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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of At Last, by Marion Harland
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: At Last
+
+Author: Marion Harland
+
+
+Release Date: May, 2004  [EBook #5622]
+This file was first posted on July 24, 2002
+Last Updated: June 16, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AT LAST ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+AT LAST
+
+A Novel
+
+By Marion Harland
+
+New York: 1870
+
+
+
+
+AT LAST
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. -- DEWLESS ROSES.
+
+
+Mrs. Rachel Sutton was a born match maker, and she had cultivated the
+gift by diligent practice. As the sight of a tendrilled vine suggests
+the need and fitness of a trellis, and a stray glove invariably brings
+to mind the thought of its absent fellow, so every disengaged spinster
+of marriageable age was an appeal--pathetic and sure--to the dear
+woman's helpful sympathy, and her whole soul went out in compassion over
+such "nice" and an appropriated bachelors as crossed her orbit, like
+blind and dizzy comets.
+
+Her propensity, and her conscientious indulgence of the same, were
+proverbial among her acquaintances, but no one--not even prudish and
+fearsome maidens of altogether uncertain age, and prudent mammas,
+equally alive to expediency and decorum--had ever labelled her
+"Dangerous," while with young people she was a universal favorite.
+Although, with an eye single to her hobby, she regarded a man as
+an uninteresting molecule of animated nature, unless circumstances
+warranted her in recognizing in him the possible lover of some waiting
+fair one, and it was notorious that she reprobated as worse than
+useless--positively demoralizing, in fact--such friendships between
+young persons of opposite sexes as held out no earnest of prospective
+betrothal, she was confidante-general to half the girls in the county,
+and a standing advisory committee of one upon all points relative to
+their associations with the beaux of the region. The latter, on
+their side, paid their court to the worthy and influential widow as
+punctiliously, if not so heartily, as did their gentle friends. Not that
+the task was disagreeable. At fifty years of age, Mrs. Button was plump
+and comely; her fair curls unfaded, and still full and glossy; her
+blue eyes capable of languishing into moist appreciation of a woful
+heart-history, or sparkling rapturously at the news of a triumphant
+wooing; her little fat hands were swift and graceful, and her complexion
+so infantine in its clear white and pink as to lead many to believe and
+some--I need not say of which gender--to practise clandestinely upon the
+story that she had bathed her face in warm milk, night and morning, for
+forty years. The more sagacious averred, however, that the secret of
+her continued youth lay in her kindly, unwithered heart, in her loving
+thoughtfulness for others' weal, and her avoidance, upon philosophical
+and religions grounds, of whatever approximated the discontented
+retrospection winch goes with the multitude by the name of
+self-examination.
+
+Our bonnie widow had her foibles and vanities, but the first were
+amiable, the latter superficial and harmless, usually rather pleasant
+than objectionable. She was very proud, for instance, of her success in
+the profession she had taken up, and which she pursued con amore; very
+jealous for the reputation for connubial felicity of those she had
+aided to couple in the leash matrimonial, and more uncharitable toward
+malicious meddlers or thoughtless triflers with the course of true love;
+more implacable to match-breakers than to the most atrocious phases of
+schism, heresy, and sedition in church or state, against which she had,
+from her childhood, been taught to pray. The remotest allusion to a
+divorce case threw her into a cold perspiration, and apologies for such
+legal severance of the hallowed bond were commented upon as rank and
+noxious blasphemy, to which no Christian or virtuous woman should lend
+her ear for an instant. If she had ever entertained "opinions" hinting
+at the allegorical nature of the Mosaic account of the Fall, her theory
+would unquestionably have been that Satan's insidious whisper to the
+First Mother prated of the beauties of feminine individuality, and
+enlarged upon the feasibility of an elopement from Adam and a separate
+maintenance upon the knowledge-giving, forbidden fruit. Upon second
+marriages--supposing the otherwise indissoluble tie to have been cut
+by Death--she was a trifle less severe, but it was generally understood
+that she had grave doubts as to their propriety--unless in exceptional
+cases.
+
+"When there is a family of motherless children, and the father is
+himself young, it seems hard to require him to live alone for the rest
+of his life," she would allow candidly. "Not that I pretend to say that
+a connection formed through prudential motives is a real marriage in
+the sight of Heaven. Only that there is no human law against it. And
+the odds are as eight to ten that an efficient hired housekeeper would
+render his home more comfortable, and his children happier than would
+a stepmother. As for a woman marrying twice"--her gentle tone and eyes
+growing sternly decisive--"it is difficult for one to tolerate the idea.
+That is, if she really loved her first husband. If not, she may plead
+this as some excuse for making the venture--poor thing! But whether,
+even then, she has the moral right to lessen some good girl's chances
+of getting a husband by taking two for herself, has ever been and must
+remain a mooted question in my mind."
+
+Her conduct in this respect was thoroughly consistent with her avowed
+principles. She was but thirty when her husband died, after living
+happily with her for ten years. Her only child had preceded him to the
+grave four years before, and the attractive relict of Frederic Sutton,
+comfortably jointured and without incumbrance of near relatives, would
+have become a toast with gay bachelors and enterprising widowers, but
+for the quiet propriety of her demeanor, and the steadiness with
+which she insisted--for the most part, tacitly--upon her right to be
+considered a married woman still.
+
+"Once Frederic's wife--always his!" was the sole burden of her answer
+to a proposal of marriage received when she was forty-five, and
+the discomfited suitor filed it in his memory alongside of Caesar's
+hackneyed war dispatch.
+
+She had laid off crape and bombazine at the close of the first lustrum
+of her widowhood as inconvenient and unwholesome wear, but never assumed
+colored apparel. On the morning on which our story opens, she took her
+seat at the breakfast-table in her nephew's house--of which she was
+matron and supervisor-in-chief--clad in a white cambric wrapper, belted
+with black; her collar fastened with a mourning-pin of Frederic's hair,
+and a lace cap, trimmed with black ribbon, set above her luxuriant
+tresses. She looked fresh and bright as the early September day, with
+her sunny face and in her daintily-neat attire, as she arranged cups
+and saucers for seven people upon the waiter before her, instructing the
+butler, at the same time, to ring the bell again for those she was to
+serve. She was very busy and happy at that date. The neighborhood was
+gay, after the open-hearted, open-handed style of hospitality that
+distinguished the brave old days of Virginia plantation-life. A merry
+troup of maidens and cavaliers visited by invitation one homestead after
+another, crowding bedrooms beyond the capacity of any chambers of equal
+size to be found in the land, excepting in a country house in the Old
+Dominion; surrounding bountiful tables with smiling visages and restless
+tongues; dancing, walking, driving, and singing away the long, warm
+days, that seemed all too short to the soberest and plainest of the
+company; which sped by like dream-hours to most of the number.
+
+Winston Aylett, owner and tenant of the ancient mansion of Ridgeley--the
+great house of a neighborhood where small houses and men of narrow means
+were infrequent--had gone North about the first of June, upon a tour
+of indefinite length, but which was certainly to include Newport, the
+lakes, and Niagara, and was still absent. His aunt, Mrs. Sutton, and his
+only sister, Mabel, did the honors of his home in his stead, and, if the
+truth must be admitted, more acceptably to their guests than he had ever
+succeeded in doing. For a week past, the house had been tolerably well
+filled--ditto Mrs. Sutton's hands; ditto her great, heart. Had she not
+three love affairs, in different but encouraging stages of progression,
+under her roof and her patronage! And were not all three, to her
+apprehension, matches worthy of Heaven's making, and her co-operation?
+A devout Episcopalian, she was yet an unquestioning believer in
+predestination and "special Providences"--and what but Providence had
+brought together the dear creatures now basking in the benignant beam
+of her smile, sailing smoothly toward the haven of Wedlock before the
+prospering breezes of Circumstance (of her manufacture)?
+
+While putting sugar and cream into the cups intended for the happy
+pairs, she reviewed the situation rapidly in her mind, and sketched the
+day's manoeuvres.
+
+First, there was the case of Tom Barksdale and Imogene Tabb--highly
+satisfactory and creditable to all the parties concerned in it, but not
+romantic. Tom, a sturdy young planter, who had studied law while at the
+University, but never practised it, being already provided for by his
+opulent father, had visited his relatives, the Tabbs, in August, and
+straightway fallen in love with the one single daughter of his second
+cousin--a pretty, amiable girl, who would inherit a neat fortune at her
+parent's death, and whose pedigree became identical with that of
+the Barksdales a couple of generations back, and was therefore
+unimpeachable. The friends on both sides were enchanted; the lovers
+fully persuaded that they were made for one another, an opinion
+cordially endorsed by Mrs. Sutton, and they could confer with no higher
+authority.
+
+Next came Alfred Branch and Rosa Tazewell--incipient, but promising at
+this juncture, inasmuch as Rosa had lately smiled more encouragingly
+upon her timid wooer than she had deigned to do before they were
+domesticated at Ridgeley. Mrs. Sutton did not approve of unmaidenly
+forwardness. The woman who would unsought be won, would have fared
+ill in her esteem. Her lectures upon the beauties and advantages of a
+modest, yet alluring reserve, were cut up into familiar and much-prized
+quotations among her disciples, and were acted upon the more willingly
+for the prestige that surrounded her exploits as high priestess of
+Hymen. But Rosa had been too coy to Alfred's evident devotion--almost
+repellent at seasons. Had these rebuffs not alternated with attacks of
+remorse, during which the exceeding gentleness of her demeanor gradually
+pried the crushed hopes of her adorer out of the slough, and cleansed
+their drooping plumes of mud, the courtship would have fallen through,
+ere Mrs. Sutton could bring her skill to bear upon it. Guided, and yet
+soothed by her velvet rein, Rosa really seemed to become more steady.
+She was assuredly more thoughtful, and there was no better sign of
+Cupid's advance upon the outworks of a girl's heart than reverie. If
+her fits of musing were a shade too pensive, the experienced eye of the
+observer descried no cause for discouragement in this feature. Rosa was
+a spoiled, wayward child, freakish and mischievous, to whom liberty was
+too dear to be resigned without a sigh. By and by, she would wear her
+shackles as ornaments, like all other sensible and loving women.
+
+Thus preaching to Alfred, when he confided to her the fluctuations
+of rapture and despair that were his lot in his intercourse with the
+sometimes radiant and inviting, sometimes forbidding sprite, whose wings
+he would fain bind with his embrace, and thus reassuring herself, when
+perplexed by a flash of Rosa's native perverseness, Mrs. Sutton was
+sanguine that all would come right in the end. What was to be would
+be, and despite the rapids in their wooing, Alfred would find in Rosa a
+faithful, affectionate little wife, while she could never hope to secure
+a better, more indulgent, and, in most respects, more eligible, partner
+than the Ayletts' well-to-do, well-looking neighbor.
+
+But the couple who occupied the central foreground of our match-maker's
+thoughts were her niece, Mabel Aylott, and her own departed husband's
+namesake, Frederic Chilton. She dilated to herself and to Mabel with
+especial gusto upon the "wonderful leading," the inward whisper that had
+prompted her to propose a trip to the Rockbridge Alum Springs early in
+July. Neither she nor Mabel was ailing in the slightest degree, but she
+imagined they would be the brighter for a glimpse of the mountains and
+the livelier scenes of that pleasant Spa--and whom should they meet
+there but the son of "dear Frederic's" old friend, Mr. Chilton, and of
+course they saw a great deal of him--and the rest followed as Providence
+meant it should.
+
+"The rest" expressed laconically the essence of numberless walks by
+moonlight and starlight; innumerable dances in the great ball-room, and
+the sweeter, more interesting confabulations that made the young people
+better acquainted in four weeks than would six years of conventional
+calls and small-talk. They stayed the month out, although "Aunt Rachel"
+had, upon their arrival, named a fortnight as the extreme limit of their
+sojourn. Frederic Chilton was their escort to Eastern Virginia, and
+remained a week at Ridgeley--perhaps to recover from the fatigue of the
+journey. So soon as he returned to Philadelphia, in which place he had
+lately opened a law-office, he wrote to Mabel, declaring his affection
+for her, and suing for reciprocation. She granted him a gracious reply,
+and sanctioned by fond, sympathetic Aunt Rachel, in the absence of
+Mabel's brother and guardian, the correspondence was kept up briskly
+until Frederic's second visit in September. Ungenerous gossips, envious
+of her talents and influence, had occasionally sneered at Mrs. Sutton's
+appropriation of the credit of other alliances--but this one was her
+handiwork beyond dispute--hers and Providence's. She never forgot
+the partnership. She had carried her head more erect, and there was
+a brighter sparkle in her blue orbs since the evening Mabel had come
+blushingly to her room, Fred's proposal in her hand--to ask counsel and
+congratulations. Everybody saw through the discreet veil with which
+she flattered herself she concealed her exultation when others than the
+affianced twain were by--and while nobody was so unkind as to expose
+the thinness of the pretence, she was given to understand in many and
+gratifying ways that her masterpiece was considered, in the Aylett
+circle, a suitable crown to the achievements that had preceded it. Mabel
+was popular and beloved, and her betrothed, in appearance and manner, in
+breeding and intelligence, justified Mrs. Sutton's pride in her niece's
+choice.
+
+The old lady colored up, with the quick, vivid rose-tint of sudden
+and real pleasure that rarely outlives early girlhood, when the first
+respondent to the breakfast-bell proved to be her Frederic's god-son.
+
+"You are always punctual! I wish you would teach the good habit to some
+other people," she said, after answering his cordial "good-morning."
+
+"None of us deserve to be praised on that score, to-day," rejoined he,
+looking at his watch. "I did not awake until the dressing-bell rang. Our
+riding-party was out late last night. The extreme beauty of the evening
+beguiled us into going further than we intended, when we set out."
+
+"Yes! you young folks are falling into shockingly irregular habits--take
+unprecedented liberties with me and with Time!" shaking her head.
+"If Winston do not return soon, you will set my mild rule entirely at
+defiance."
+
+Chilton laughed--but was serious the next instant.
+
+"I expected confidently to meet him at this visit," he said, glancing at
+the door to guard against being overheard. "Should he not return to-day,
+ought I not, before leaving this to-morrow, to write to him, since he is
+legally his sister's guardian? It is, you and she tell me, a mere form,
+but one that should not be dispensed with any longer."
+
+"That may be so. Winston is rigorous in requiring what is due to his
+position--is, in some respects, a fearful formalist. But he will hardly
+oppose your wishes and Mabel's. He has her real happiness at heart,
+I believe, although he is, at times, an over-strict and exacting
+guardian--perhaps to counterbalance my indulgent policy. He is unlike
+any other young man I know."
+
+"His sister is very much attached to him."
+
+"She loves him--I was about to say, preposterously. Her implicit belief
+in and obedience to him have increased his self-confidence into a
+dogmatic assertion of infallibility. But"--fearing she might create an
+unfortunate impression upon the listener's mind--"Winston has grounds
+for his good opinion of himself. His character is unblemished--his
+principles and aims are excellent. Only"--relapsing hopelessly into
+the confidential strain in which most of the conference had been
+carried--"between ourselves, my dear Frederic, I am never quite easy
+with these patterns to the rest of human-kind. I should even prefer a
+tiny vein of depravity to such very rectangular virtue."
+
+"You are seldom ill at ease, if human perfection is all that renders
+you uncomfortable," responded Frederic. "There are not many in whose
+composition one cannot trace, not a tiny, but a broad vein of Adamic
+nature. What a delicious morning!" he added, sauntering to the window.
+
+"And how sorry I am for those who did not get up in time to enjoy the
+freshness of its beauty!" cried a gay voice from the portico, and Mabel
+entered by the glass door behind him--her hands loaded with roses,
+herself so beaming that her lover refrained with difficulty from kissing
+the saucy mouth then and there.
+
+He did take both her hands, under pretext of relieving her of the
+flowers, and Aunt Rachel judiciously turned her back upon them, and
+began a diligent search in the beaufet for a vase.
+
+"Do you expect us to believe that you have been more industrious than
+we? As if we did not know that you bribed the gardener to have a bouquet
+cut and laid ready for you at the back-door," Frederic charged upon the
+matutinal Flora. "Else, where are other evidences of your stroll, in
+dew-sprinkled draperies and wet feet? Confess that you ran down stairs
+just two minutes ago! Now that I come to think of it, I am positive that
+I heard you, while Mrs. Sutton was lamenting your drowsy proclivities
+after sunrise."
+
+"I have been sitting in the summer-house for an hour--reading!"
+protested Mabel, wondrously resigned to the detention, after a single,
+and not violent attempt at release. "If you had opened your shutters you
+must have seen me. But I knew I was secure from observation on that side
+of the house, at least until eight o'clock, about which time the
+glories of the new day usually penetrate very tightly-closed lids. As to
+dew--there isn't a drop upon grass or blossom. And, by the same token,
+we shall have a storm within twenty-four hours."
+
+"Is that true? That is a meteorological presage I never heard of until
+now."
+
+"There is a moral in it, which I leave you to study out for yourself,
+while I arrange the roses I--and not the gardener--gathered."
+
+In a whisper, she subjoined--"Let me go! Some one is coming!" and in a
+second more was at the sideboard, hurrying the flowers into the antique
+china bowl, destined to grace the centre of the breakfast table.
+
+"Good-morning, Miss Rosa. You are just in season to enjoy the society of
+your sister," Frederic said, lightly, pointing to the billows of mingled
+white and red, tossing under Mabel's fingers.
+
+The new-comer approached the sideboard, leaned languidly upon her elbow,
+and picked up a half-blown bud at random from the pile.
+
+"They are scentless!" she complained.
+
+"Because dewless!" replied Mabel, with profound gravity. "It is the
+tearful heart that gives out the sweetest fragrance."
+
+"I have more faith in sunshine," interrupted Rosa, a tinge of contempt
+in her smile and accent. "Or--to drop metaphors, at which I always
+bungle--it is my belief that it is easy for happy people to be good.
+All this talk about the sweetness of crushed blossoms, throwing their
+fragrance from the wounded part, and the riven sandal-tree, and the
+blessed uses of adversity, is outrageous balderdash, according to my
+doctrine. A buried thing is but one degree better than a dead one. What
+it is the fashion of poets and sentimentalists to call perfume, is the
+odor of incipient decay."
+
+"You are illustrating your position by means of my poor oriental pearl,"
+remonstrated Mabel, playfully, wresting the hand that was beating
+the life and whiteness out of the floweret upon the marble top of the
+beaufet. "Take this hardy geant de batailles, instead. My bouquet must
+have a cluster of pearls for a heart."
+
+"What a fierce crimson!" Frederic remarked upon the widely-opened rose
+Miss Tazewell received in place of the delicate bud. "That must be the
+'hue angry, yet brave,' which, Mr. George Herbert asserts, 'bids the
+rash gazer wipe his eye.'"
+
+"More poetical nonsense!" said Rosa, deliberately tearing the bold
+"geant" to pieces down to the bare stem, "unless he meant to be comic,
+and intimate that the gazer was so rash as to come too near the bush,
+and ran a thorn into the pupil."
+
+No one answered, except by the indulgent smile that usually greeted her
+sallies, however absurd, among those accustomed to the spoiled child's
+vagaries.
+
+Mabel was making some leisurely additions to her bouquet in the shape
+of ribbon grass and pendent ivy sprays, coaxing these with persuasive
+touches to trail over the edge and entwine the pedestal of the salver on
+which her bowl was elevated; her head set slightly on one side, her
+lips apart in a smile of enjoyment in her work and in herself. It was
+a picture the lover studied fondly--one that hung forever thereafter in
+his gallery of mental portraits. Beyond a pair of fine gray eyes, the
+pliant grace of her figure and the buoyant carriage of youth, health,
+and a glad heart, Mabel's pretensions to beauty were comparatively few,
+said the world. Frederic Chilton had, nevertheless, fallen in love
+with her at sight, and considered her, now, the handsomest woman of his
+acquaintance. Her dress was a simple lawn--a sheer white fabric, with
+bunches of purple grass bound up with yellow wheat, scattered over it;
+her hair was lustrous and abundant, and her face, besides being happy,
+was frank and intelligent, with wonderful mobility of expression. In
+temperament and sentiment; in capacity for, and in demonstration of
+affection, she suited Frederic to the finest fibre of his mind and
+heart. He, for one, did not carp at Aunt Rachel's declaration that they
+were intended to spend time and eternity together.
+
+Still, Mabel Aylett was not a belle, and Rosa Tazewell was. Callow
+collegians and enterprising young merchants from the city; sunbrowned
+owners of spreading acres and hosts of laborers; students and
+practitioners of law and medicine, and an occasional theologue, had
+broken their hearts for perhaps a month at a time, for love of her,
+since she was a school-girl in short dresses. Yet there had been a date
+very far back in the acquaintanceship of each of these with the charmer,
+when he had marvelled at the infatuation which had blinded her previous
+adorers. She was "a neat little thing," with her round waist, her tiny
+hands and feet and roguish eye--but there was nothing else remarkable
+about her features, and in coloring, the picture was too dark for his
+taste. Why, she might be mistaken for a creole! And each critic held
+fast to his expressed opinion until the roguish eyes met his directly
+and with meaning, and he found himself diving into the bright,
+shimmering wells, and drowning--still ecstatically--before he reached
+the bottom whence streamed the light of passionate feeling, striking
+upward through the surface. What her glances did not effect was done by
+her dazzling smile and musical voice.
