Frank in a manner so unexpected as almost to take away his
breath.

"I suppose this is what fools call poetic justice," said Miss Leonora,
"which is just of a piece with everything else that is poetical--weak
folly and nonsense that no sensible man would have anything to say to.
How a young man like you, who know how to conduct yourself in some
things, and have, I don't deny, many good qualities, can give in to
come to an ending like a trashy novel, is more than I can understand.
You are fit to be put in a book of the Good-child series, Frank, as an
illustration of the reward of virtue," said the strong-minded woman,
with a little snort of scorn; "and, of course,