+
+As one of her victims swore, "It was a dearer delight to be rejected by
+her than to be accepted by a dozen other girls--she did the thing up so
+handsomely! And yet, do you know, sir, I could have shot myself for a
+barbarous brute when I saw the pitying tears standing upon her lashes,
+and heard the tremor in her sweet tones, as she begged me to forgive her
+for not loving me!"
+
+Those she had once captivated never quite rid themselves of the glamour
+of her arts; remained her trusty squires, ready to serve, or to defend
+her always afterward.
+
+Aunt Rachel, intent, during the short pause, upon the movements of the
+servant who was setting the smoking breakfast upon the table, glanced
+around when all was properly arranged, to summon the two to their
+places--but something in Rosa's attitude and countenance held her
+momentarily speechless. Mabel still bent over her roses, in smiling
+interest, and Frederic Chilton was watching her--but not as the third
+person of the group about the beaufet watched them both between her
+half-closed lids, her black brows close together, and the glittering
+teeth visible under the curling upper lip.
+
+"She looked like a panther lying in wait for her prey!" Mrs. Sutton said
+to her niece, many months later, in attempting to describe the scene.
+"Or like a bright-eyed snake coiled for a spring. The sight of her sent
+shivers all down my spine."
+
+Her interruption of the tableau sounded oddly abrupt to ears used to her
+pleasant accents.
+
+"Come, young people! how long are you going to keep me waiting?
+Breakfast is cooling fast!"
+
+"I beg your pardon, Auntie! I did not notice that it had been brought
+in," apologized Mabel, drawing back, that Frederic might lift the loaded
+salver carefully to its place upon the board.
+
+As they were closing about this, they were joined by Messrs. Barksdale
+and Branch, Miss Tabb delaying her appearance until the repast was
+nearly over, and meeting the raillery of the party upon her late
+rising with the sweet, soft smile her cousin-betrothed admired as the
+indication of unadulterated amiability. The breakfast-hour, always
+pleasant, was to-day particularly merry. Rosa led off in the laughing
+debates, the play of repartee, friendly jest, and anecdote that incited
+all to mirth and speech and tempted them to linger around the table long
+after the business of the meal was concluded.
+
+"This is the perfection of country life!" said Frederic Chilton, when,
+at last, there was a movement to end the sitting. "But it spoils one
+fearfully for the everyday practicalities of the city--a Northern city,
+especially."
+
+"Better stay where you are, then, instead of deserting our ranks
+to-morrow," suggested Rosa, gliding by his side out upon the long
+portico at the end of the house. "What does your nature crave that
+Ridgeley cannot supply?"
+
+"Work, and a career!"
+
+"You still feel the need of these?" significantly.
+
+"Otherwise I were no man!"
+
+"You are right!"
+
+Her disdainful eyes wandered to the farther end of the portico, where
+Alfred Branch, in his natty suit of white grasscloth, plucked at his
+ebon whiskers with untanned fingers, and talked society nothings with
+the ever-complaisant Imogene.
+
+"Come what may, you, Mr. Chilton, have occupation for thought and
+hands; are not tied down to a detestable routine of vapid pleasures and
+common-place people!"
+
+"You are--every independent woman and man--is as free in this respect
+as myself, Miss Rosa. None need be a slave to conventionality unless he
+choose."
+
+She made a gesture that was like twisting a chain upon her wrist.
+
+"You know you are not sincere in saying that. I wondered, moreover,
+when you were railing at the practicalities of city life, if you were
+learning, like the rest of the men, to accommodate your talk to your
+audience. Where is the use of your trying to disguise the truth that all
+women are slaves? I used to envy you when I was in Philadelphia, last
+winter, when you pleaded business engagements as an excuse for declining
+invitations to dinner-parties and balls. Now, if a woman defies popular
+decrees by refusing to exhibit herself for the popular entertainment,
+the horrible whisper is forthwith circulated that she has been
+'disappointed,' and is hiding her green wound in her sewing-room or
+oratory. 'Disappointed,' forsooth! That is what they say of every
+girl who is not married to somebody by the time she is twenty-five. It
+matters not whether she cares for him or not. Having but one object in
+existence, there can be but one species of disappointment. Marry she
+must, or be PITIED!" with a stinging emphasis on the last word.
+
+Tom Barksdale and Mabel were pacing the portico from end to end,
+chatting with the cheerful familiarity of old friends. Catching some of
+thin energetic sentence, Mabel looked over her shoulder.
+
+"Who of us is fated to be pitied, did you say, Rosa dear?"
+
+"Never yourself!" was the curt reply. "Rest content with that
+assurance."
+
+Her restless fingers began to gather the red leaves that already
+variegated the foliage of the creeper shading the porch. Strangely
+indisposed to answer her animadversions upon the world's judgment of her
+sex, or to acknowledge the implied compliment to his betrothed, Frederic
+watched the lithe, dark hands, as they overflowed with the vermilion
+trophies of autumn. The September sunshine sifted through the vines in
+patches upon the floor; the low laughter and blended voices of the four
+talkers; the echo of Tom's manly tread, and Mabel's lighter footfall,
+were all jocund music, befitting the brightness of the day and world.
+What was the spell by which this pettish girl who stood by him, her
+luminous eyes fixed in sardonic melancholy upon the promenaders, while
+she rubbed the dying leaves into atoms between her palms--had stamped
+scenes and sounds with immortality, yet thrilled him with the indefinite
+sense of unreality and dread one feels in scanning the lineaments of the
+beloved dead? Had her nervous folly infected him? What absurd phantasy
+was hers, and what his concern in her whims?
+
+A stifled cry from Mabel aroused him to active attention. A gentlemen
+had stepped from the house upon the piazza, and after bending to kiss
+her, was shaking hands with her companions.
+
+"The Grand Mogul!" muttered Rosa, with a comic grimace, and not offering
+to stir in the direction of the stranger.
+
+In another moment Mabel had led him up to her lover, and introduced, in
+her pretty, ladylike way, and bravely enough, considering her blushes,
+"Mr. Chilton" to "my brother, Mr. Winston Aylett."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. -- AN EXCHANGE OF CONFIDENCES.
+
+
+"And so you know nothing of this gentleman beyond what he has told you
+of his character and antecedents?"
+
+Aunt Rachel had knocked at the door of her nephew's study after dinner,
+on the day of his return, and asked for an interview.
+
+"Although I know you must be very busy with your accounts, and so
+forth, having been away from the plantation for so long," she said,
+deprecatingly, yet accepting the invitation to enter.
+
+Mr. Aylett's eye left hers as he replied that he was quite at liberty
+to listen to whatever she had to say, but his manner was entirely his
+own--polished and cool.
+
+Family tradition had it that he was naturally a man of strong passions
+and violent temper, but since his college days, he had never, as far as
+living mortal could testify, lifted the impassive mask he wore, at the
+bidding of anger, surprise, or alarm. He ran all his tilts--and he was
+not a non-combatant by any means--with locked visor. In person, he
+was commanding in stature; his features were symmetrical; his bearing
+high-bred. His conversation was sensible, but never brilliant or
+animated. In his own household he was calmly despotic; in his county,
+respected and unpopular--one of whom nobody dared speak ill, yet whom
+nobody had reason to love. There was a single person who believed
+herself to be an exception to this rule. This was his sister Mabel. Some
+said she worshipped him in default of any other object upon which she
+could expend the wealth of her young, ardent heart; others, that
+his strong will enforced her homage. The fact of her devotion was
+undeniable, and upon his appreciation of this Aunt Rachel built her
+expectations of a favorable hearing when she volunteered to prepare the
+way for Mr. Chilton's formal application for the hand of her nephew's
+ward. Between herself and Winston there existed little real liking and
+less affinity. She was useful to him, and his tolerance of her society
+was courteous, but she understood perfectly that he secretly despised
+many of her views and actions, as, indeed, he did those of most women.
+Her present mission was undertaken for the love she bore Mabel and her
+sister. It was not kind to send the girl to tell her own story. It
+was neither kind nor fair to subject their guest to the ordeal of
+an unheralded disclosure of his sentiments and aspirations, with the
+puissant lord of Ridgeley as sole auditor.
+
+"Fred would never get over the first impression of your brother's
+chilling reserve," said the self-appointed envoy to Mabel, when she
+insisted that her affianced would plead his cause more eloquently than
+a third person could. "For, you, must confess, my love, that Winston,
+although in most respects a model to other young men, is unapproachable
+by strangers."
+
+As she said "your accounts and so forth," she looked at the table from
+which Mr. Aylett had arisen to set a chair for her. There was a pile of
+account-books at the side against the wall, but they were shut, and over
+heaped by pamphlets and newspapers; while before the owner's seat lay
+an open portfolio, an unfinished letter within it. Winston wiped his pen
+with deliberation, closed the portfolio, snapped to the spring-top of
+his inkstand, and finally wheeled his office chair away from the desk to
+face his visitor.
+
+"Is it upon business that you wish to speak to me?"
+
+He always disdained circumlocution, prided himself upon the directness
+and simplicity of his address. This acted now as a dissuasive to the
+sentimental address Mrs. Sutton had meditated as a means of winning
+the flinty walls behind which his social affections and sympathies were
+supposed to be intrenched. Had her mission been in behalf of any other
+cause, she would have drawn off her forces upon some pretext, and
+effected an ignominious retreat. Nerved by the thought of Mabel's
+bashfulness and solicitude, and Frederic's strangerhood, she stood to
+her guns.
+
+Winston heard her story, from the not very coherent preamble, to the
+warm and unqualified endorsement of Frederic Chilton's credentials, and
+her moved mention of the mutual attachment of the youthful pair, and
+never changed his attitude, or manifested any inclination to stay
+the narration by question or comment. When she ceased speaking, his
+physiognomy denoted no emotion whatever. Yet, Mabel was his nearest
+living relative. She had been bequeathed to his care, when only ten
+years old, by the will of their dying father, and grown up under his eye
+as his child, rather than a sister. And he was hearing, for the first
+time, of her desire to quit the home they had shared together from her
+birth, for the protection and companionship of another. Mrs. Sutton
+thought herself pretty well versed in "Winston's ways," but she had
+expected to detect a shade of softness in the cold, never-bright eyes
+and anticipated another rejoinder than the sentence that stands at the
+head of this chapter.
+
+"And so you know nothing of this gentleman beyond what he has told you
+of his character and antecedents?" he said--the slender white fingers,
+his aunt fancied, looked cruel even in their idleness, lightly linked
+together while his elbows rested upon the arms of his chair.
+
+"My dear Winston! what a question! Haven't I told you that he is my
+husband's namesake and godson! I was at his fathers house a score of
+times, at least, in dear Frederic's life-time. It was a charming place,
+and I never saw a more lovely family. I recollect this boy perfectly,
+as was very natural, seeing that his name was such a compliment to my
+husband. He was a fine, manly little fellow, and the eldest son. The
+christening-feast was postponed, for some reason I do not now remember,
+until he was two years old. It was a very fine affair. The company was
+composed of the very elite of that part of Maryland, and the Bishop
+himself baptized the two babies--Frederic, and a younger sister. I know
+all about him, you see, instead of nothing!"
+
+"What was the date of this festival?" asked Winston's unwavering voice.
+
+"Let me see! We had been married seven years that fall. It must have
+been in the winter of 18--."
+
+"Twenty-three years ago!" said Winston, yet more quietly. "Doubtless,
+your intimacy with this estimable and distinguished family continued up
+to the time of your husband's death?"
+
+"It did."
+
+"And afterward?"
+
+Mrs. Button's color waned, And her voice sank, as the inquisition
+proceeded. "Dear Frederic's" death was not the subject she would have
+chosen of her free will to discuss with this man of steel and ice.
+
+"I never visited them again. I could not--"
+
+If she hoped to retain a semblance of composure, she must shift her
+ground.
+
+"I returned to my father's house, which was, as you know, more remote
+from the borders of Maryland--"
+
+"You kept up a correspondence, perhaps?" Winston interposed, overlooking
+her agitation as irrelevant to the matter under investigation.
+
+"No! For many months I wrote no letters at all, and Mr. Chilton was
+never a punctual correspondent. The best of friends are apt to be
+dilatory in such respects, as they advance in life."
+
+"I gather, then, from what you have ADMITTED"--there was no actual
+stress upon the word, but it stood obnoxiously apart from the remainder
+of the sentence, to Mrs. Sutton's auriculars--"from what you have
+admitted, that for twenty years you have lost sight of this gentleman
+and his relatives, and that you might never have remembered the
+circumstance of their existence, had he not introduced himself to you at
+the Springs this summer."
+
+"You are mistaken, there!" corrected the widow, eagerly. "Rosa Tazewell
+introduced him to Mabel at the first 'hop' she--Mabel--attended there.
+He is very unassuming. He would never have forced himself upon my
+notice. I was struck by his appearance and resemblance to his father,
+and inquired of Mabel who he was. The recognition followed as a matter
+of course."
+
+"He was an acquaintance of Miss Tazewell--did you say?"
+
+"Yes--she knew him very well when she was visiting in Philadelphia last
+winter."
+
+"And proffered the introduction to Mabel?" the faintest imaginable
+glimmer of sarcastic amusement in his eyes, but none in his accent.
+
+"He requested it, I believe."
+
+"That is more probable. Excuse my frankness, aunt, when I say that it
+would have been more in consonance with the laws controlling the conduct
+of really thoroughbred people, had your paragon--I use the term in no
+offensive sense--applied to me, instead of to you, for permission to pay
+his addresses to my ward. I am willing to ascribe this blunder, however,
+to ignorance of the code of polite society, and not to intentional
+disrespect, since you represent the gentleman as amiable and
+well-meaning. I am, furthermore, willing to examine his certificates
+of character and means, with a view to determining what are his
+recommendations to my sister's preference, over and above ball-room
+graces and the fact that he is Mr. Sutton's namesake, and whether
+it will be safe and advisable to grant my consent to their marriage.
+Whatever is for Mabel's real welfare shall be done, while I cannot
+but wish that her choice had fallen upon some one nearer home The
+prosecution of inquiries as to the reputation of one whose residence is
+so distant, is a difficult and delicate task."
+
+"If you will only talk to him for ten minutes he will remove your
+scruples,--satisfy you that all is as it should be," asserted Mrs.
+Sutton, more confidently to him than herself.
+
+"I trust it will be as you say--but credulity is not my besetting sin.
+I am ready to see the gentleman at any hour you and he may see fit to
+appoint."
+
+"I will send MR. CHILTON to you at once, then." Mrs. Sutton collected
+the scattering remnants of hope and resolution, that she might deal a
+parting shot.
+
+"Winston is an AWFUL trial to my temper, although he never loses his
+own," she was wont to soliloquize, in the lack of a confidante to whom
+she could expatiate upon his eccentricities and general untowardness.
+His marked avoidance of Frederic's name in this conference savored
+to her of insulting meaning. She had rather he had coupled it with
+opprobious epithets whenever he referred to him, than spoken of him as
+"this" or "that gentleman." If he took this high and chilly tone, with
+Mabel's wooer, there was no telling what might be the result of the
+affair.
+
+"Don't mind him if he is stiff and uncompromising for a while," she
+enjoined upon Frederic, in apprising him of the seignior's readiness to
+grant him audience, "It is only his way, and he is Mabel's brother."
+
+"I will bear the latter hint in mind," rejoined the young man, with the
+gay, affectionate smile he often bestowed upon her. "I don't believe he
+can awe me into resignation of my purpose, or provoke me into dislike of
+the rest of the family."
+
+Mabel was in her aunt's room, plying her with queries, hard to be
+evaded, touching the tenor and consequences of her recent negotiations,
+when a servant brought a message from her brother. She was wanted in the
+study. The girl turned very white, as she prepared to obey, without an
+idea of delay or of refusal.
+
+"O Auntie! what if he should order me to give Frederic up!" she
+ejaculated, pausing at the door, in an agony of trepidation. "I never
+disobeyed him in my life."
+
+"He will not do that, dear, never fear! He can find no pretext for
+such summary proceedings. And should he oppose your wishes, be firm of
+purpose, and do not forsake your affianced husband," advised the old
+lady, solemnly. "There is a duty which takes precedence, in the sight
+of Heaven and man, of that you owe your brother. Remember this, and take
+courage."
+
+Mabel's roses returned in profusion, when, upon entering the arbiter's
+dread presence, she saw Frederic Chilton, standing on the opposite side
+of the table from that at which sat her brother at his ease, his white
+fingers still idly interlaced, his pale patrician face emotionless as
+that of the bust of Apollo upon the top of the bookcase behind him. It
+was Frederic who led her to a chair, when she stopped, trembling midway
+in the apartment, and his touch upon her arm inspirited her to raise her
+regards to Winston's countenance at the sound of his voice.
+
+"I have sent for you, Mabel, that I may repeat in you hearing the reply
+I have returned to Mr. Chilton's application for my sanction to your
+engagement--I should say, perhaps, to your reciprocal attachment. The
+betrothal of a minor without the consent, positive or implied, of her
+parent or guardian is, as I have just explained to Mr. Chilton, but
+an empty name in this State. I have promised, then, not to oppose
+your marriage, provided the inquiries I shall institute concerning Mr.
+Chilton's previous life, his character, and his ability to maintain you
+in comfort, are answered satisfactorily. He will understand and excuse
+my pertinacity upon this point when he reflects upon the value of the
+stake involved in this transaction."
+
+In all their intercourse, Frederic had no more gracious notice
+from Mabel's brother than this semi-apology, delivered with stately
+condescension, and a courtly bow in his direction.
+
+It sounded very grand to Mabel, whose fears of opposition or severity
+from her Mentor had shaken courage and nerves into pitiable distress.
+Frederic could desire nothing more affable than Winston's smile; no more
+abundant encouragement than was afforded by his voluntary pledge. Had
+not the thought savored of disloyalty to her lover, she would have
+confessed herself disappointed that his reply did not effervesce with
+gratitude, that his deportment was distant, his tone constrained.
+
+"I appreciate the last-named consideration, Mr. Aylett, I believe,
+thoroughly, as you do. I have already told you that I invite, not
+shirk, the investigation you propose. I now repeat my offer of whatever
+facility is at my command for carrying this on. No honorable man could
+do less. Unless I mistake, you wish now to see your sister alone."
+
+He bent his head slightly, and without other and especial salutation to
+his betrothed, withdrew.
+
+Odd, white dints came and went in Winston's nostrils--the one and
+unerring facial sign of displeasure he ever exhibited, if we except a
+certain hardening of eye and contour that chiselled his lineaments into
+a yet closer resemblance to marble.
+
+"He is very sensitive and proud, I know," faltered Mabel, hastily
+marking these, and understanding what they portended.
+
+"You need not like him the less on that account, always provided that
+the supports of his pride are legitimate and substantial," answered her
+brother, carelessly transferring to his tablets several names from a
+sheet of paper upon the table--the addresses of persons to whom Frederic
+had referred him for confirmation of his statements regarding his social
+and professional standing.
+
+"I hope, for your sake, Mabel," he pursueds pocketing the memoranda,
+"that this affair may be speedily and agreeably adjusted; while I cannot
+deny that I deprecate the unseemly haste with which Mrs. Sutton and
+her ally have urged it on, in my absence. Had they intended to court
+suspicion, they could not have done it more effectually. You could not
+have had a more injudicious chaperone to the Springs."
+
+"Indeed, brother, she was not to blame," began the generous girl,
+forgetting her embarrassment in zealous defence of the aunt she loved.
+"It was not she who presented me to Mr. Chilton, and she has never
+attempted to bias my decision in any manner."
+
+"I have heard the history in detail." Had his breeding been less fine,
+he would have yawned in her face. "I know that you are indebted for Mr.
+Chilton's acquaintanceship to Miss Tazewell's generosity. But in strict
+justice, Mrs. Sutton should be held responsible for whatever unhappiness
+may arise from the intimacy. You were left by myself in her charge."
+
+"I do not believe it will end unhappily," Mabel was moved to reply,
+with spirit that became her better than the shyness she had heretofore
+displayed, or the submissive demeanor usual with her in tete-a-tetes
+with her guardian.
+
+He smiled in calm superiority.
+
+"I have expressed my hope to that effect. Of expectations it will be
+time enough to speak when I am better informed upon divers points. I
+am not one to take much for granted, am less sanguine than my romantic
+aunt, or even than my more practical sister. Assuming, however, that
+all is as you would have it, your wish would be, I suppose, for an early
+marriage?"
+
+"There has been little said about that," responded Mabel,
+reddening--then rallying to add smilingly--"such an arrangement would
+have involved the taking for granted a good many things--your consent
+among them."
+
+Winston passed over the addenda.
+
+"But that little, especially when uttered by Mr. Chilton, trenched upon
+the inexpediency of long engagements--did it not?"
+
+Mabel was mute, her eyes downcast.
+
+"I agree with him there, at any rate. You are nineteen years of age; he
+twenty-five. Your property is unincumbered, and can be transferred
+to your keeping at very short notice. Mr. Chilton represents that his
+income from his patrimonial estate, eked out by professional gains, is
+sufficient to warrant him in marrying forthwith. I shall see that no
+time is lost in making the inquiries upon which depends the progress of
+the negotiation. Business calls me North in a week or ten days. I shall
+stop a day in Philadelphia, and settle your affair."
+
+The frightfully business-like manner of disposing of her happiness
+appalled the listener into silence. The loss of Frederic; the
+destruction of her love-dream; the weary years of lonely wretchedness
+that would follow the bereavement, were to him only unimportant
+incidentals to her "affair;" weighed in the scale of his impartial
+judgment no more than would unconsidered dust. For the first time in the
+life to which he had been the guiding-star, she ventured to wonder if
+the unswerving rectitude that had elevated him above the level of other
+men, in her esteem and affection, were so glorious a thing after all; if
+a tempering, not of human frailty, but of charity for the shortcomings,
+sympathy for the needs, of ordinary mortals, would not subdue the
+effulgence of his talents and virtues into mild lustre, more tolerable
+to the optics of fallible beholders.
+
+Unsuspicious, with all his astuteness, of her sacrilegious doubts,
+Winston proceeded:
+
+"In the event of your marriage, you would desire, no doubt, that Mrs.
+Sutton should take up her abode with you? You would find her useful in
+many ways, and she would get on amicably with her husband's godson."
+
+"I do not think she expects to go with me," answered Mabel, staggered by
+his coolly confident air. "I certainly have never entertained the
+idea. I imagined that she would remain with you, while you needed her
+services."
+
+"That will not be long. I shall be married on the 10th of October."
+
+"Married! brother!" starting up in amazement. "You are not in earnest!"
+
+"I should not jest upon such a theme," replied Winston, in grave rebuke.
+"My plans are definitely laid. It is not my purpose to keep them secret
+a day longer. I meant to communicate them to yourself and Mrs. Sutton
+this afternoon, but yours claimed precedence."
+
+Mabel sat down again, totally confounded, and struggling hard with
+her tears. The thought of her brother's marriage was not in itself
+disagreeable. She had often lamented his insensibility to the
+attractions of such women as she fancied would add to his happiness, and
+grace the high place to which his wife would be exalted. She never
+liked to hear him called invulnerable; repelled the hypothesis of
+his incurable bachelorhood as derogatory to his heart and head. This
+unlooked-for intelligence, had it reached her in a different way, would
+have delighted as much as it astonished her. The fear lest her consent
+to wed Frederic and leave Ridgeley might be the occasion of discomfort
+and sadness to her forsaken brother had shadowed all her visions of
+future bliss. She ought to have hailed with unmixed satisfaction the
+certainty that he would not miss her sisterly ministrations, or feel the
+need of her companionship in that of one nearer and dearer than was
+his child-ward. She had striven not to resent even in her own mind, his
+cavalier treatment of her lover; had hearkened respectfully and without
+demur to his unsympathizing calculations of what was possible and what
+feasible in the project of her union with the man of her choice. For how
+could he know anything of the palpitations, the anxieties, the raptures
+of love, when he was a stranger to the touch of a kindred emotion? He
+meant well; he had her welfare in view; unfortunate as was his style of
+discussing the means for insuring this--for he loved her dearly, dearly!
+
+She must never question this, although he had dealt the comfortable
+persuasion a cruel blow; wounded her in a vital part by withholding
+from her the circumstance of his attachment and betrothal until the near
+approach of the wedding day rendered continued secrecy inexpedient. No
+softening memory of his affianced had inclined him to listen with kindly
+warmth to her timid avowals, or Frederic's manly protestations of their
+mutual attachment. He recognized no analogy in the two cases; stood
+aloof from them in the flush of his successful love, as if he had never
+known the pregnant meaning of the word. Smarting under the sense of
+injury to pride and affection, her language, when she could trust her
+voice, was a protest that, in Winston's judgment, ill beseemed her age
+and station.
+
+"Why did you not tell me of this earlier, brother? It was unjust and
+unkind to keep me in the dark until now."
+
+"You forget yourself, Mabel. I am not under obligation to account to you
+for my actions."
+
+He said it composedly, as if stating a truth wholly disconnected with
+feeling on his part or on hers.
+
+"I have given you the information to which you refer, in season for you
+to make ample preparation for my wife's reception. And, mark me, she
+must see no sulkiness, no airs of strangeness or intolerance, because
+I have managed a matter that concerns me chiefly, as seemed to me best.
+Say the same to Mrs. Sutton, if you please; also that I will submit to
+no dictation, and ask no advice."
+
+Mabel's anger seldom outlived its utterance. The hot sparkle in her
+eye was quenched by moisture, as she laid her hand caressingly upon her
+brother's.
+
+"Winston! you cannot suppose that we could be wanting in cordiality to
+any one whom you love, much less to your wife. Let her come when she
+may, she will be heartily welcomed by us both. But this has
+fallen suddenly upon me, and I am a little out of sorts to-day, I
+believe--excited and nervous--and, O, my darling! my oldest and best of
+friends! I hope your love will bring to you the happiness you deserve."
+
+The tears had their course, at last, bathing the hand she bowed to kiss.
+The simple ardor of the outbreak would have affected many men to a show
+of responsive weakness. Even Winston Aylett's physiognomy was more human
+and less statuesque, as he patted her head, and bade her be composed.
+
+"If you persist in enacting Niobe, I shall believe that you are
+chagrined at the prospect of having the sister you have repeatedly
+besought me to give you," he said, playfully--for him. "You have
+not asked me her name, and where she lives. What has become of your
+curiosity? I never knew it to be quiescent before."
+
+"I thought you would tell me whatever it was best for me to know,"
+replied Mabel, drying her eyes.
+
+If she had said that she was too well-trained to assail him with
+interrogatories he had not invited, it would have been nearer the mark.
+
+"There is nothing relating to her which I desire to conceal," he
+rejoined, with some stiffness, "or she would never have become my
+promised wife. She is a Miss Dorrance, the daughter of a widow residing
+in the vicinity of Boston, Massachusetts. I met her first at Trenton
+Falls, where a happy accident brought me into association with her
+party. I travelled with them to the Lakes and among the White Mountains,
+and, while in Boston, visited her daily. We were betrothed a week ago,
+and having, as I have observed, an aversion to protracted engagements,
+I prevailed upon her to appoint the tenth of next mouth as our marriage
+day. There you have the story in brief. I have not Mrs. Sutton's talents
+as a raconteur, nor her disposition to turn hearts inside out for the
+edification of her auditors."
+
+"Does she--Miss Dorrance--look like anybody I know?" asked Mabel,
+hesitating to declare herself dissatisfied with the skeleton love-tale,
+yet uncertain how to learn more.
+
+"A roundabout way of asking if she is passable in appearance," Winston
+said, with his smile of conscious superiority. "Judge for yourself!"
+taking from his pocket a miniature.
+
+"How beautiful! What a very handsome woman?" the sister exclaimed at
+sight of the pictured face.
+
+"You are correct. She is, moreover, a thorough lady, and
+highly-educated. Ridgeley will have a queenly mistress. The likeness is
+considered faithful, but it does not do her justice."
+
+He took it from Mabel, and they scanned it together; she resting
+against his shoulder. She felt his chest heave twice; heard him swallow
+spasmodically in the suppression of some mighty emotion, and the
+palpable effort drew her very near to him. She never doubted from that
+moment, what she had more cause in after days to believe, that he loved
+the woman he had won with a fervor of passion that seemed foreign to his
+temperament as the evidence of it was to his conduct.
+
+The September sun was near the horizon, and between the bowed shutters
+one slender, gilded arrow shot athwart the portrait, producing a
+marvellous and sinister change in its expression. The large, limpid eyes
+became shallow and cunning; the smile lurking about the mouth was the
+more treacherous and deadly for its sweetness; while the burnished coils
+of hair brushed away from the temples had the opaline tints and sinuous
+roll of a serpent.
+
+Mabel shrank back before the horror of the absurd imagination.
+
+Winston raised the picture to his lips.
+
+"My peerless one!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. -- UNWHOLESOME VAPORS.
+
+
+"DORRANCE!" repeated Frederic, after his betrothed, when she rehearsed
+to him in their moonlight promenade upon the piazza the leading
+incidents of her brother's wooing. "She lives near Boston, you say, and
+her mother is a widow?"
+
+"Yes. What have you ever heard about her?"
+
+"Nothing whatever. I was startled by the name--but very foolishly! I
+once knew a family of Dorrances--New Yorkers--but the father, a retired
+naval officer, was alive, and all the daughters were married. The
+youngest of them would be, by this time, much older than you judge the
+original of the miniature to be."
+
+"She is not more than twenty-two, at the most," Mabel was sure.
+
+Frederic's hurried articulation and abstracted manner excited her
+curiosity, and unrestrained by Winston's curb, it was not "quiescent."
+The thought was spoken so soon as it was formed.
+
+"There was something unpleasant in your intercourse with them, then? or
+something objectionable in the people themselves? Could they have been
+relatives of this widow and her daughter? The name is not a common one
+to my ears."
+
+"Nor to mine; yet we have no proof to sustain your supposition. I should
+be very sorry--"
+
+He stopped.
+
+Mabel studied his perturbed countenance with augmented uneasiness.
+
+"Was not the family respectable?"
+
+"Perfectly, my shrewd little catechist!" seeming to shake off an
+uncomfortable incubus, as he laughed down at her serious face. "They
+vaunted themselves upon the antiquity of their line, and were more
+liberal in allusions to departed grandeur than was quite well-bred. When
+I knew them they were not wealthy, or in what they would have called
+'society.' Indeed, the mother kept a private boarding-house near
+the law-school I attended. There were several sons--very decent,
+enterprising fellows. But one lived at home, and a daughter, the wife of
+a lieutenant in the navy, whom I never saw. I boarded with them for six
+months, or thereabout."
+
+"You never saw the daughter! How was that?"
+
+"I must have expressed myself awkwardly if I conveyed any such idea. I
+did not meet the seafaring husband who was off upon a long cruise.
+The wife I met constantly--knew very well. You need not look at me so
+intently, love, as if you feared that some dark mystery lurked behind
+this matter-of-fact recital. If I do not tell you every event of my
+former life, it is not because it was vile. I could not sustain
+the light of your innocent eyes if I had ever been guilty of aught
+dishonorable or criminal. But even the follies and mistakes of a young
+man's early career are not fit themes for your ears. And I was no wiser,
+no more wary, than other youths of the same age; was apt to believe that
+fair which was only specious, and that I might play, uninjured, with
+edged tools. Nor had I seen you then, my treasure--my snow-drop of
+purity! Mabel! do you know how solemn a thing it is to be loved and
+trusted by a man, as I love and confide in you? It terrifies me when I
+think of the absoluteness of my dependence upon your fidelity--of how
+rich I am in having you--how poor, wretched, and miserable I should be
+without you. I shall not draw a free breath until you are mine beyond
+the chance of recall."
+
+"Nobody else wants me!" breathed Mabel in his ear, nestling within
+the arm that enfolded and held her tightly in the corner of the
+piazza shaded by the creeper. "The danger of losing me is not imminent
+to-night, at all events," she resumed, presently, with a touch of the
+sportiveness that lent her manner an airy charm in lighter talk than
+that which had engrossed her for the past hour.
+
+The evening was warm and still to sultriness, and the moonlight,
+filtered into pensive pallor through a low-lying haze, yet sufficed to
+show how confidingly Imogene leaned upon her attendant in sauntering
+down the long main alley of the garden. Rosa was at the piano in the
+parlor, singing to the enamored Alfred. Mrs. Sutton had withdrawn to
+her own room to ruminate upon the astounding disclosure of her nephew's
+engagement, while Winston bent over his study-table busy with the
+interrupted letter his aunt had seen in his portfolio.
+
+"There is no one here who has the leisure or the disposition to contest
+your rights, you perceive," said Mabel, running through a laughing
+summary of their companions' occupations.
+
+"Betrothals are epidemic in this household and neighborhood," Winston
+was writing. "There are no fewer than three pairs of turtles cooing down
+stairs as I pen this to you, my bird of paradise. The case that next to
+mine--to ours--commands my interest is that of my sister. I came home to
+learn that the little Mabel I used to hold on my knee had entered into
+an engagement--conditional upon my sanction--with that traditional
+tricky personage, a Philadelphia lawyer--Mr. Frederic Chilton, at the
+door of whose manifold perfections, as set forth by my loquacious aunt,
+you may lay the blame of this delayed epistle. I know nothing of this
+aspirant to the dignity of brotherhood with myself, saving the facts
+that he is tolerably good looking, claims to be the scion of an old
+Maryland family, and that self-conceit is apparently his predominant
+quality."
+
+"What is that?" asked Frederic, halting before the windows, of the
+drawing-room, as a wild, sorrowful strain, like the wail of a breaking
+heart, arose upon the waveless air.
+
+Rosa was a vocalist of note in her circle, and she had never rendered
+anything with more effect than she did the song to which even the
+preoccupied strollers among the garden borders stayed their steps to
+listen. Through the open casement Mabel and her lover could see the face
+of the musician, slightly uplifted toward the moonlight; her eyes, dark
+and dreamy, as under the cloud of many years of weary waiting and final
+hopelessness. Her articulation was always pure, but the passionate
+emphasis of every word constrained the breathless attention of her
+audience to the close of the simple lay:
+
+    "Thy name was once the magic spell
+       By which my thoughts were bound;
+     And burning dreams of light and love
+       Were wakened by the sound.
+     My heart beat quick when stranger-tongues,
+       With idle praise or blame,
+     Awoke its deepest thrill of joy
+       To tremble at thy name.
+
+    "Long years, long years have passed away,
+       And altered is thy brow;
+     And we who met so fondly once
+       Must meet as strangers now.
+     The friends of yore come 'round me still,
+       But talk no more of thee,
+     'Twere idle e'en to wish it now,
+       For what art thou to me?"
+
+    "Yet still thy name--thy blessed name!
+       My lonely bosom fills,
+     Like an echo that hath lost itself
+       Among the distant hills,
+     That still, with melancholy note,
+       Keeps faintly lingering on,
+     When the joyous sound that woke it first
+       Is gone--forever gone!"
+
+"A neat conceit that last verse, and the music is a fair imitation of a
+dying bugle-echo!" said Winston Aylett to himself, resuming the writing
+he had suspended for a minute. "That girl should take to the stage. If
+one did not know better, her eyes and singing together would delude him
+into the idea that she had a heart. Honest Alfred evidently believes
+that she has, and that the patient labor of love will win it for
+himself. Bah!"
+
+Frederic and Mabel retired noiselessly from their post of observation,
+as "honest Alfred" made a motion to take in his the hand lying prone and
+passive upon the finger-board. They exchanged a smile, significant and
+tender, in withdrawing.
+
+"We understand the signs of the times," whispered Frederic, at the upper
+turn of their promenade. "Heaven bless all true lovers under the sun!"
+
+"Don't!" said Rosa, vehemently, snatching away her hand from her
+suitor's hold. "Leave me alone! If you touch me again I shall scream!
+I think you were made up without nerves, either in the heart or in the
+brain--if you have any!"
+
+Before the aghast Alfred rallied from the recoil occasioned by her
+gesture and words, her feet were pattering over the oaken hall and
+staircase in rapid retreat to her chamber.
+
+"You are really happy, then?" queried Mabel. "Quite content?"
+
+"Did I not tell you awhile ago that I was not satisfied?" returned
+Chilton. "Two months since I should, in anticipation of this hour, have
+declared that it would be fraught with unalloyed rapture. I was
+happier yesterday than I am to-day. It is not merely that we must part
+to-morrow, or that your brother's precautionary measures and disapproval
+of what has passed between us have acted like a shower-bath to the
+fervor of my newly born hopes. I am willing that my life should be
+subjected to the utmost rigor of his researches, and another month, at
+farthest, will reunite us. Nor do I believe in presentiments. I am more
+inclined to attribute the uneasiness that has hovered over me all the
+day to physical causes. We will call it a mild splenetic case, induced
+by the sultry weather, and the very slow on coming of the storm presaged
+by your dewless roses."
+
+He laughed naturally and pleasantly. Having confessed to what he
+regarded as a ridiculous succumbing of his buoyant spirit to atmospheric
+influences, he shook off the nightmare as if it had never sat upon him.
+
+Mabel was grave still.
+
+"There is something weirdly oppressive in the night," she said, in a
+low, awed tone. "But the burden you describe has weighed me down since
+morning. While Rosa was singing, I felt suddenly removed from you by a
+horrid gulf. What if all this should be the preparation to us for some
+impending danger?"
+
+"Sweet! these are unwholesome vapors of the imagination. Nothing can be
+a disaster that leaves us to one another," was the text of Frederic's
+fond soothing; and by the time Mrs. Sutton descended from her chamber of
+meditation, to remind Imogene that the seeds of ague and fever lurked in
+the river-fogs, the couple from the piazza came into the lighted parlor,
+all smiles and animation, wondering, jocosely, what had become of the
+recent occupants of the apartment.
+
+Neither reappeared until breakfast-time next morning. Rosa was like
+freshly-poured champagne, in sweet and sparkle. Alfred, rueful and limp,
+as if the dripping clouds that verified Mabel's prediction had
+soaked him all night. He was dry and comfortable--to carry out the
+figure--within twenty minutes after his beloved fluttered, like a tame
+canary, into the chair next his own--in five more, was more truly her
+slave, living in, and upon her smiles--adoring her very caprices as he
+had never admired another woman's virtues--than he had been prior to the
+brief, but tempestuous scene over night. She was the life of the
+party assembled in the dining-room. Imogene had caught cold, walking
+bareheaded in the evening air, and Tom condoled with her upon her
+influenza and sore-throat too sincerely to do justice to the rest of
+his friends and his breakfast. Mr. Aylett was never talkative, and his
+unvarying, soulless politeness to all produced the conserving effect
+upon chill and low spirits that the atmosphere of a refrigerator does
+upon whatever is placed within it. Mrs. Sutton's motherly heart was
+yearning pityingly over the lovers who were soon to be sundered, while
+Mabel's essay at cheerful equanimity imposed upon nobody's credulity.
+Frederic comported himself like a man--the more courageously because
+the host's cold eye was upon him, and he surmised that sighs and
+sentimentality would meet very scant indulgence in that quarter.
+Moreover, he was not so unreasonable as to descry insupportable
+hardships in this parting. By agreement with Mr. Aylett and his sister,
+he was, if all went prosperously, to revisit Ridgeley at the end of six
+weeks, when his design was to entreat his betrothed to name the wedding
+day. The prospect might well support him under the present trial. He
+bore Rosa's badinage gallantly, tossing back sprightly and telling
+rejoinders that called forth the smiling applause of the auditors, and
+commanded her respectful recognition of him as a foeman worthy of her
+steel.
+
+"Nine o'clock," said Winston, at length, consulting his watch, and
+pushing back his chair. "The carriage will be at the door in fifteen
+minutes, Mr. Chilton. The road is heavy this morning, and the stage
+passes the village at ten."
+
+"I shall be ready," responded Frederic. "I am sorry your carriage and
+coachman must be exposed to the rain."
+
+"That is nothing. They are used to it. I never alter my plan of travel
+on account of the weather, how ever severe the storm. This warm rain can
+hurt nobody."
+
+"It is pouring hard," remarked Mrs. Button, solicitously. "And that
+stage is wretchedly uncomfortable in the best weather. I wish you
+could be persuaded to stay with us until it clears off, Mr. Chilton,
+and"--making a bold push--"I am sure my nephew concurs in my desire."
+
+"Mr. Chilton should require no verbal assurance of my hospitable
+feelings toward him and my other guests," said Mr. Aylett,
+frigidly--smooth as ice-cream. "If I forbear to press him to prolong his
+stay, it is in reflection of the golden law laid down for the direction
+of hosts--'Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest.'"
+
+"You are both very kind, but I must go," Frederic replied, concisely
+and civilly, following Mabel into the parlor, whither the other visitors
+were fabled to have repaired. As he had guessed, his betrothed was the
+only person there; the quartette having dispersed with kindly tact, for
+which he gave them due credit.
+
+"Don't think hardly of me, dear," he began, seating himself beside her
+on the sofa.
+
+"Allow me to offer you a few of the finest cigars I have enjoyed for
+many years," said Mr. Aylett, entering in season to check Frederic's
+movement to encircle Mabel's drooping form with his arm. "You smoke, I
+believe? You may have an opportunity of indulging in this solace in
+an empty stage. At least, there is little probability that you will be
+denied the luxury by the presence of lady passengers. I procured those
+in Havana, last winter. In case you should like them well enough to
+order some for yourself, I will give you the address of the merchant
+from whom I purchased them."
+
+He wrote a line upon a card, as he might sign a beggar's petition--with
+a supercilious parade of benevolence--and passed it to the other, who
+accepted it with a phrase of acknowledgment neither hearty nor grateful.
+Then the master of the house paced the floor with a slow, regular step,
+his hands behind him; his countenance placidly ruminative, his
+thoughts apparently engaged with anything rather than the pain upon the
+corner-sofa, whose leave-taking he had mercilessly marred. Frederic dumb
+and furious; Mabel equally dumb and amazed to alarm, knowing as she
+did that her brother's actions were never purposeless, sat still, their
+hands clasped stealthily amid the folds of Mabel's dress; their eyes
+saying the dear and passionate things forbidden to their tongues.
+Neither would feign indifference, or attempt a lame dialogue upon other
+topics than those that filled their minds. Mr. Aylett was not one to pay
+outward heed to hints when he chose to ignore them. He kept up his walk
+until the carriage was driven around to the front door, informed the
+parting guest that it awaited his commands, likewise that he would
+need all the time that remained to him if he hoped to catch the
+stage; without leaving the room, called to a servant to bring down Mr.
+Chilton's baggage, and did not lose sight of his sister's lover until
+the last farewell was said, and Frederic bestowed inside the vehicle.
+There was nothing offensively officious or malicious in all this.
+Having declared as an incontrovertible dogma, that a ward could form no
+engagement without the formal sanction of her legal guardian, he saw fit
+to put the seal upon the decision at this, their adieu, in a manner they
+were not likely to forget. An hour's harangue would not have imbued them
+with the sense of his authority, his determination to exercise it, and
+their impotency to resist it, as did this practical lesson.
+
+Mrs. Sutton could scarcely restrain her tearful remonstrances against
+what was, to her perception, an act of arbitrary and wanton cruelty, and
+other spectators had their views upon the subject.
+
+"Very inconsiderate in Aylett! I wonder how he would like the same game
+to be played upon himself!" commented Alfred, aside, to his Dulcinea.
+
+Her lip curled in disdainful amusement.
+
+"As if he had ever done an inconsiderate thing since he put off long
+clothes! There is method in all this, if we were clever enough to fathom
+it."
+
+Within herself, she determined that she would solve the enigma before
+she was a week older.
+
+Frederic cast one hasty, eager look at the portico, as the carriage
+turned out of the yard. Mabel stood in the foreground, her figure framed
+by the climbing roses drooping over the front steps. She was very pale,
+and, forgetful for the moment of the observation of the bystanders,
+leaned slightly forward, her eyes strained upon the carriage-window--one
+hand laid upon her heart, the other resting against the pillar nearest
+her, as for support. She waved her handkerchief, in response to his
+smile and lifted hat, and simultaneously with this interchange of adieux
+her brother took her by the arm.
+
+"You are getting wet there, Mabel! Come into the house! It is well I
+have come back to look after you!"
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. -- "FOUNDED UPON A ROCK."
+
+
+If Mrs. Sutton had raised horrified eyes and despairing hands upon
+learning the date of her nephew's proposed marriage, it was because
+she miscalculated his executive abilities, and the energy she had never
+until now seen fairly put forth. Within three days after his return, the
+homestead was alive with masons, carpenters, painters, and upholsterers,
+engaged by the prompt bridegroom on his passage through Richmond; and so
+explicit were his orders as to the minutest detail of the work appointed
+to each, that he could safely leave the scene of action at the time
+appointed for the flying trip northward, to which he had referred in his
+dialogue with Mabel on the afternoon of his arrival.
+
+The party of visitors had emigrated to other regions, a couple of days
+after Frederic Chilton's departure, with the exception of Rosa Tazewell,
+who accepted Mabel's invitation to prolong her sojourn, the more
+willingly since she "flattered herself she could be of use in the
+general upheaving of the ancient foundations, and establishment of
+the new. If there was one thing she enjoyed above another, it was a
+tremendous bustle--a lively revolution."
+
+She made her boast of personal utility good by installing herself
+forthwith as Mrs. Sutton's aid-de-camp, and rendering herself so far
+indispensable in the work of reconstruction that Mr. Aylett deigned to
+ask her not to desert her post in his absence.
+
+"Yours is the genius of renovation, Miss Rosa," the potentate was
+pleased to say in his handsomest style. "Do not, I beg of you, forsake
+my aunt and sister in their need. Let me feel that I leave one head as
+the motive-power of the multitudinous hands."
+
+She agreed, in the same strain, to oblige him--a decision greeted
+with satisfaction by the pair in whose behalf he besought her friendly
+offices. The versatile invention and deft fingers of the little
+brunette were welcome to the heavily-taxed housekeeper, as were her
+gay good-humor and words of cheer and affection to the younger of her
+companions. The two girls became more confidential in six days than
+eighteen years of neighborly intercourse had sufficed to make them.
+Mabel's innate delicacy and excellent common sense would, in ordinary
+circumstances, have barred effusiveness upon the theme nearest
+her heart, but love at nineteen is rarely discreet, even when the
+persuasives to communicativeness are less powerful than were the sorcery
+of Rosa's sympathy and the confessions that paved the way to answering
+and trustful communicativeness on her friend's part.
+
+They were having what she called "a good, long, comforting, as well as
+comfortable chat" over their sewing in Mabel's chamber on the afternoon
+of the eighth day of Winston's absence. The weather was lovely, with the
+mellow brightness and balmy airs that make Virginian autumns a joy and
+glory until November is half spent, and the atmosphere held, at sunset,
+the warmth and much of the radiance which had set the day--a perfect
+gem--in the heart of the golden month. Into the eastern windows gazed
+the full moon, a crimson globe upon the hazy horizon, while Venus lay,
+large and tremulous, among the dying fires of the west.
+
+"'Lovers love the western star,'" quoted Rosa, merrily, taking Mabel's
+work from her and throwing it upon the bed. "Come and enjoy the holy
+hour with me."
+
+They leaned together upon the window-sill, their young faces tinted
+by the changeful hues of the sky, both thoughtful and mute, until Rosa
+broke the silence by a heavy sigh.
+
+"O Mabel, you should be a happy, happy girl; blessed among women. You
+can love--freely and joyously--and have pride and faith in the one
+beloved."
+
+"As you will some day," rejoined the other, drawing nearer to her, "when
+you, in your turn, shall know the unspeakable sweetness of unquestioning
+faith--of utter dependence upon him to whom you have given your heart."
+
+"Utter dependence!" echoed Rosa. "That would mean utter wreck of
+heart, hope--everything--should the anchor give way. It is a hazardous
+experiment, ma belle!"
+
+The other looked down at her with simple fearlessness.
+
+"'For it was founded upon a rock!'" she repeated softly; yet the
+exultant ring of her accent vibrated upon the ear like a joyous
+challenge.
+
+Rosa's fretful movement was involuntary.
+
+"Mine would drag in the sand at every turn of the tide, every rise
+of the wind, if I were to follow your advice, and say 'yes' to the
+pertinacious Alfred," she said reproachfully.
+
+"Don't say advice, dear!" corrected the other. "I only endeavored
+to convince you that there must be latent tenderness beneath your
+sufferance of Mr. Branch's devotion; that if you really were averse to
+the thought of marrying him, you could not take pleasure in his society
+or enjoy the marks of his attachment which are apparent to you and to
+everybody else."
+
+"Can't you understand," said the beauty, petulantly, "that it is one
+thing to flirt with a man in public, and another to cherish his image
+in private? There is no better touchstone of affection than the holiness
+and calm of an hour like this. If Frederic were with you, the scene
+would be the fairer, the season more sacred for its association with
+thoughts of him and his love. Whereas, my Alfred's adoring platitudes
+would disgust me with the sunset, with the world, and with myself, for
+permitting him to haunt my presence and hang upon my smile--foppish
+barnacle that he is! If you knew how I despise myself sometimes!"
+
+"Dear Rosa! I shall never try again to persuade that you care for him
+as a woman should for the man GOD intended her to marry. But why not act
+worthily of yourself--justly to him, and reject him decidedly?"
+
+"Because"--her face shrewd and wilful as it had been sorrowful just
+now--"I am by no means certain that I can do better than to marry him.
+He is rich, good-looking (so people say!), well-born, gentlemanly, and
+pleasant of temper. An imposing array of advantages, you see! I might go
+further, and fare very much worse. We shall not expect to pass our days
+in gazing at sunsets and walking in the moonlight, you know. It is not
+every woman who can marry the man she loves best. While the right to
+select and to woo is usurped by the masculine portion of the community,
+it must, perforce, be Hobson's choice with an uncountable majority
+of feminines. I should not complain. The stall allotted to me by
+Hobson--alias Fate--might hold a worse-conditioned animal than my
+worshipping swain."
+
+"What a wicked rattle you are!" Mabel said, affecting to box her ears.
+"I could not love you if I believed you to be in earnest. As to
+your figure of the stabled steed--this disapproving customer has the
+consolation that she need not accept him, unless she wishes to do so.
+She has the invaluable privilege of saying 'no' as often and obstinately
+as she pleases."
+
+"I deny it," said Rosa, perversely. "Parents, in this age, do not make a
+custom of locking up refractory daughters in nunneries or garrets until
+they consent to wed Baron Buncombe or my Lord Nozoo, but there are,
+nevertheless, compulsory marriages in plenty. Society warns me to make
+a creditable match, upon penalty, if I decline, of being pointed out
+to the succeeding--and a fast-succeeding generation it is! as a
+disappointed old maid--passee belle, who squandered her capital of
+fascinations, and has become a pauper upon public toleration, while
+my mother, sisters, and brothers are growing impatient at my many and
+profitless flirtations, and anxious to see me 'settled.' My mother's
+pet text, since I was sixteen, has been her prayerful desire that I, the
+last of her nestlings, should make choice of a tenable bough and helpful
+partner, and set up a separate establishment before she dies. When that
+event occurs, I shall be, in effect, homeless--a boarder around upon my
+rebukeful relatives, who 'always thought how my trifling would end,' and
+who will be forever scribbling 'vanitas vanitatum,' upon the tombstone
+of my departed youth--my day of beaux and offers. You may shake your
+head and look heroic with all your might! You are no better off than
+I, should your brother see cause to refuse his consent to your marriage
+with Mr. Chilton. He could, and probably would, coerce you into another
+alliance before you were twenty-one. There are so many ways of
+letting the life out of a woman's heart, when it is already faint from
+disappointment! The spirit is oftener broken by unyielding, but not
+seemingly cruel pressure, than by outrageous violence. And Winston would
+show himself an adept in such arts, if occasion offered."
+
+"Rosa Tazewell! you are speaking of my brother, my friend and
+benefactor! one of the best, noblest, most disinterested creatures
+Heaven ever made!" cried Mabel, erect and indignant. "You have no
+warrant--I shall never give you the right--to asperse him in my
+presence. He is incapable of cruelty or unfairness. It is my duty to
+obey him, but it is no less a pleasure, for he is a hundred-fold
+wiser and better than I am--knows far more truly what is for my real
+advantage. As to his conduct in this affair of Frederic and myself, you
+cannot deny that it has been generous and consistent throughout. He has
+been cautious--never harsh!"
+
+"So!" said Rosa, scrutinizing the flushed countenance of the other, her
+own full of intense meaning, "you HAVE had your misgivings!"
+
+Mabel reddened more warmly.
+
+"Misgivings! What do you mean?"
+
+"That the uncalled-for vehemence of your defence is a proof of disturbed
+confidence, of wanting belief in the infallibility of your semi-deity.
+The trailing robes of divinity have been blown aside by a chance breath
+of suspicion, and you had a glimpse of the clay feet. I am glad of
+it. Scepticism is the parent of rebellion, and the time is coming when
+fealty to your betrothed may demand disloyalty to the power that now
+is."
+
+Mabel's smile was meant to be careless, but it was only uneasy, and gave
+the lie direct to her asseveration.
+
+"I have no apprehensions of such a conflict. Winston's word is as
+good as another man's oath. It is pledged to my marriage with Frederic
+Chilton, in the event of the prosperous issue of his inquiries into
+his, Frederic's, character and prospects. That these will be answered
+favorably, I have the word of another, who is every whit as trustworthy.
+Where is there room for doubt?"
+
+The brunette shook her head--unconvinced.
+
+"Have your own way! I can afford to abide the showing of the logic of
+events."
+
+"And I!" retorted Mabel, hastily, turning from her, without attempting
+to dissemble her chagrin, to answer a knock at the door.
+
+It was a servant, with two letters. The annoyance passed from her brow,
+like the sheerest mist, as she read the superscriptions--one in her
+brother's handwriting, the other in Frederic's.
+
+Rosa interfered to prevent the breaking of the seals.
+
+"I am going to leave you to the undisturbed enjoyment of your feast,"
+she said, in her most winsome manner. "But--won't it taste the sweeter
+if your antepast is the delight of forgiveness? Say you are not angry
+with me--mia cara!"
+
+"You are a ridiculous child!" Mabel bent to kiss the pleading lips, then
+the great, melting eyes. "Who could be out of temper with you for half a
+minute at a time? You did try my patience with your nonsense, but since
+it WAS nonsense, I have forgotten it all, and love you none the less for
+your prankish humor--you gypsy!"
+
+"She calls my prophecies humbug--turns a deaf ear to my warnings!" cried
+the incorrigible rattle, clasping her hands above her head and rolling
+her eyes tragically. "I have a lively appreciation, at this instant, of
+Cassandra's agonies when Troilus named her 'our mad sister!'--
+
+      'Woe! woe! woe!
+    Let us pay betimes
+    A moiety of that mass of moans to come!'"
+
+Laughing anew at her frantic rush from the chamber, Mabel sat down in
+the broad window-seat to read her love-letter.
+
+Frederic was too manly in feeling and habit of speech to deal in florid
+rhapsodies, but each line had its message from his heart to hers. He
+loved her purely and in truth, and there was not a sentence that did not
+tell her this, by inference, if not directly. He trusted her--and this,
+too, he told her, more as a husband might the wife of years than a lover
+of her he had won so lately. Their hopes were the same and their lives,
+and she dwelt longest upon the sketched plans for the future of these.
+It brought him closer to her than anything else--put her secret and
+reluctant imaginations of evil, and Rosa's daring insinuations, out of
+sight and recollection. She read slowly, and with frequent pauses,
+that she might take in the exquisite flavor of this and that phrase of
+endearment; set before herself in beauty and distinctness the scenes he
+portrayed as the adornment of the prospect which was theirs.
+
+The second and yet more deliberate perusal over, she folded the sheet
+with lingering touches to every corner, thrust it into the envelope,
+and drew it forth again to peep once more at the signature--"Forever and
+truly, your own Frederic;" pressed it to her lips, then to her heart,
+and bestowed it securely in her writing-desk, before she unclosed her
+brother's epistle.
+
+With her finger upon the seal--a big drop of red wax, like a petrified
+blood-gout, stamped with the Aylett coat-of-arms--she leaned through
+the casement to watch for the flutter of Rosa's white dress among the
+vari-colored maples shading the lawn--sang a clear, sweet second to the
+song that ascended to her eyrie:
+
+    "Why weep ye by the tide, ladye?
+       Why weep ye by the tide?
+     I'll wed ye to my youngest son,
+       And ye shall be his bride.
+     And ye shall be his bride, ladye,
+       Sae comely to be seen;
+     But aye she loot the tears down fa'
+       For lock o' Hazeldean."
+
+"MY DEAR MABEL" [wrote the lord of Ridgeley]--"I wish you, so soon as
+you receive this, to communicate with Jenkyns and Smythe concerning the
+new parlor furniture I ordered from them. In talking it over, Clara and
+I have decided that it had better be covered with maroon, instead of
+green, as you advised. I enclose a sample of damask which they must
+match exactly. I would I write direct to them, but think it likely that
+Jenkyns, the managing man of the firm, is in your neighborhood at this
+time. He told me, when I was in town, of his intention to visit Mrs.
+Wilson, his sister, I believe, who lives on the White Oak road, about
+three miles from Ridgeley. Send for him, and put the samples into his
+hands. If he cannot get the precise color in Richmond, let him order it
+from New York.
+
+"The carpets for the parlor, dining-room, and Clara's chamber I have
+bought in Lowell. Clara accompanied me thither, and gave me the benefit
+of her taste in the selection. I have resolved, also, to purchase
+wallpaper in Boston to match these. Say as much to Jenkyns. I shall
+have the boxes directed to his care and instruct him further respecting
+making the carpets and hanging the paper when I return.
+
+"Ask Roberts (the mason) whether it will be practicable to build
+a fire-place in the large lower hall. Another chimney would be an
+unsightly appendage to the roof, but Clara agrees with me, since
+studying the plan of the house I brought on for her inspection, that a
+flue could be run through the closet in your room into the rear one of
+the west chimneys. She thinks the hall must be freezing cold in winter,
+and caught eagerly at my idea that a blazing fire at one end would
+lighten the sombre effect of the oaken wainscot and lofty ceiling.
+I proposed to tear down the panelling, but she was horrified at the
+thought. I could not take more pride and interest in preserving the
+antique character of the home of my forefathers than does she. She will
+have it that the hall, thus improved, and hung with a few old pictures,
+some bits of ancient armor, and carpeted with maroon and green will be
+truly baronial. You and she will agree admirably in your enthusiastic
+love of the venerable, and in your aesthetic tastes. I congratulate
+myself hourly upon my good fortune in securing such a companion for
+myself, and such an instructress for yourself. You cannot fail to derive
+infinite benefit from intercourse with her.
+
+"This brings me to another subject to which I desire to call your
+immediate attention. I wish her to select a couple of dresses suitable
+for your wear on the night of our reception-party, and at others which
+will, undoubtedly, be given in our honor. She objects to doing this
+unless I obtain from you a written request that she should thus aid me.
+She fears you may consider her action 'premature and officious.' Write
+to her at once, requesting her to do this sisterly favor for you,
+setting forth your distance from the city, the meagre assortment of
+the goods to be had in the Richmond stores, etc., and giving her carte
+blanche as to cost and style. It will be an inestimable advantage to
+your appearance on the occasions named should she oblige you in this
+particular. I earnestly desire that you should look your best at your
+introduction to her."
+
+"'Maroon and green!' a 'baronial' hall, and new party-dresses for
+insignificant me!" Mabel stopped to say aloud in great amusement. "What
+would my sage brother have said to such paltry memoranda six months ago?
+He is an apt scholar, or he has an able teacher. Ah, well! love is a
+marvellous transmogrifier!"
+
+With this apothegm from the storehouse of her lately acquired wisdom,
+she passed to the next paragraph.
+
+"Now for another matter about which I meant to write to you yesterday,
+but I was prevented by our expedition to Lowell. The evenings I of
+course devote to Clara. I have not been so engrossed by my own very
+important concerns as to neglect yours. I stopped a day in Philadelphia,
+illy as I could afford the time, to make such investigations as I could,
+without exciting invidious suspicion, into the character of the person
+whom I found domesticated at Ridgeley on my return from my summer tour.
+The information I picked up in that cautious city was so meagre and
+tantalizing as to provoke me into the belief that he had selected his
+references with an eye to the slenderness of their knowledge of his
+personal history. Accident, however, has since placed within my reach
+a means of learning all that I wish to know. Without wearying you with
+explanations, which, indeed, I have no time to write--being engaged
+to drive out with Clara in an hour from this time--I will transcribe a
+portion of a letter received by me, two days since, from a gentleman of
+unexceptional standing, and upon whose word you may safely depend.
+
+"He says: 'In reply to your queries as to my acquaintanceship with one
+Frederic Chilton, now a practising lawyer in the city of Philadelphia,
+I would, if conscience permitted, repay your frankness by evasion of a
+disagreeable truth. But in the circumstances which induced your
+appeal, I have no option. Hesitation or concealment would be unkind and
+dishonorable. I knew the man you speak of well--I may say intimately,
+while we were fellow-students in the----law school, in 18--. He was
+then--what I have but too much reason for believing him at this
+day--a plausible, unprincipled man of pleasure. Our intercourse, which
+commenced at the card-table, terminated with a severe horsewhipping
+I administered to him in punishment of an offence offered a married
+lady--a relative of my own. Taking advantage of the protracted absence
+of her husband, who was a naval officer, he offered her many attentions,
+received by herself as tokens of innocent and friendly regard, until he
+forgot himself so far as to make her open and insulting proposals, even
+urging her to consent to an elopement, and threatening, in the event of
+her refusal, to ruin her by infamous calumnies. Her father was infirm;
+her husband in a foreign land. His base persecution would have met with
+no chastisement, had not I espoused the terrified woman's cause.
+These are the bare facts of the case. He merited a flogging--as you, a
+chivalric Virginian, will admit. I--a Northern man, with cooler blood,
+but I hope, as true a sense of honor and right as your own--inflicted
+this, as I am prepared to testify before any number of witnesses.'"
+
+[Mabel was reading very fast, her eyes hurrying from side to side of the
+page, her face blanching, and her hands more numb with every word.]
+
+"The above is a verbatim copy of that portion of my friend's letter
+which pertains to your affair," continued Mr. Aylett. "I shall write to
+Mrs. Sutton's protege by the mail that carries this, informing him of my
+opportune discovery, through no instrumentality of his providing, of the
+poverty of his claims to the title of gentleman, and the audacity of
+his pretensions to my sister's hand. Have what letters, etc., you have
+received from him ready packed to return to his address when I
+come home. My principal regret, in the review of the unfortunate
+entanglement, is that he ever visited Ridgeley and was known in the
+vicinity as your suitor. You will suffer from this, in the future, more
+than you can now suppose. A woman hardly ever outlives such a stigma.
+
+"You may expect me on Thursday next, the 21st, at which time I hope to
+see most of the alterations I have ordered in an encouraging state of
+forwardness. Should Jenkyns be in town when you get this, write out my
+directions clearly and in full, and send them, with sample of damask, by
+mail.
+
+"Your affectionate brother,
+
+"WINSTON AYLETT"
+
+The clammy, nerveless hands dropped--the fatal sheet below them--into
+Mabel's lap. She did not cry out or moan. Things stricken to the heart
+generally fall dumbly. It was not her cramped position within the
+window-seat that paralyzed her limbs, nor the chill of the twilight that
+crept through vein and bone. For one sick second she believed herself
+to be dying, and would not have stirred a muscle or spoken a syllable to
+save the life which had suddenly grown worthless--worthless, since she
+was never to see Frederic again; be no more to him than if she had
+never laid her head upon his bosom; never felt his kisses upon lip and
+forehead; never lived upon his words of love as rapt mortals, admitted
+in trances to the banquet of the gods, eat ambrosia, and drink to
+divinest ecstacy of nectar--the elixir of immortal life and joy,
+sparkling in golden chalices.
+
+She had had her dream--ravishing and brief--but the awakening was
+terrible as the struggle back to life from a swoon or deathful lethargy.
+As to thinking, I believe nobody thinks at such seasons. Nature shrinks
+in speechless horror at sight of the descending weight, and when it has
+fallen, lies motionless, gasping in breath to enable her to support
+the intolerable anguish, not speculating how to avert the next stroke.
+Frederic and she were parted! Had not Winston said so! And when was he
+known to reverse a verdict! She had nothing to do but sit still and let
+the waters go over her head.
+
+Rosa was seated upon the upper step of the west porch, her chin cradled
+in her hand, her elbow on her knee, gazing on the darkening sky, and
+crooning Scotch ballads in a pensive, dreamy way. Mabel, from her perch,
+eyed her as if she were a creature belonging to another world--seen
+dimly, and comprehended yet more imperfectly. Yet it could not have been
+half an hour--thirty fleeting minutes--since the two had talked as dear
+friends out of the fulness of their hearts. Where were the hopes and
+happy memories that had made hers then a garden of pleasant things, a
+fruitful field which Heaven had blessed? In that little inch of time,
+the flood had come and taken them all away.
+
+Would the dry aching in her throat and chest ever be less? Tears
+had gushed freely and healthfully after her last leave-taking with
+Frederic--the looked farewell, which was all Winston's surveillance had
+granted them. She had been wounded then by her brother's singular want
+of tact or feeling. She had not the spirit to resent anything to-night,
+unless it were that God had made and suffered to live a being so
+wretched and useless as herself. She supposed it was wicked--but she did
+not care! She ought to be resigned to the mysterious dispensations of
+Providence--that was the prescribed phraseology of pious people. She had
+heard the cant times without number. What more would they have than her
+utter destitution of love and bliss? Was she not miserable enough to
+satisfy the sternest believer in purgatorial purification? to appease
+the wrath even of Him who had wrought her desolation? It must be the
+judgment of a retributive Deity upon her idolatrous affection that she
+was bearing--her worship of Frederic. Yes, she had loved him; she loved
+him now better than she did anything else upon earth--better than she
+did anything in Heaven.
+
+In the partial insanity of her woe and despair, she lifted her gray face
+and vacant eyes to the vast, empty vault, beyond which dwelt her Maker
+afar off, and said the words aloud--spat them at Him through hard, ashy
+lips.
+
+"I love him! I love him! You have taken him from me--but I will love him
+for all that!"
+
+Heaven--or Fate--her blasphemous mood did not distinguish the one from
+the other--was a robber. Her brother was pitiless as the death that
+would not answer to her call. Between them she was bereaved.
+
+It was but a touch--the lightest breath of natural feeling that broke
+up the hot crust, that shut down the fountain of tears--Rosa's voice,
+tuneful and sad as a nightingale's, chanting the border-lays she loved
+so well:
+
+    "When I gae out at e'en.
+     Or walk at morning air,
+     Ilk rustling bush will seem to say
+     I used to meet thee there.
+     Then I'll sit down and cry,
+     And live beneath the tree.
+     And when a leaf falls in my lap,
+     I'll oa' it a word from thee."
+
+She had sung it herself to Frederic the night before he left her, and as
+she finished the artless ballad, he took her in his arms and kissed her.
+
+As he would never do again!
+
+"My darling! my darling!" she cried aloud.
+
+Then the grief-drops came in a flood.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. -- CLEAN HANDS.
+
+
+The servant who summoned Mabel to supper brought down word that she was
+not feeling well, and did not wish any.
+
+"Not well! Bless me!" exclaimed Mrs. Sutton, starting up. "Rosa, love,
+excuse me for three seconds, please. I must see what is the matter. I
+do hope there is no bad news from--" (arrested by the recollection that
+there were servants in the room, she substituted for the name upon her
+lips)--"in her letters."
+
+"I don't think she's much sick ma'am," said the maid. "She is a-settin'
+in the window."
+
+"Where I left her with her letters, an hour and more ago," observed
+Rosa. "Don't hurry back if she needs you, Aunt Rachel. I will make
+myself at home; shall not mind eating alone for once."
+
+Not withstanding the array of dainties before her, she only nibbled the
+edge of a cream biscuit with her little white teeth, and crumbled
+the rest of it upon her plate in listlessness or profound and active
+reverie, while the hostess was away. She, too, had her conjectures and
+her anxieties--a knotty problem to work out, and the longer she pondered
+the more confident was she that she had grasped at least one filament of
+the clue leading to elucidation.
+
+Mabel had not stirred from her place--sat yet with her brother's letter
+in her lap, her hands lying heavily upon it, although her muslin dress
+was ghostly in the stream of moonlight flowing across the chamber. She
+had wept her eyes dry, and her voice was monotonous, but unfaltering.
+
+"I am not really sick, aunt, but I have no appetite, and having a great
+deal to think of, I preferred staying here to going to the table," was
+her answer to Mrs Sutton's inquiries.
+
+"Your hands are cold and lifeless as clay, my child. What is the matter?
+It is not like you to be moping up here, alone in the dark."
+
+"Won't you leave me to myself for a while, and keep Rosa down-stairs?"
+asked Mabel, more patiently than peevishly. "Before bed-time I will see
+you in your room, and we can talk of what has disturbed me."
+
+"My daughter," murmured the gentle-hearted chaperone, trying to draw the
+erect head to her shoulder, as she stood by her niece.
+
+Mabel resisted the kindly force.
+
+"No, no, aunt. I cannot bear that yet. I have just begun to think
+connectedly, and petting would unnerve me."
+
+This was strange talk from the frank-hearted child she had reared from
+babyhood, and while she desisted from further attempts at consolation,
+Aunt Rachel took a very sober visage back to the supper-room with her,
+and as little appetite as Rosa had manifested. The meal was quickly
+over, and by way of obeying the second part of Mabel's behest, the
+innocent diplomatist begged Rosa to go to the piano.
+
+"I always enjoy your delightful music, my dear. It makes the house more
+lively."
+
+"Thank you, dear Mrs. Sutton. I should take pleasure in obliging you;
+but if Mabel is out of sorts, I don't believe she will care to have the
+house lively to-night," was the amiable rejoinder. "Moreover, I am dying
+to finish 'David Copperfield.' Will you allow me to curl myself up in
+the big chair here, and read for an hour?"
+
+Mrs. Sutton gave a consent that was almost glad in its alacrity, and
+pretended to occupy herself with the newspapers brought by the evening
+mail, until she judged that Mabel had had season in which to compose her
+thoughts. Then she muttered something about "breakfast," "muffins," and
+"Daphne," caught up her key-basket, and bustled out.
+
+Rosa's book fell from before her face at the sound of the closing door.
+The liquid eyes were turbid; her features moved by some passion mightier
+far than curiosity or compassion for her friend's distress.
+
+"I have done nothing--literally nothing, to bring this on!" was the
+reflection which brought most calm to her agitated mind. "If it should
+be as I think, I am guiltless of treachery. My skirts are clear. My
+hands are clean! Yet there have been moments when I could have dipped
+them in blood that this end might be attained!"
+
+Too restless to remain quiet, she tossed her book aside and wandered
+from side to side of the room, halting frequently to hearken for Mrs.
+Sutton's return, or some noise from the conference chamber that might
+alleviate her suspense.
+
+"I tried to put her on her guard," she broke forth at length, bent, it
+would seem, upon self-justification against an invisible accuser. "I saw
+aversion in Winston's eye the day he came home to find the other here.
+He would never forgive his slave the presumption of choosing a husband
+for herself. Did I not tell her so? Yet this has caught her like a
+rabbit in a trap--unprepared for endurance or resistance. The spiritless
+baby! Would I give him up, except with life, if he loved me as he does
+her?"
+
+It was not a baby's face that was confronting Mrs. Sutton's just then.
+It was no weak, spiritless slave who sustained the pelting shower of her
+comments, her wonderment and her entreaties that Mabel would refuse to
+abide by her brother's decision--her guardian though he was--and if she
+would not write to Frederic with her own hand, empower her aunt to apply
+to him for an explanation of the disgraceful mystery.
+
+"We should condemn no man unheard," she argued.
+
+"It is but fair to give him an opportunity of telling his side of the
+story."
+
+"Winston's letter will inform him of what and by whom he is accused,"
+said Mabel. "He will have the opportunity you speak of. I should not be
+content with my brother's action, were this not so. I have been over
+the whole ground again and again, since sunset. We--you and I--are
+powerless. This story is either true or false. If what we have read
+really happened, what could arise from our correspondence with the
+offender against honor and virtue? It would but complicate difficulties.
+If he is unjustly accused, he can prove it, and put his slanderers to
+shame without our promptings. Our interference would be an intimation
+that he needed our championship."
+
+"I believe he will clear himself of every stain," returned Mrs. Sutton
+earnestly. "This is either a vile plot concocted by some secret foe, or
+the Frederic Chilton mentioned here," pushing the letter away from her
+on the table, with a gesture of loathing, "is another person."
+
+"That is very unlikely!"
+
+Mabel leaned her forehead wearily upon her hand, and did not finish the
+sentence immediately.
+
+"I will be candid with you, aunt, upon this subject, as I have tried to
+be in every other confidence with which I have burdened you. Frederic
+Chilton was a student in the law-school, which was also attended by
+Winston's correspondent, and at the date specified by him. I have reason
+to think there was something unpleasant--something he wished to conceal
+from me, and perhaps from everybody else, connected with his stay there.
+He referred to it ambiguously on the last evening of his visit here, as
+a folly, a youthful indiscretion. I have the impression, moreover, that
+a married woman was mixed up in this trouble, whatever it was--a lady,
+some years older than himself, whose husband, a naval officer, was
+absent upon a long cruise. This may be the germ of the story related
+here, and it may have nothing whatever to do with it."
+
+In saying "here," she pointed to the letter. Both avoided touching it
+as it lay between them, the big seal uppermost, and looking more like
+bright, fresh blood than ever, in the lamplight.
+
+"My dear, all this proves nothing--absolutely nothing--except that
+the shock and overmuch solitary musing have made you morbid and
+unreasonable."
+
+Mrs. Sutton assumed a collected air, and delivered herself with the mien
+of one who was determined to submit to no trifling, and to credit no
+scrap of evidence against her friend which counter-reasoning could set
+aside.
+
+"My husband's godson--we must remember he is that, Mabel!--could never
+be guilty of the infamous conduct ascribed to this Chilton by Winston
+Aylett's anonymous friend. I am accounted a tolerable judge of
+character, and I maintain that it is a moral impossibility for my
+instincts and experience to be so utterly at fault as these two men
+would make you believe. As to the corroboration of your 'impression,'
+that would be consummate nonsense in the eye of the law. Let us sift
+the pros and cons of this affair as rational, unprejudiced beings
+should--not jump at conclusions. And I must say, Mabel"--was the
+consistent peroration of this address, uttered in a mildly-aggrieved
+tone, while the blue eyes began to shine through a rising fog--"it
+seems to me very singular--really wounds me--is not what I looked for in
+you--that you should rank yourself with my poor boy's enemies!"
+
+"I, his enemy!" The word was a sharp cry--not loud, but telling of
+unfathomed deeps of anguish, from the verge of which the listener drew
+back with a shudder. "I would have married him without a single glance
+at the past! Let him but say 'it is untrue--all that you fear and they
+declare,' and I would disbelieve this tale, instantly and utterly,
+though a thousand witnesses swore to the truth of it. Or, let him be all
+that they say, I would marry him to-night, if I had the right to do it.
+But I promised--and to promise with an Aylett is to fulfil--that I
+would be ruled by my guardian's will, should the investigation, to which
+Frederic himself did not object, terminate unfavorably for my hopes, and
+contrary to his declaration."
+
+"It was a rash promise, and such are better broken than kept."
+
+"Your Bible, Aunt Rachel--to-night, I cannot call it mine!--commends him
+who swears to his own heart and changes not," replied the niece, with
+restored steadiness. "It would have been the same had I refused my
+consent to Winston's proposal. I am a minor, and who would wait two
+years for me?"
+
+"Anybody who loved you, provided your trust in him equalled his in you,"
+said Mrs. Sutton, slyly.
+
+Mabel's answer was direct.
+
+"You want me to say that I do not believe this tale of Mr. Chilton's
+early errors; to brand it as a mistake or fabrication. You insinuate
+that, in reserving my sentence until I shall have heard both sides of
+it, I show myself unworthy of the love of a true man; betray of what
+mean stuff my affection is made. I suppose blind faith is sublime! But
+for my part, I had rather be loved in spite of my known faults, than
+receive wilfully ignorant worship."
+
+The daring stroke at Mrs. Sutton's hypothesis of the inseparable union
+between esteem and affection, excited her into an impolitic admission.
+
+"My child, you make my blood run cold! You do not mean that you could
+love a man for whose character you had no respect!"
+
+"There is a difference between learning to love and continuing to love,"
+said Mabel, sententiously. "But we have had enough of useless talk,
+aunt. In two days more Winston will be here. Until then, let matters
+remain as they are. You can tell Rosa as much or as little as you like
+of what has happened. She must suspect that something has gone awry.
+To-morrow, I will look up this Mr. Jenkyns, and deliver the messages
+with which I am charged--likewise consult the mason about the 'baronial'
+fireplace," smiling bitterly.
+
+"You never saw another creature so altered as she is," Mrs. Sutton
+bewailed to Rosa, in rehearsing the scene. "If this thing should turn
+out to be true, she is ruined and heart-broken for life. She will
+become a cold, cynical, unfeeling woman--a feminine copy of her granite
+brother."
+
+"If!" reiterated Rosa, testily. "There is not one syllable of truth in
+it from Alpha to Omega! I know he is your nephew, and that it is one af
+the Medo-Persian laws of Ridgeley that the king can do no wrong; but
+I would sooner believe that Winston Aylett invented the slander
+throughout, than question Fred Chilton's integrity. There is foul play
+somewhere, as you will discover in time--or out of it!"
+
+To Mabel, Frederic's spirited champion said never a word of the event
+that held their eyes waking until dawn--each motionless as sleepless
+lest her bed fellow should discover her real state.
+
+"I have had no share in causing the rupture. I am not called upon to
+heal it," meditated she. "In this, the law of self-preservation is my
+surest guide."
+
+Her resolve to remain neutral was sharply and unexpectedly tested the
+next afternoon.
+
+The two girls went out for a ramble about four o'clock, taking the
+beaten foot-path that led through cultivated fields, and between wooded
+hills, to a small post-town two miles distant. The day was sunless, but
+not chilly, and when they had outwalked the hearing of the murmur of
+rural life that pervaded the barnyard and adjacent "quarters," the
+silence was oppressive, except when broken by the whirr of a partridge,
+the melancholy caw of the crows, scared from their feast upon the
+scattered grains knocked from over-ripe ears of corn during the recent
+"fodder-pulling," and, as they neared it, by the fretting of a rapid
+brook over its stony bottom.
+
+The pretence of social converse had been given up before the friends
+cleared the first field beyond the orchard. Rosa's exquisite tact
+withheld her from obtruding commonplaces upon the attention of a mind
+torn by suspense--distracted between disappointment and outraged pride,
+and Mabel had not besought her sympathy in her grievous strait. They
+walked on swiftly, the one staring straight forward, yet seeing
+nothing; the other, although thoughtful, losing not one feature of
+the landscape--the light-gray sky, the encircling forest, the yellow
+broom-straw clothing the hill-sides, the crooked fences, lined with
+purple brush, golden-rod, black-bearded alder and sumach, flaming with
+scarlet berry cones and motley leaves. It was her principle and habit to
+seize upon whatever morsels of delight were dropped in her way, and she
+had a taste for attractive bits of scenery, as for melody. There was no
+reason why the evil estate of her companion should debar her from quiet
+enjoyment of the autumn day. She was sorry that Mabel was suffering.
+It was unpleasant to see pain or grief. Smiles were prettier than glum
+looks. She hoped she had enough humanity about her to enable her to
+recognize these facts. But, in her soul, she despised the girl for her
+tacit acquiescence in her brother's decree; contemned her yet more for
+her partial credence of the rumor of her lover's unworthiness. It was as
+well, taking these things into account, that Mabel was not communicative
+with regard to the great change that had befallen her since this
+hour yesterday, when she had exultingly proclaimed that her trust was
+"founded upon a rock."
+
+"Varium et mutabile semper faemina!" reflected Rosa, who knew that much
+Latin--and attracted by the waving of the bright grasses beneath the
+waves of the rivulet they were crossing, she stopped to lean over the
+railing and poke them aside from the stones with a chincapin switch she
+had picked up a little way back.
+
+Mabel did not look around; apparently did not observe that she walked on
+alone.
+
+"I dare say she would not miss me for the next mile!" soliloquized the
+idle lounger, snatching foam-flakes from their nestling-places behind
+the rocks, and watching them as they danced down the stream.
+
+Something, whiter and more regular in shape than they, lay upon the
+margin of the brook, partly concealed by a clump of sedge. A letter,
+with the address uppermost! Rosa's optics were keen. She easily made out
+the direction upon the envelope from where she stood. It was Frederic
+Chilton's name in Mrs. Sutton's quaint, old-fashioned "back-hand"
+chirography. An hour before, as Rosa now recollected, she had seen, from
+her window, a negro man take the path to the village, arranging some
+papers in the crown of his tattered straw hat. He had dropped this, the
+most important of all, probably in stooping to drink from his hollowed
+palms at the spring-stream. However this might be, there it lay--the
+warning to the calumniated lover that his traducers were making clean
+(or foul) work with his fair fame in the quarter where he wished to
+stand at his best; perhaps citing him to appear and answer the damaging
+charges in person before the same tribunal.
+
+"If she would only let me drop him a friendly line asking him, for her
+sake, to contradict this horrid slander!" the distraught matron had
+sighed, last night, in her recapitulation of the conversation with her
+obdurate niece. "But she will not hear of it."
+
+"I hardly think he would like it either," Rosa had rejoined. "It would
+hint at distrust on your part or on hers. Mr. Aylett's letter should be
+sufficient to elicit the defence you crave."
+
+"You are in the right, perhaps!" But Mrs. Sutton had looked miserably
+discontented. "Yet to be frank with you, Rosa, Winston is not apt to
+be conciliatory in his measures when he takes it into his head that the
+family honor is assailed. I am afraid he has written haughtily, if not
+insolently, to poor Frederic."
+
+Rosa had no doubt of this, even while she answered, "Neither haughtiness
+nor downright insolence would prevent a man who has so much at stake as
+has Mr. Chilton, from taking instant steps to re-establish himself in
+the respect of the family he desires to enter. This is a very delicate
+matter--take what view of it we may. Hadn't you better wait a few days
+before you interfere? Nothing can be lost--something may be gained by
+prudent delay."
+
+"And I suppose Winston WOULD be very much displeased at my
+officiousness, as he would term it," had been Mrs. Sutton's reluctant
+concession to her young guest's discreet counsels. "But it is very hard
+to remain quiet, and see everything going to destruction about one!"
+
+She had evidently reconsidered her resolution to let things take their
+wrong-headed course, and in virtue of her prerogatives as match-maker
+and mender, had thrust her oar into the very muddy whirlpool boiling
+about the bark of her darling's happiness.
+
+Rosa wrought out this chain of sequences, with many other links,
+stretching far past present exigences and possibilities, ere Mabel's
+figure disappeared behind the shoulder of the hill rising beyond the
+brook. Should Frederic Chilton receive that letter, in less than a
+week--in three days, perhaps, for he was a man prompt to resolve and to
+do--he would present himself at Ridgeley to speak in his own behalf--an
+event Rosa considered eminently undesirable. Certainly Mabel's
+pusillanimity merited no such reward. She had no right to question the
+rectitude that one she professed to love, nor her aunt the right to act
+as mediator. If Mabel Aylett, with her found sense and judgment, and
+her inherent strength of will, would not hold fast to her faith in her
+affianced husband, and defy her brother to sunder them, let her lose
+that which she prized so lightly.
+
+If the epistle, soaking slowly there in the wet, had been committed
+to Rosa's charge, she would have scorned to intercept it; would have
+deposited it safely and punctually in the post-office. As it was, if
+she left it alone, Frederic would never get it, and Mrs. Sutton remain
+unconscious of its fate--unless some other passer-by should perceive and
+rescue it from illegibility and dissolution; unless Mabel should espy
+it on their return-walk, or, coming back, the next moment, to seek her
+truant mate, catch sight of the snowy leaflet of peace in its snuggery
+under the sedge.
+
+A startled partridge flew over Rosa's head from the thither rising
+ground, and in the belief that he was the harbinger of the approach she
+dreaded, she dislodged the envelope from its covert, with a quick touch
+of her little wand, and it floated down the stream.
+
+Slowly--all too gradually at first--swinging lazily wound in the eddies,
+catching, now against a jutting stone, now entangled by a blade of
+grass--Rosa's heart in her throat as she watched it, lest Mabel's
+footsteps should be audible upon the rocky path, Mabel's hat appear
+above the spur of the hill. Then the channel caught it, whirled it over
+and over, faster and faster, and sucked it downward.
+
+Mrs. Sutton was at the tea-table with the girls that evening, when
+Johnson, the sable Mercury, showed himself at the door, to inform his
+superior that he had "got everything at de sto' she sent him fur to
+buy."
+
+"You mailed the letters, Johnson?" said the mild mistress, rather
+anxiously.
+
+"All on dem, Mistis!"
+
+"The unconscionable liar!" thought Rosa, virtuously, "he ought to be
+flogged! But it is none of my business to contradict him."
+
+She did not say now, "My hands are clean!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. -- CRAFT--OR DIPLOMACY!
+
+
+"YOUR letter notifies me, in general terms, that the answers returned
+to your inquiries as to my antecedents and present reputation are the
+reverse of satisfactory. You feel constrained, you add, in view of the
+information thus obtained, to interdict my further intercourse with your
+sister or any other member of your family. Since I cannot battle with
+shadows, or refute insinuations the drift of which I do not in the least
+comprehend, may I trouble you to put the allegations to which you refer
+into a definite and tangible shape? Let me know who are my accusers, and
+what are the iniquities with which they charge me. The worst criminal
+against human and divine laws has the right to demand thus much before
+he is convicted and sentenced.
+
+"As to your prohibition of my continued correspondence with Miss Aylett,
+I shall consider her my promised wife, and write to her regularly as
+such, until you have made good your indictment against me, or until I
+receive the assurance under her own hand and seal that my conduct in
+thus addressing her is obnoxious to herself.
+
+"I have the honor, sir, of signing myself
+
+"Your obedient servant,
+
+"FREDERIC S. CHILTON."
+
+The cool contempt of the reply to his imperative dismissal of whatever
+claims the presumptuous adventurer his aunt had encouraged believed he
+had upon Mabel's notice or affection, was likely to irk Winston Aylett
+as more intemperate language could not. It did more. It baffled him, for
+a time. He could, and he meant, to withhold the lover's letter from his
+sister's eyes. He could--and upon this also he was determined--command
+her, in the masterful manner that heretofore had never failed to work
+submission, never to meet, speak, or write again to the man he almost
+hated; will her to forget her childish fancy for his handsome face and
+glozing arts, and in the fulness of time, to bestow her in marriage upon
+a partner of his own providing. He had no misgivings as to his ability
+to accomplish all this, if the blackguard aforesaid could be kept out
+of her way until that remedial agent, Time, and lawful authority had a
+chance to do their work.
+
+But he was openly defied to prevent communication between the betrothed
+pair, unless his injunction had Mabel's endorsement; and, upon alighting
+from the stage at the village, on his return to Ridgeley, he had taken
+from the post-office, along with the impertinent missive addressed to
+himself, one for Mabel, superscribed by the same hand. From the first,
+he had no intention of transferring it to the keeping of the proper
+owner, It was forwarded in direct disobedience to his commands, and the
+writer should be made to understand the futility of opposition to these.
+For several hours, his only purpose respecting it was to enclose it,
+unopened, in an envelope directed by himself, and send it back to the
+audacious author, by the next mail. He was balked in this project by
+no fastidious scruples as to his right thus to dispose of his ward's
+property. Nature, or what he assumed was natural affection, concurred
+with duty in urging him to hinder an alliance by which Mabel's happiness
+would be imperilled and her relatives scandalized. But when, in the
+solitude of his study, he vouchsafed a second reading to Frederic's
+letter, preparatory to the response he designed should annihilate his
+hopes and chastise his impudence, a doubt of the efficacy of his schemes
+attacked him for the first time. "Under her own hand and seal,"
+were terms the explicitness of which commended them to his grave
+consideration. His next thought was to oblige Mabel to indite a formal
+renunciation of her unworthy suitor. There were several objections to
+this measure.
+
+Firstly, he disliked whatever smacked of scenic effect, and women were
+apt to get up scenes--hysterics, attitudes, and the like--upon trivial
+provocation, He wanted to get the thing over quietly and soon.
+
+Secondly, he was not very sure that he should find in Mabel the docile
+puppet she had appeared to him for so many years of tutelage. She
+had matured marvelously of late. Her very manner of meeting him that
+afternoon impressed him by its self-possession and freedom from the
+emotion that used to gush from eyes and lips, in happy tears, and
+broken, delighted greeting at his approach. For aught he knew to the
+contrary, she might have accepted his fiat as just, if not merciful, and
+not a dream of rebellion been fostered thereby. The grave tranquillity
+of her demeanor might arise from the chastening influences of the
+mortification she had sustained, and a consciousness of ill-desert
+that bred humility. He would fain have believed all this, but until he
+broached the subject to her, his incertitude could not be removed, and
+in a step so momentous as that which he meditated, it behooved him to
+try well the solidity of the ground beneath him.
+
+Lastly, our blood-prince of the kingdom of Ridgeley was, whether he
+confessed it or not, acting under orders.
+
+"Be very tolerant with that poor little deceived sister of yours!" his
+fiancee had implored, her diamond eyes bedimmed by quick-springing damps
+of commiseration. "Recollect that the consciousness of wasted love is
+always harder to bear than what is commonly known as bereavement. If you
+find her refractory, be patient and persuasive, instead of dictatorial.
+Craft often effects what overt violence would attempt in vain."
+
+"Craft!" The word struck unpleasantly upon the Virginia lordling's ear,
+and he echoed it with a suspicion of a frown upon his brow. "I am not an
+adept in chicanery!"
+
+"But you are a born diplomatist!" seductively. "And because I am of the
+same credulous sex as our mistaken little darling, you will not proceed
+to open warfare with her, even should she be both to resign her lover?
+It is the glory of the strong to show charity to the weak and erring."
+
+For her sake, then, our flattered diplomatist would try the effect of
+guile, instead of brutality, upon the helpless girl, the balance of
+whose fate was grasped by his shapely hand. For one base second, the
+idea of attempting an imitation of his sister's handwriting flashed
+through his mind. But he was a gentleman, and forgery is not a
+gentlemanly vice, any more than is counterfeiting bank-notes. Finally,
+the author of craft--the subtle, refined virtue bepraised by his
+bride-elect--the devil--came to his help.
+
+Mabel, like most other girls, had a dainty and fantastic taste in
+the matter of letter-paper and envelopes. She used none but French
+stationery, stamped with her monogram--a curious device, wrought in two
+colors--and at the top of each sheet stood out in bas-relief the
+Aylett crest. With these harmless whimsies Frederic was, without doubt,
+familiar. If his letter were returned to him, wrapped in a blank page,
+taken from her papetiere and within one of her envelopes, it would not
+signify so much whose handwriting was upon the exterior. Papetiere
+and writing-desk were in Mabel's bed-room, but she was in the parlor,
+practising an instrumental duet with Rosa--a favorite with Miss
+Dorrance. Winston had brought it south with him, and asked his sister
+to learn it forthwith, in just the accent he used to employ when
+prescribing what studies she should pursue at school. There was nothing
+in his errand that he should be ashamed of, he reminded himself with
+impatient severity, as he traversed the upper hall on tip-toe to the
+western chamber. He had, on sundry previous occasions, sought, in the
+receptacles he was about to ransack, for sealing-wax, pencils, and the
+like trifles. Mabel was too wise a woman not to keep her secrets under
+lock and key, and if there were private documents left in his way, he
+was too honorable to pry into them.
+
+Shutting the door cautiously, that the snap and blaze might not betray
+him, he struck a wax match, warranted to burn a minute-and-a-half, and
+raised the lid of the desk. His unseen but wily coadjutor had guided him
+cunningly. In fingering a heap of envelopes in order to find one large
+enough for his purpose, he brought to light one addressed to "Mr.
+Frederic Chilton, Box 910, Philadelphia, Penn."
+
+Upon the reverse was a small blot that had condemned it in Mabel's
+sight, as unfit to be sent to her most valued correspondent, and which
+she had not observed before writing the direction. Selecting another,
+she had thrown this back carelessly into the desk, meaning to burn it
+when it should be convenient, and forgotten all about it.
+
+The livid dints were deep and restless in Winston's nostrils, as seen by
+the light of the tiny taper he raised to extinguish, when his prize was
+secured. The devil supplied him with another crafty hint, as he was in
+the act of folding one edge of Frederic's letter that it might fit into
+the new cover. Why not strip off the letter entirely, that it might seem
+to have been opened, read, and then flung back upon the writer's hands
+with contumely? Half-way measures were unsafe and foolish. Stratagem,
+to be efficient, should be not only deft, but thorough; else it was
+bungling, not diplomacy. His hand did not shake in divesting the
+closely-written sheet of its wrapping, but in one respect his behavior
+was in consonance with the gentlemanly instincts he vaunted as a proof
+of pure old blood. He averted his eyes lest he should see a line the
+lover had penned to his mistress. The letter slipped smoothly into the
+quarters prepared for it--smoothly as Satan's mark usually goes on until
+his tool has made his damnation sure.
+
+"Well done?" said Diabolus.
+
+"That was a clever hit!" chimed in his assistant, complacently, after
+he had put the sealed envelope into his portfolio for safe-keeping, and
+burned the torn one he had removed. "Nobody but an idiot or a madman
+would persist in following a girl up after such a quietus."
+
+He replied to Frederic's note to himself shortly and with disdain, using
+the third person throughout, and informing Mr. Chilton with unmistakable
+distinctness that Miss Aylett had offered no opposition whatever to
+her brother's will in this unfortunate affair. So far as he--Mr.
+Aylett--could judge, her views coincided exactly with his own. Mr.
+Chilton's letters and presents should be returned to him at an early
+day, and thus should be finished the closing chapter of a volume which
+ought never to have been begun.
+
+All this done to his mind, he set the door of his room ajar, and watched
+for Mabel's passage to hers.
+
+He had not to wait long. The young ladies had fallen into habits of
+early retiring of late--a marked change from their olden fashion of
+singing and talking out the midnight hour. Himself unseen, Mr. Aylett
+scrutinized the two mounting the stairs side by side--Rosa's dark,
+mobile face, arch with smiles, while she chattered over a bit of country
+gossip she had heard that afternoon from a visitor, and the weary calm
+of Mabel's visage, the drooping eyelids, and, when appealed to directly
+by her volatile comrade, the measured, not melancholy cadence of her
+answer, The girl had had a sore fight, and won a Pyrrhian victory. She
+was not vanquished, but she was worsted. Some men, upon appreciating
+what this meant, and how her grief had been wrought, would have had
+direful visitings of conscience, surrendered themselves to the mastery
+of doubts as to the righteousness and humanity of stringent action such
+as he had just consummated. He was not unmoved. He really loved his only
+sister, as proud, selfish men love those of their own lineage who have
+never disputed their supremacy, and derogated from their importance. He
+said something under his breath before he called her, but the curse was
+not upon himself.
+
+"The low-bred hound!" he muttered. "This is his doing!"
+
+Mabel halted at the stair-head, the blood suddenly and utterly forsaking
+her cheeks when he spoke her name, although his address was purposely
+kind, and, he thought, inviting.
+
+"Can you spare me a moment?" he continued, smilingly, to win her
+advance. "I will not detain you long. I know you are agonizing to have
+your talk out, Miss Rosa."
+
+Rosa laughed, with a saucy retort, and turned into her chamber.
+
+Mabel entered her brother's, and without speaking, took the seat he
+offered. She was to be sentenced, and she must reserve her forces to
+sustain the pain without a groan.
+
+"You saw Jenkyns--did you not?" began Mr. Aylett, with the manner of one
+at peace with himself, and those of his fellow-men whose existence he
+chose to acknowledge.
+
+"I did. He made memoranda of your orders, and said all should be done as
+you wished."
+
+"I ordered the masons, this evening, to begin the hall-chimney
+to-morrow. While the work is going on, you had better occupy some other
+bed-room. I shall hurry it forward, day and night, or it will not be
+done in season for us when we return from our bridal-tour. The carpets
+must be down, and the paper dry by the fifteenth at farthest. Clara
+bought your dresses, and offers to have them made, if you will send
+her an accurate measurement. You are about her height, although not so
+well-proportioned. Your figure is angular, where hers is round. She is
+your senior by several years, yet one might easily mistake her for a
+girl of twenty, her complexion is so fresh. Her twenty-five years show
+themselves in nothing except her ease of manner, maturity of thought,
+and elegance of diction."
+
+He would have sneered at this strain in another as hyperbolical and
+fatuous. The absurdity of it in his mouth consisted mainly in the cool
+arrogance of the assumption that whatever belonged to him was above
+adverse criticism, and would be maligned if it were referred to without
+appending an encomium. Much of fervor might and did mingle in his
+thoughts of her he was to wed, but none warmed his enumeration of her
+perfections. He did nothing con amore, unless it were exalting the
+dignity and glory of the Aylett name, and maintaining his right to
+support their ancient honors.
+
+Mabel did not respond to his gratuitous praise of the fair and
+benevolent Clara. While he was talking, he seemed to recede a great way
+from her; his tones to ring hollowly upon her hearing, his form to grow
+indistinct. Was he playing with her suspense, or could it be that he--a
+being with heart and nerves like hers, had no conception of the rack on
+which she was stretched--no suspicion that every one of his deliberate
+sentences was a turn of the screw that redoubled her torture? The
+Ayletts were a strong-willed race, and she repressed all sign of
+suffering save intense pallor; made this less palpable by screening
+her eyes from the lamp-light with a paper she took from the table, and
+thereby throwing her features into deep shadow.
+
+"But it is not my intention to trouble you with matters that concern me
+alone," he pursued, without varying his intonations. "As I anticipated,
+Mr. Chilton declines explaining the ugly story relative to his earlier
+career of dissipation and deceit, which I forwarded to you. He indulges,
+instead, in a tirade of personal abuse touching my right to control you,
+declaring his purpose to pursue you with letters and attentions until
+he shall be discarded by yourself. We will not stay to discuss the
+gentlemanliness and delicacy of his behavior in this regard. I merely
+declare, that, having had a fair opportunity of honest confession or
+denial of statements detrimental to his principles and pursuits,
+and having shirked both, he has placed himself outside the pale of
+respectful consideration. Has he written to you since his receipt of my
+letter?"
+
+"No!"
+
+Mabel was staring at a figure in the carpet, on a line with her feet.
+Had she regarded her brother never so attentively, she would have
+detected no change in his countenance. He did not prepare questions
+without also studying how to deliver them.
+
+"I am glad he has the moral decency to forbear carrying out his threat
+of persecution."
+
+He could say it with the greater hardihood in the remembrance that the
+"persecution" had been attempted.
+
+"I wish he had written!" rejoined Mabel, abruptly, but without passion.
+"He was right to protest against accepting his dismissal from any other
+than myself."
+
+She had not removed her eyes from the spot on the carpet, or lowered the
+paper screen. She looked like a statue and spoke like an automaton.
+
+Mr. Aylett's nostrils quivered ominously.
+
+"Is it your wish to recommence the correspondence I have ended?"
+
+"You know that I would strike off my right hand sooner than do it. But
+if he had written to me, I should have answered his letter, if it had
+been only to bid him farewell. Since he has not chosen to do this, I
+cannot take the initiative."
+
+If Winston had never entertained a favorable opinion of his own sagacity
+prior to hearing this avowal, it would have forced itself upon him now.
+How timely was the thought, how felicitous the accident, that had aided
+him to ward off the disaster of renewed intercourse!
+
+Involuntarily his fingers crept nearer to the closed portfolio.
+
+"No good could have come of that!" returned he coldly. "When an
+amputation is to be performed, wise people submit to it without
+useless preliminaries. The exchange of farewells in this case would
+be inexpedient in the highest degree. You would compromise yourself by
+continued acknowledgment of this fellow's acquaintance. My will is that
+you and the world should forget, as soon as it can be done, that you
+ever saw or heard of him. The connection was degrading."
+
+"Don't abuse him, brother! Let the knowledge that we are parted forever,
+satisfy your resentment. Since he has not appealed to me from your
+verdict, I am left to suppose that, upon second thoughts, he has
+resolved to acquiesce in your will. I do not blame him for the change
+of purpose." Still impassive in feature and voice, still not withdrawing
+her fixed gaze from that one point upon the floor. "He, too, has pride,
+and it matches yours. I do not say mine. I question, sometimes, if I
+have any."
+
+"If your conjecture be correct, you cannot object to return the letters
+you have already received from him," said Winston, pressing on to the
+conclusion of a disagreeable business. "Since you are not likely to
+add to your stock of these valuables, you do not care to retain them,
+I suppose? I believe the rule is total surrender of souvenirs when a
+rupture is pronounced hopeless."
+
+"I shall keep them a week longer!"
+
+She assigned no reason for the resolution, and her manner, without being
+sullen, aggravated her brother into wrath, the effusion of which was a
+withering sneer.
+
+"Your hope in his repentance is creditable to the strength--or
+weakness--of woman's love. But have your way. The illustrious record of
+his former life is a powerful argument in favor of clemency. In a week,
+then!"
+
+He nodded dismissal, wheeled his chair around to the table, dipped a pen
+in the standish, and pulled an account-book toward him.
+
+He was surprised and not pleased, nevertheless, that Mabel retired
+without other reply than a simple "Good-night," said without temper,
+or any evidence of excitement. A month before, a milder sarcasm, the
+lightest breath of reproof, would have brought her to his feet in a
+paroxysm of tears, to implore pardon for her contumacy, and to promise
+obedience for all time to come. She was getting beyond his control the
+while she offered no open resistance to his government. Was sorrowful
+shame, or her infatuation for the adventurer he cursed in his heart
+by his gods, the influence that was petrifying her into this unlovely
+caricature of her once bright and affectionate self?
+
+She presented herself, unsummoned, in his study at the expiration of
+the period she had designated, a pacquet in her hand, neatly done up and
+sealed.
+
+"I will trouble you to direct it," was all she said, as she laid it
+before him.
+
+"This is done of your own free will--remember!" he said, impressively.
+"In after years, should you be so unreasonable as to regret it, there
+must be no misconception on the subject between us. If you wish, at
+this, the eleventh hour, to draw back, I shall not oppose you."
+
+"You will write the address, then, if you please!" was Mabel's reply,
+showing him the surface intended for it.
+
+Then she left him.
+
+"A sensible girl, after all! a genuine Aylett, in will and stoicism!"
+commented the master of the situation, beginning in his round, legible
+characters, the inscription he hoped never to trace again. "So endeth
+her first lesson in Cupid's manual!"
+
+He never knew that Mrs. Sutton had bolstered the Aylett will and
+stoicism into stanchness at this closing scene. In a fit of despondency,
+she had that morning imparted to Mabel the fact that she had written to
+Frederic, ten days before, and had no answer, although she had besought
+an immediate one.
+
+"I have expected him confidently every day for a week," she lamented. "I
+didn't suppose he would stay at Ridgeley, after what has happened;
+but there's the hotel in the village, and, as I told him, he could
+accomplish more by an hour's talk with you than by fifty letters. It is
+very mysterious--his continued silence! He always appeared so frank and
+reasonable. Nothing else like it has ever occurred in my experience--and
+I have had a great deal, my dear!"
+
+"I am sorry you wrote, aunt," replied Mabel, sorrowfully dignified.
+"Sorry you have subjected yourself to unnecessary mortification. I am
+past feeling it for myself. We cannot longer doubt that Mr. Chilton
+desires to hold no further communication with any of us."
+
+Within the hour she made up the pacquet and carried it to her brother.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. -- WASSAIL.
+
+
+ALMOST sixteen months had passed since the dewless September morning,
+when Mabel had gathered roses in the garden walks, and her brother's
+return had shaken the dew with the bloom from her young heart. It was
+the evening of Christmas-day, and the tide of wassail, the blaze
+of yule, were high at Ridgeley. Without, the fall of snow that had
+commenced at sundown, was waxing heavier and the wind fiercer. In-doors,
+fires roared and crackled upon every hearth; there was a stir of busy
+or merry life in every room. About the spacious fire-place in the
+"baronial" hall was a wide semicircle of young people, and before that
+in the parlor, a cluster of elders, whose graver talk was enlivened,
+from time to time, by the peals of laughter that tossed into jubilant
+surf the stream of the juniors' converse.
+
+Nearest the mantel, on the left wing of the line, sat the three months'
+bride, Imogene Barksdale, placid, dove-eyed, and smiling as of yore,
+very comely with her expression of satisfied prettiness nobody called
+vanity, and bedecked in her "second day's dress" of azure silk and her
+bridal ornaments. Her husband hovered on the outside of the ring, now
+pulling the floating curls of a girl-cousin (every third girl in
+the country was his cousin, once, twice, or thrice-removed, and none
+resented the liberties he, as a married man, was pleased to take), anon
+whispering in the ear of a bashful maiden interrogatories as to her
+latest admirer or rumored engagement; oftenest leaning upon the back
+of his wife's chair, a listener to what was going on, his hand lightly
+touching her lace-veiled shoulders, until her head gradually inclined
+against his arm. They were a loving couple, and not shy of testifying
+their consent to the world.
+
+"They remind me irresistibly of a pair of plump babies sucking at
+opposite ends of a stick of sugar candy!" Rosa Tazewell said aside to
+the hostess, as the latter paused beside her on her way through the hall
+to the parlor.
+
+"The candy is very sweet!" replied Mrs. Aylett, charitably, but laughing
+at the conceit--the low, musical laugh that was at once girlish in its
+gleefulness, yet perfectly well-bred.
+
+Mr. Aylett heard it from his stand on the parlor-rug, and sent a
+quick glance in that direction. It was slow in returning to the
+group surrounding him. He had married a beautiful woman--so said
+everybody--and a fascinating, as even everybody's wife did not dispute.
+In his sight, she was simply and entirely worthy of the distinction he
+had bestowed upon her; an adornment to Ridgeley and his name. From
+their wedding-day, his deportment toward her had been the same as it was
+to-night--attentive, but never officious; deferential, yet far removed
+from servility; a manner that, without approximating uxoriousness, yet
+impressed the spectator with the conviction that she was with him first
+and dearest among women; a partner of whom, if that were possible, he
+was more proud than fond--and of the depth and reality of his affection
+there could be no question.
+
+She declined to seat herself in the circle, although warmly importuned
+by her guests thus to add brilliancy to their joyous party, yet remained
+standing near Rosa, interested and amused by the running fire of
+compliment and badinage that went to make up the hilarious confusion. If
+the family record had been consulted, the truth that she had counted
+her thirty-second summer would have astonished her husband, with her new
+neighbors. Apparently she was not over twenty-five. Her chestnut hair
+was a marvel for brightness and profusion, her broad brow smooth and
+white, her figure, as Winston had described it to his sister, rounded,
+even to voluptuousness, yet supple as it had been at fifteen. In her
+cheeks, too, the blushes fluctuated readily and softly, and when she
+smiled, her teeth showed like those of a little child in size and
+purity. Her voice matched her beauty well, never loud, always melodious,
+with a peculiar, gliding, legato movement of the graceful sentences, for
+the pleasing effect of which she was indebted partly to Nature, and
+much more to Art. She appeared on this evening in a green silk dress,
+matronly in shade and general style, but not devoid of coquettish
+arrangement in the square corsage, the opening of which was filled with
+foam-like puffs of thulle, threatening, when her bust heaved in mirth
+or animated speech, to overflow the sheeny boundaries. A chaplet of
+ivy-leaves encircled her head, and trailed upon one shoulder; her
+bracelets were heavy, chased gold without gems of any kind; a single
+diamond glittered--a point of prismatic light at her throat. Her
+wedding-ring was her only other ornament.
+
+"Very sweet, I grant you, and very flavorless," returned Rosa. "And
+alarmingly apt to turn sour upon the stomach. I had rather be fed upon
+pepper lozenges."
+
+"You should have been born in the Spice Islands," said the hostess,
+tapping the dark cheek with her fore finger. "But we could not spare you
+from our wassail-cup to-night, my dear Lady Pimento!"
+
+She bent slightly, that the flattery might reach no other ear. She may
+not have known that Rosa's Creole skin was at a wretched disadvantage,
+as seen against the green silk background; but others noticed it, and
+thought how few complexions were comparable to the wearer's. She had the
+faculty of converting into a foil nearly every woman who approached her.
+
+"Thank you! So I am pimento, am I?" queried Rosa, pertly. "And each of
+us is to personate some condiment--sweet, ardent, or aromatic--in the
+exhilarating draught! Which shall Mr. Harrison here be?
+
+"'Cinnamon or ginger, nutmeg or cloves?'"
+
+"That is a line of a college drinking-song!"
+
+The speaker was a young man of eight-and-twenty; who sat between Rosa
+and Mabel, and whose attentions to the latter were marked. Of medium
+height, with sandy hair and whiskers, high cheek-bones, that gave a
+Gaelic cast to his physiognomy; which was remarkable for nothing in
+particular when at rest, and followed somewhat tardily the operations
+of his mind when he talked, he would probably have been the least likely
+person present to rivet a stranger's notice but for the circumstance
+that he played shadow to the host's sister and was Mrs. Aylett's
+brother. With regard to the feeling entertained by the former of those
+ladies for him, there were many and diverse opinions, but his sister's
+partiality was unequivocally exhibited. Of her three brothers, this--the
+youngest, the least handsome, and the only bachelor--was her favorite.
+She took pains to apprise his fellow-guests of this interesting fact by
+petting him openly, and exerting her fullest artifices to bring him out
+in becoming colors.
+
+"It is," she answered him now, admiringly. "What a memory you have, my
+dear Herbert! Now I am never positive with whom to credit a quotation.
+I recollect, since you have spoken, that your famous quartette-club used
+to render that with much eclat, and how it was encored at the brilliant
+private concert you gave in behalf of some popular charity or other."
+
+Thus encouraged, Mr. Dorrance proceeded to enlarge the fragment:
+
+    "Nose, nose, jolly red nose!
+     Where got you that jolly red nose?
+     Nutmeg and ginger, cinnamon and cloves,
+     These gave me this jolly red nose.'
+
+"You did not quote the third line correctly, Miss Tazewell."
+
+"Never having been a college bacchanalian, I am excusable for the
+inaccuracy," she retorted. "I did not even know where I picked up
+the foolish bit. Having ascertained the origin to be of doubtful
+respectability, I shall never use it again."
+
+"My sister has alluded to our quartette-club," pursued Mr. Dorrance,
+turning from the caustic beauty to Mabel, without noticing the
+impertinent thrust. "It was the most successful thing of the kind I ever
+knew of, being composed of thoroughly-trained musicians--amateurs, of
+course--and practising nothing but classic music, the productions of the
+best masters. There is something both instructive and elevating in such
+an association."
+
+"Especially when the theme of their consideration is the 'Jolly Red
+Nose,'" interposed the wicked minx at his other elbow.
+
+Two giddy girls tittered, unawed by Mrs. Aylett's proximity and her
+brother's owl-like stare at his critic.
+
+"You may not be aware, Miss Tazewell, that the lyric to which you
+have reference is celebrated, both for its antiquity, and the pleasing
+harmonies that must ever commend it to the taste of the true lover of
+music; although I allow that to a disciple of the modern and more flimsy
+school of this glorious art, it may seem puerile and ridiculous," he
+remarked, in grandiose patronage. Then, again to Mabel, "There were four
+of us--as I said--all students. What is it, Clara?"
+
+"I have dropped my bracelet upon the floor, between you and Miss
+Tazewell," stooping to shake out Rosa's full skirts from which the
+trinket fell with a clinking sound.
+
+Three gentlemen darted forward to pick it up, but her husband noted
+approvingly that while she accepted it graciously from the lucky finder,
+and thanked the others for their kindly interest in the fate of her
+"bauble," she held out her arm to her brother, that he might clasp it
+again in its place. Affable always, winning whomsoever she chose to
+admiration of her personal and mental endowments, she never departed
+from matronly decorum. The company agreed silently, or in guarded
+asides, that she was charming. No tongue--even the most reckless or
+venomous--ever lisped the dread word, levity, in connection with her
+name.
+
+"Take care, my dear brother! you will pinch me!" those near heard
+her say, and she twisted the golden circlet that the clasp might be
+uppermost.
+
+Rosa's alert ear caught the hurried murmur which succeeded, and was
+muffled, so to speak, by her affectionate smile of gratitude.
+
+"What were you about to say? Will you never learn prudence?"
+
+"The dove has talons, then?" mused the eavesdropper, "But what was he in
+danger of revealing?"
+
+If the interdicted revelation had connection, close or remote, with the
+famous quartette club, he kept well away from it after this reminder,
+beginning, when he resumed his seat, to discourse upon the comparative
+excellence of wood and coal fires, of open chimney-places and stoves.
+
+Mrs. Aylett smiled an engaging and regretful "au revoir" to the circle,
+and passed on to look after the comfort and pleasure of her elder
+visitors, and Rosa soon discovered that her awakened curiosity would be
+in no wise appeased by listening to the steady, pattering drone of
+Mr. Dorrance's oration. Oratorical he was to a degree that excited the
+secret amusement of the facile Southern youths about him. With them,
+the art of light conversation had been a study from boyhood, the topics
+suitable for and pleasing to ladies' ears carefully culled and
+adroitly handled. To amuse and entertain was their main object. Erudite
+dissertations upon science and literature; abstruse arguments--whatever
+resembled a moral thesis, a political, religious, or philosophical
+lecture met with the sure ban of ridicule from them, as from the fair
+whose devoted cavaliers they were. If they laughed, when it was safe
+and not impolitic to do so, at the ponderous elocution of the Northern
+barrister, they marvelled exceedingly more at Mabel's indulgence of
+his attentions. That a girl, who, in virtue of her snug fortune and
+attractive face, her blood and her breeding, might, as they put it, have
+the "pick of the county," if she wanted a husband, should lend a willing
+ear to the pompous platitudes, the heavy rolling periods of this alien
+to her native State--a man without grace of manner or beauty--in their
+nomenclature, "a solemn prig," defied all ingenuity of explanation, was
+an increasing wonder outlasting the prescribed nine days. He rode with
+the ill assurance of one who, accustomed to the sawdust floor, treadmill
+round, and enclosing walls of a city riding-school, was bewildered
+by the unequal roads and free air of the breezy country. He talked
+learnedly of hunting, quoting written authorities upon this or that
+point, of whom the unenlightened Virginians had never heard, much
+less read; equipped himself for the sport in a bewildering arsenal
+of new-fangled guns, game-bags, shot-pouches, and powder-horns, with
+numerous belts, diagonal, perpendicular, and horizontal, and in the
+field carried his gun a la Winkle; never, by any happy accident, brought
+down his bird, but was continually outraging sporting rules by firing
+out of time, and flushing coveys prematurely by unseasonable talking and
+precipitate strides in advance of his disgusted companions.
+
+Yet he was not a fool. In the discussion of graver matters--politics,
+law, and history--that arose in the smoking-room, he was not to be put
+down by more fluent tongues; demolished sophistry by solid reasoning,
+impregnable assertions, and an array of facts that might be prolix, but
+was always formidable--in short, sustained fully the character ascribed
+to him by his brother-in-law, of a "thoroughly sensible fellow."
+
+"No genius, I allow!" Mr. Aylett would add, in speaking of his wife's
+bantling among his compatriots, "but a man whose industry and sound
+practical knowledge of every branch of his profession will make for him
+the fortune and name genius rarely wins."
+
+With the younger ladies, his society was, it is superfluous to observe,
+at the lowest premium civility and native kindliness of disposition
+would permit them to declare by the nameless and innumerable methods in
+which the dear creatures are proficient. To Rosa Tazewell he could not
+be anything better than a target for the arrows of her satire, or the
+whetstone, upon the unyielding surface of which she sharpened them. But
+she showed her prudential foresight in never laughing at him when out
+of his sight, and in Mabel's. At long ago as the night of Mr. Aylett's
+wedding-party at Ridgeley, her sharp eyes had seen, or she fancied they
+did, that the hum-drum groomsman was mightily captivated by the daughter
+of the house, and she had divined that Mrs. Aylett's clever ruses for
+throwing the two together were the outworks of her design for uniting,
+by a double bond, the houses of Dorrance and Aylett. She knew,
+furthermore, that Herbert Dorrance had travelled with the Ridgeley
+family for three weeks in October, and that he had now been domesticated
+at the homestead for ten days. Mrs. Aylett's show of fondness for him
+was laughable, considering what an uninteresting specimen of masculinity
+he was; but the handsome dame was too worldly-wise, too sage a judge of
+quid pro quo, to entice him to waste so much of the time he was addicted
+to announcing was money to him, for the sake of a good so intangible as
+sisterly sentimentality.
+
+Unless there were some substantial and remunerative ulterior object to
+be gained by his tarrying in the neighborhood, cunning Rosa believed
+that "dear Bertie" would have been packed off to Buffalo, or whatever
+outlandish place he lived in, so soon as the bridal festivities were
+over, and not showed his straw-colored whiskers again in Virginia in
+three years, at least, instead of running down to the plantation every
+three months.
+
+"If such an ingredient as the compound, double-distilled essence of
+flatness is to be infused into the wassail-cup, it is he who will supply
+it!" thought the spicy damsel, with a bewitching shrug of the plump
+shoulder nearest him, while engaged in a lively play of words with a
+gentleman on her other hand. "What can possess Mabel to encourage him
+systematically in her decorous style, passes my powers of divination.
+Maybe she means to use him as a poultice for her bruised heart. In that
+case, insipidity would be no objection."
+
+Mabel had not the air of one whose heart is bruised or torn. That she
+had gained in queenliness within the past year was not evidence of
+austerity or the callousness that ensues upon the healing of a wound.
+The Ayletts were a stately race, and the few who, while she was in her
+teens, had carped at her lack of pride because of her disposition to
+choose friends from the walks of life lower than her own, and criticised
+as unbecoming the playful familiarity that caused underlings and
+plebeians--the publicans and sinners of the aristocrat's creed--to
+worship the ground on which she trod--the censors in the court of
+etiquette conferred upon her altered demeanor the patent of their
+approbation, averring, for the thousandth time, that good blood would
+assert itself in the long run and bring forth the respectable fruits of
+refinement, self-appreciation, and condescension. The change had
+come over her by perceptible, but not violent, stages of progression,
+dating--Mrs. Sutton saw with pain; Rosa, with enforced respect--from the
+sunset hour in which she had read her brother's sentence of condemnation
+upon her then betrothed, now estranged, lover. After that one evening,
+she had not striven to conceal herself and her hurt in solitude. Neither
+had she borrowed from desperation a brazen helmet to hide the forehead
+the cruel letter had, for a brief space, laid low in the dust of
+anguished humiliation.
+
+If a whisper of her disappointment and the attendant incidents
+crept through the ranks of her associates, it died away for want of
+confirmation in her clear level-lidded eyes, elastic footfall and the
+willingness and frequency with which she appeared and played her part
+in the various scenes of gayety that made the winter succeeding her
+brother's marriage one long to be remembered by the pleasure-seekers
+of the vicinity. She had not disdained the assistance of her
+sister-in-law's judgment and experience in the choice of the dresses
+that were to grace these merry-makings, and, thanks to her own naturally
+excellent taste, now tacitly disputed the palm of elegant attire with
+that lady. Her Christmas costume, which, in many others of her age,
+would have been objected to by critical fashionists, as old-maidish and
+grave, yet set off her pale complexion--none of the Ayletts were rosy
+after they reached man's or woman's estate--and heightened her distingue
+bearing into regal grace. Yet it was only a heavy black silk, rich and
+glossy as satin, cut, as was then the universal rule of evening
+dress, tolerably low in the neck, with short sleeves; bunches of
+pomegranate-blossoms and buds for breast and shoulder-knots, and among
+the classic braids of her dark hair a half-wreath of the same.
+
+She had the valuable gift of sitting still without stiffness, and not
+fidgetting with fan, bouquet, or hand-kerchief, as she listened or
+talked. Rosa's mercurial temperament betrayed itself, every instant, in
+the bird-like turn of her small head, the fluttering or chafing of her
+brown fingers, and not unfrequently by an impatient stamp, or other
+movement of her foot that exposed fairy toe and instep. Contemplation
+of the one rested and refreshed the observer; of the other, amused and
+excited him. Mr. Dorrance's phlegmatic nature found supreme content in
+dwelling upon the incarnation of patrician tranquillity at his right
+hand, and he regarded the actions of his frisky would-be tormentor very
+much as a placid, well-gorged salmon would survey, from his bed of
+ease upon the bottom of a stream, the gyrations of a painted dragon fly
+overhead.
+
+A lull in the general conversation--the reaction after a hearty laugh at
+a happy repartee--gave others besides Mabel the opportunity of profiting
+by his learned remarks.
+
+"But does not that seem to you a short-sighted policy," he was urging
+upon his auditor, with the assistance of a thumb and forefinger of one
+hand, joined as upon a pinch of snuff, and tapping the centre of
+the other palm; "does not that appear inexcusable profligacy of
+extravagance, which fells and consumes whole surface forests of
+magnificent trees--virgin growth--(I use the term as it is usually
+applied, although, philosophically considered, it is inaccurate)
+giants, which centuries will not replace, instead of seeking beneath
+the superficial covering of mould, nourishing these, for the exhaustless
+riches, carboniferous remains of antediluvian woods, hidden in the
+bowels of your mountains, and underlying your worn-out fields?"
+
+Rosa was shaking with internal laughter--she would give no escape except
+through her dancing eyes.
+
+Indeed, Mr. Dorrance's was the only staid countenance there, as Mabel
+said, pleasantly, moving her chair beyond the bounds of the ring, "I,
+for one, find the combustion of the upper forest growth too powerful,
+just at this instant. This is a genuine Christmas-storm--is it not?
+Listen to the wind?"
+
+In the stillness enjoined by her gesture, the growl of the blast in the
+chimney and in the grove; the groaning, tapping, and creaking of the
+tree branches; the pelting sleet and the rattle of casements all
+over the house brought to the least imaginative a picture of out-door
+desolation and fireside comfort that prolonged the hush of attention.
+Tom Barksdale's pretty wife slipped her hand covertly into his tight
+grasp, and their smile was of mutual congratulation that they were
+brightly and warmly housed and together. Rosa, preternaturally grave and
+quiet, lapsed into a profound study of the mountain of red-hot embers.
+Several young ladies shuddered audibly, as well as visibly, and were
+reassured by a whispered word, or the slightest conceivable movement of
+their gallants' chairs nearer their own.
+
+"I think we have the grandest storms at Ridgeley that visit our
+continent," resumed Mabel thoughtfully. "I suppose because the house
+stands so high. The wind never sounds to me anywhere else as it does
+here on winter nights."
+
+Yielding to the weird attraction of the scene invoked by her fancy, she
+arose and walked to the window at the eastern extremity of the hall,
+pulling aside the curtain that she might peer into the wild darkness.
+The crimson light of the burning logs and the lamp rays threw a strongly
+defined shadow of her figure upon the piazza floor, distinct as
+that projected by a solar microscope upon a sheeted wall; sent long,
+searching rays into the misty fall of the snow, past the spot from
+which she had her last glimpse of Frederic Chilton, so many, many months
+agone, showing the black outline of the gate where he had looked back to
+lift his hat to her.
+
+What was there in the wintry night and thick tempest to recall the
+warmth and odor of that moist September morning, the smell of the
+dripping roses overhead, the balmy humidity of every breath she drew?
+What in her present companion that reminded her of the loving clasp that
+had thrilled her heart into palpitation? the earnest depth of the eyes
+that held hers during the one sharp, yet sweet moment of parting--eyes
+that pledged the fealty of her lover's soul, and demanded hers then and
+forever? His conscience might have been sullied by crimes more heinous
+than those charged upon him by her brother and his friends; he might--he
+HAD--let her go easily, as one resigns his careless hold upon a
+paltry, unprized toy; but when her hand had rested thus in his, and
+his passionate regards penetrated her soul, he loved her, alone and
+entirely! She would fold this conviction to her torpid heart for a
+little while before she turned herself away finally from the memories
+of that love-summer and battle-autumn of her existence. If it aroused
+in the chilled thing some slight pangs of sentiency, it would do her no
+hurt to realize through these that it had once been alive.
+
+She saw a shadow approaching to join itself to hers upon the whitened
+floor without, before Mr. Dorrance interrupted her reverie by words.
+
+"The fury of the tempest you admire proves its paternity," he said, with
+a manifest effort at lightness. "It emanates from the vast magazines of
+frost, snow, and wintry wind that lie far to the north-east even of my
+home, and THAT is in a region you would think drear and inhospitable
+after the more clement airs of of your native State."
+
+"We have very cold weather in Virginia sometimes," returned Mabel, still
+scanning the sentinel gate-posts, and the pyramidal arbor-vitae trees
+flanking them.
+
+Her gaze was a mournful farewell, but she neglected none of the
+amenities of hospitality. She was used to talking commonplaces.
+
+"We feel it all the more, too, on account of the mildness of the greater
+part of the winter," she subjoined.
+
+"Allow me!" said the other, looping back the curtain she had until now
+held in her hand. "Whereas our systems are braced by a more uniform
+temperature to endure the severity of our frosts, and high, keen
+blasts."
+
+"I suppose so," assented Mabel, mechanically, and unconscious as himself
+that meaning glances were stolen at them from the fireside circle, while
+the hum and conversation was continuous and louder, for the good-natured
+intent on the speakers' part to afford the supposed lovers the chance of
+carrying on their dialogue unheard.
+
+"But our houses are very comfortable--often very beautiful," Mr.
+Dorrance persevered, keeping to the scent of his game, as a trained
+pointer scours a stubble-field, narrowing his beat at every circuit;
+"and the hearts of those who live in them are warm and constant. It is
+not always true that
+
+    "'The cold in clime are cold in blood;
+     Their love can scarce deserve the name.
+
+"I have thought sometimes that that feeling is strongest and most
+enduring, the demonstration of which is guarded and infrequent, as the
+deepest portion of the channel is the most quiet."
+
+If his philosophical and scientific talk were heavy and solid, his
+poetry and metaphors were ponderous and labored. Yet Mabel listened to
+him now, neither facing nor avoiding him, looking down at her hands,
+laid, one above the other, upon the window-sill, the image of maidenly
+and courteous attention.
+
+Why should she affect diffidence, or seek to escape what she had
+foreseen for weeks, and made no effort to ward off? She had come to the
+conclusion in October that Herbert Dorrance would, when the forms he
+considered indispensable to regular courtship had been gone through
+with, ask her to marry him, and coolly taken her resolution to accept
+him. This morning, on the reception of a handsome Christmas gift from
+him, and discovering in his actions something more pointed than his
+customary punctilious devoirs, and in his didacticism the outermost of
+the closing circle of pursuit she had furthermore concluded that his
+happy thought was to celebrate the festal season by his betrothment. She
+was quite ready for the declaration, which, she anticipated, would be
+pompous and formal. She would have excused him from "doing" the poetical
+part of it; but, since it was on the programme, it was not her province
+to interfere.
+
+"I am no enthusiast," he next averred,--Rosa would have said, very
+unnecessarily--"the tricks of sighing lovers are beyond--or beneath--my
+imitation. I could not 'write a sonnet to my mistress' eyebrow,' or
+move her to tearful pity by sounding declarations of my adoration of
+her peerless charms, and my anguish at the bare imagination of the
+possibility that these would ever be another's. But, so far as the
+earnest affection and sincere esteem of an honest man can satisfy the
+requirements of a good woman's heart, yours shall be filled, Mabel,
+if you will be my wife. I have admired you from the first day of our
+meeting. For six months I have been truly attached to you, and seriously
+meditated this declaration. Your brother is satisfied with the exhibit I
+have made of my affairs and my prospects, and sanctions my addresses.
+I can maintain you more than comfortably, and it shall be one of the
+principal aims of my life to consult your welfare in all my plans for my
+own advancement. I have been settled in the large and flourishing
+city of Albany about seven years, and--ignoring the trammels of mock
+humility, let me say to you--have, within that period, gained to a
+flattering extent the confidence of the most respectable portion of the
+community; have built up an excellent and growing business connection,
+and secured the entree of the best society there. These are the
+pecuniary and social aspects of the alliance I propose for your
+consideration. Through my sister, and by means of the intimate
+association into which her marriage with your brother has drawn you and
+myself, you have been enabled, within the twelvemonth that has elapsed
+since our introduction, one to the other, to learn whatever you wished
+to know with respect to my personal character, my tastes, temper, and
+habits. It has given me heartfelt pleasure to discover that these
+are, in the main, analogous to your own. I have built upon this
+similarity--or harmony would be the better word--sanguine hopes of our
+future happiness, should you see your way clear to accept my proffered
+hand, consent to link your future with mine."
+
+"I beg to lay the 'ouse in Walcot Square, the business and myself,
+before Miss Summerson, for her acceptance," said magnanimous Mr. Guppy,
+thus clinching his declaration that "the image he had supposed was
+eradicated from his 'art was NOT eradicated."
+
+It was more in keeping with Rosa's character than Mabel's to recollect
+the comic scene in the book they had read together lately, but the
+latter did remember it at this instant, and despite the momentous issues
+involved in her immediate action, was strongly tempted to laugh in her
+wooer's solemn face.
+
+Then--so abrupt and fearful are the transitions from the extremes of one
+emotion to another--arose before her another picture. As in a
+dissolving view, she beheld herself walking with Frederic Chilton in
+the moonlighted alleys of the garden; midsummer flowers blooming to the
+right and left, her head drooping, in shy happiness, as the lily-bell
+bows to shed its freight of dew; his face glowing with the ardor
+of verbal confession of that he had already sought to express by
+letter--heard his fervent, pleading murmur, "Mabel! look up, my darling!
+and tell me again that you will not send me away beggared and starving.
+I cannot yet believe in the reality of my bliss!"
+
+These were the love-words of an "enthusiast"--these---
+
+The vision vanished at the short, hard breath, she drew in unclasping
+her locked hands, and lifting her grave, tranquil eyes to the level of
+her suitor's.
+
+"I will follow your example in repudiating spurious sentiment, Mr.
+Dorrance. I believe you to be a good, true man and that the attachment
+you profess for me is sincere. I believe, moreover, that my chances of
+securing real peace of mind will be fairer, should I commit myself to
+your guardianship, than if I were to surrender my affections to the
+keeping of one whose vows were more impassioned, who, professing to
+adore me as a divinity, should yet be destitute of your high moral
+principle and stainless honor. When I was younger and more rash in
+judgment and feeling, I was led into a sad mistake by the evidence of
+eye, ear, and a girl's imagination. I ought to tell you this, if you
+have not already heard the story. I will not deceive you into the
+persuasion that I can ever feel for you, or any other man, the love,
+or what I thought was love, I knew in the few brief weeks of my early
+betrothal. But you must know how that ended, and I have no desire to
+repeat the mad experiment of risking my earthly all upon one throw of
+fate. If friendship--if esteem, and the resolve to show myself a worthy
+recipient of your generous confidence--will content you, all else shall
+be as you wish."
+
+In her determination to be candid, to leave him in no uncertainty as to
+her actual sentiments, she had concerted a response but a degree less
+stilted than his proposal. She would have been ashamed of it had he
+appeared less gratified.
+
+His dull eyes brightened; his face flushed and beamed with unfeigned
+delight, and in his transport he said the most natural and graceful
+thing that ever escaped him during his wooing.
+
+"I am content! The second love of Mabel Aylett must ever be more to me
+than the first of any other woman!"
+
+True, he nearly spoiled all the next minute, by producing from his
+pocket a wee velvet case, from which he extracted a valuable diamond
+ring, and proceeded, then and there, in the shadow of the accommodating
+curtain, to fit it upon her finger. He had foreseen that she would not
+be hardly won, and with characteristic providence had prepared himself
+for the event.
+
+The blood leaped to Mabel's temples and the fire to her eye, at the
+prompt seal set by the practical non-enthusiast upon the contract, but
+she bit her lip, and submitted after a second of thought. He owed his
+exemption from rebuke to her memory of his latest utterance. She could
+not mistake the tone of genuine feeling, and she overlooked the breach
+of taste that followed; treasured up the heart-saying as one of the few
+souvenirs she cared to preserve of his courtship.
+
+"If he is content, I need not be miserable," was the consolatory
+reflection with which she took upon herself her new and binding
+obligations.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. -- THE FACE AT THE WINDOW.
+
+
+MRS. AYLETT was in her best feather that night; the suave chatelaine,
+the dutiful consort; the tactful warder of the interesting pair whose
+movements she had not ceased to watch from the moment they took their
+places with the party about the fire-place in the hall until she, alone
+of all the company, saw Herbert Dorrance draw the diamond signet from
+its receptacle, and the sparkle of the jewel as it slipped to its
+abiding-place upon Mabel's finger.
+
+Lest something unusual in their look or behavior should excite the
+suspicions of their companions, make them the focus of inquisitive
+observation and whispered remark, the diplomate passed again into
+the hall, sweeping along in advance of them when they deserted their
+curtained recess, and would have joined the rest of the company.
+
+"Are we to have no dancing this evening?" she said, in hospitable
+solicitude. "It wants an hour yet of supper-time. The exercise will do
+you all good, particularly the young ladies, who have not stirred beyond
+the piazzas to-day. I have been waiting for an invitation to play for
+you, but my desire for your welfare has overcome native humility. Will
+you accept my services as your musician?"
+
+The suggestion was acceded to by acclamation, and while one gentleman
+led her to the grand piano which stood between the front windows of the
+drawing-room, and another opened a music-book which she named, a set was
+quickly formed in the long apartment, the soberer portion of the crowd
+ranging themselves along the walls as lookers-on.
+
+Mrs. Aylett was a proficient in dance-music. She never volunteered
+to perform that which she was not conscious of doing well. She had
+occasionally taken the floor for a single quadrille, to oblige a favored
+guest--always a middle-aged or elderly gentleman--or moved through
+a cotillion with ease and spirit as partner to her husband, but
+she declined dancing, as a rule; was altogether indifferent to the
+amusement, while she delighted to oblige her friends by playing for them
+whenever and as long as they required her aid. Without saying, in so
+many words, that she disapproved of the waltz for unmarried ladies,
+and frowned upon promiscuous dancing for matrons, she yet managed to
+regulate the social code of the neighborhood in both these respects, was
+imitated and quoted by the most discreet of chaperones and belles.
+
+Mr. Dorrance was Mabel's partner; Rosa stood up with Randolph Harrison,
+a gay youth, who was her latest attache; Tom Barksdale led out a
+blushing, yet sprightly school-girl, and Imogene was his vis-a-vis
+supported by an ancient admirer, who had comforted himself for her
+preference for another man by falling in love with a prettier woman.
+The room was decorated with garlands of running cedar--a vine known
+in higher latitudes as "ground-pine," and which carpeted acres of the
+Ridgeley woods. The vases on the mantel were filled with holly,
+and other gayly colored berry boughs, while roses, lemon and orange
+blossoms, mignonette and violets from the conservatory were set about
+on tables and brackets, blending fresher and more wholesome odors with
+those of the Parisian extracts wafted from the ladies' dresses and
+handkerchiefs.
+
+Mr. Aylett had--accidentally, it would seem--his wife understood that
+the action was premeditated--stationed himself at an angle to the piano
+that allowed him a fair view of her, and did not grudge the merriest
+bachelor there his share of enjoyment, while he could keep furtive watch
+upon the changeful countenance, the Sappho-like head, and the delicate
+hands which one could have thought made the music, rather than did the
+obedient keys they touched. The wedded lovers had taste and pride in
+equal proportions, and a parade of their satisfaction in one another for
+the edification or amusement of indifferent spectators would have been
+revolting to both, but the ray that sped from half-averted eyes, from
+time to time, and was returned by a kindling glance, also shot sidelong
+beneath dropped lashes, said more to each other than would a quarto
+volume of stereotyped protestations and caresses, such as Tom Barksdale
+dealt out profusely to his beauteous Imogene. Clearly, neither Mr. nor
+Mrs. Winston Aylett was fond of sugar-candy.
+
+Mabel's faith in the sincerity of her sister-in-law's agreeable sayings
+and ways was not invariable nor absolute. She liked her after a certain
+fashion; got along swimmingly with her, the amazed public decided "SO
+much better than could have been expected, and than was customary with
+relations by marriage, and not by descent;" yet her more upright nature
+and different training helped her to detect the petty artifices with
+which Clara cajoled the unwary, moulded the plastic at her will. But she
+had never questioned the reality of her love for Winston. As a wife,
+her deportment was exemplary, her devotion too freely and consistently
+rendered to have its spring in policy or affectation. She gloried in her
+handsome, courtly lord, and in his attachment for herself. Whether she
+would have espied the same causes for loving exultation in him, had
+he been a poor clergyman or merchant's clerk, was an irrelevant
+consideration. The master of Ridgeley was not to be contemplated apart
+from the possessions and dignities that were his inalienable pedestal.
+Clara Dorrance was a clever woman, and she had given these due weight in
+accepting his hand; and they may have had their influence in moving
+her to unceasing, yet unobtrusive endeavor to make herself still more
+necessary to his happiness, to strengthen her hold upon him by every
+means an affectionate and beloved wife has at her command. She had done
+well for herself--she was thinking while he concluded as silently within
+himself that the slight pensiveness tempering the expressive face was
+its loveliest dress.
+
+She--beautiful and penniless, ambitious, and a devotee of pleasure--yet
+dependent for food and clothing upon her mother's life-interest in
+an estate, not one penny of which would revert to her children at her
+decease; without kindred and without society in the elegant suburb they
+had inhabited for four or five years, might have been elated at a
+less brilliant match than that she had made. The "best people" of the
+aforesaid suburb were exclusive; slow to form intimacies with their
+unaccredited neighbors, and very hasty in breaking them at the faintest
+whiff of a doubtful or tainted reputation. And of the second best the
+Dorrances had kept themselves clear. Having met and captivated her
+wealthy lover on a rarely fortunate summer jaunt, made in company with
+her eldest brother, his wife, and two relatives of the last-named, Clara
+did not repel him or disgust the best people of Roxbury by indiscreet
+raptures over, or exhibition of, her prize.
+
+"I feel with you an invincible repugnance to throwing open our hearts to
+the inspection of the unsympathizing world, at the most sacred moment
+of our lives," she said, in stating her preference for a quiet
+morning-wedding, a family breakfast, and instant departure upon their
+bridal-trip. "If I begin to invite my friends and neighbors, our
+cottage--lawn and garden included--would not contain them, and after
+all were asked whom I could remember, as many more would be mortally
+offended at being forgotten."
+
+The bridegroom gladly acquiescing, with a compliment to her womanly
+delicacy, the ceremony was performed in the presence of the bride's
+nearest relatives; an elegant repast was served, at which the Dorrance
+plate made an imposing show, and Clara turned her back upon the scenes
+and reminiscences of her past life to commence the world anew.
+
+Yes, she had done very well for herself--how wonderfully well she knew
+better than did any one else, and at this date she had fresh cause for
+self-gratulation. Through her, Herbert, her favorite brother, was
+likely to form an alliance which would be a timely and substantial
+stepping-stone to his aggrandizement and wealth. There were more reasons
+why she should hold her head higher--why the blood should clothe her
+cheek with a richer carmine, and a smile encircle the mouth, as one
+swift glance took in the spacious, luxurious room, thronged with
+well-dressed aristocrats, her husband the stateliest, most honored of
+them all, yet her fond thrall; the splendid apparel in which his wealth
+had bedecked her, the queen of the scene--more reasons, I say, for the
+ineffable thrill of pleasure that coursed, a rapid, intoxicating stream,
+through her veins, than grateful affection for the author of all these
+goods. With a Sybarite's dread of pain and loneliness, she seldom
+trusted herself to look at the dark curtain in the background, against
+which her latter-day glories shone the more dazzlingly. But to-night
+she felt safe upon her throne--sat, the lady of kingdoms, sultana in the
+realm of her spouse's heart and in his domain, and could stare full upon
+the past--could measure, without shuddering, the height of her actual
+and assumed estate above--
+
+Mr. Aylett stepped forward in haste and concern at the deadly pallor
+that overspread her face--the look of horror, fear, loathing, before
+which smile and brightness fled, blasted into wretchedness. The
+revellers stopped in their giddy measure at the discordant jangle,
+preluding a dead silence.
+
+Mabel, chancing in the evolutions of the set to be nearest the window,
+and noting the direction of the fainting woman's eyes, was quick enough
+to see a shadow flit across the yellow square of light upon the snowy
+floor of the portico--a man's shape, as it appeared to her, crouching
+and slinking out of view into the darkness.
+
+"She saw something, or somebody, through the window, and was
+frightened," she said, in a low voice, checking Tom Barksdale and
+another gentleman, who would have pressed with the inconsiderate crowd
+toward the senseless figure Mr. Aylett had laid upon the sofa. "Will you
+see what it was?"
+
+The request cleared the room directly of all the men of the assembly,
+with the exception of Winston and Dr. Ritchie, a young physician, who
+was superintending the administration of restoratives to Mrs. Aylett.
+
+She was reviving rapidly when the search party gave in their report.
+There were fresh tracks upon the piazza, and these they had traced to
+the back of the house, losing them there in the drifting snow, the wind
+blowing like a hurricane, and ploughing what had fallen and what was
+descending into constantly changing heaps. But the watch-dogs had
+been unchained, and four of the negro men detailed as sentinels, the
+gentlemen engaging to make the round of the premises again before
+bed-time.
+
+The effect of this communication was the reverse of tranquillizing
+upon the patient. The wild, terrified look in her eye resembled the
+unreasoning fear of lunacy as she seized her husband's arm.
+
+"Indeed, indeed they must not. It is not right or safe to make such a
+serious matter of my foolish nervousness. I am not sure there was any
+one there! It was probably an optical delusion. I was plunged in a
+reverie, thinking of happy, peaceful, lovely things"--with the sickly
+feint of a meaning smile into his face--"and, happening to look at
+the window, I fancied that I saw"--with all her self-command her voice
+failed here, and she put her hand before her eyes for a moment before
+she could go on--"I thought I saw--SOMETHING! It may have been a human
+face--it may have been the shadow of the curtains, or the reflection of
+the lights upon the glass; but it startled me, appearing so abruptly.
+Please say no more about it. If it was a living creature, it must have
+been one of the servants, tempted by curiosity to peep at the dancers."
+
+"It will prove to be a costly indulgence to him, if I can discover who
+the rascal was," said Mr. Aylett, decisively. "I would not have had you
+so startled for the worth of all the lazy hounds on the premises."
+
+His wife laid her hand upon his.
+
+"It is Christmas night, my love, and the poor fellow is excusable. He
+showed excellent taste. It was a very pretty scene. I shall not soon
+forgive myself for throwing it into such 'admired disorder.' Miss
+Scott"--[to a musical spinster]--"may I tax your politeness so far as
+to ask you to take my seat at the piano? I must go to my room for a few
+minutes," raising her finger smilingly to her displaced ivy wreath. "If
+you would testify your tolerance of my folly, please go on with your
+amusement. I shall be encouraged to return when I hear the music."
+
+Her collected, urbane self once more, she took her husband's arm, and
+passed through the opening ranks of her friends, bowing to this side and
+that, with apologetic banter and graceful words of regret--still very
+pale, but changed in no other respect.
+
+"A singular episode in an evening's entertainment," said Mr. Dorrance,
+leading Mabel to her stand in the re-forming set. "I never knew Clara
+to succumb before to any type of syncope or asphyxia. She is a woman of
+remarkable nerve and courage. And, by the way, how preposterous is the
+common use of the word 'nervous.' The ablest lexicographers define it as
+'strong, well-strung, full of nerve,' whereas, in ordinary parlance,
+it has come to signify the very opposite of these. When I speak of a
+nervous speaker or writer, for example, what do I mean?"
+
+"One who imbibes unwholesomely large quantities of strong green tea,
+and sees hobgoblins peering at her through the window-panes!" said Rosa,
+sarcastically artless, tripping by in season to overhear this clause of
+his small-talk.
+
+Mabel's imperturbable good-breeding prevented embarrassment or
+resentment at the interruption. At heart, she was vexed that Rosa should
+omit no opportunity of shooting privily and audaciously at her practical
+admirer, but to betray her appreciation of the impertinence would be to
+subject herself to imputations of sensitiveness on his account.
+
+"I saw the hobgoblin without the aid of green tea," she rejoined. "There
+was really some one upon the porch, but why the apparition should scare
+Clara out of her wits, I cannot divine. The negro is an incurable Paul
+Pry, and, next to dancing a Christmas jig himself, is the pleasure of
+seeing others do it."
+
+Mrs. Aylett verified her brother's encomium upon her nerve by
+reappearing in the saloon by the time another set was over, and just
+before the announcement of supper, radiant and self-possessed, prepared
+to do double social duty to atone for the fright she had caused, and the
+temporary damp her swoon had cast over the festivities.
+
+The revel went joyously forward--Christmas-games and incantations, the
+dexterous introduction, by a jocose old gentleman, of a mistletoe-bough
+into the festoons draping the chandelier, and divers other tricks,
+all of which were taken in excellent part by the victims thereof, and
+vociferously applauded by the spectators. The great hall-clock had rung
+out twelve strokes, and two or three methodical seniors were beginning
+to whisper to one another their intention to take French leave of the
+indefatigable juniors and seek their couches, when a continued tumult
+arose from the yard--barking and shouts, and voices in angry or eager
+dispute.
+
+Unmindful of the nipping air, the ladies flew to the windows and raised
+them, while the gentlemen, in a body, rushed out upon the porch, many to
+the lawn--the scene of the disturbance.
+
+"They have caught him!"
+
+"There are several of them--a gang of thieves, no doubt!"
+
+"No! I see but one! They are bringing him to the house!" were morsels
+of information passed over the shoulders of the foremost rank of
+inquisitive fair ones to the rear, but none were able to answer the
+returning inquiries.
+
+"Who is it?"
+
+"What does he look like like?"
+
+"Does he offer any resistance?"
+
+"Do you suppose he is a burglar, or only a common vagrant?"
+
+"I thought the Ridgeley grounds were never infested by prowling beggars,
+or other vagabonds," said a lady to Mrs. Aylett, who prudently remained
+near the fire, even then shivering with the cold, and casting uneasy
+looks at the windows.
+
+"Mr. Aylett is a model to his brother magistrates in his treatment of
+such nuisances," remarked another "His name is a terror to strollers,
+whether they be organ-grinders, peddlers, or incendiaries."
+
+Mrs. Aylett, excessively pale, applied her vinaigrette to her nose, and
+trembled yet more violently.
+
+"I believe he is very strict," she assented. "But I am really afraid
+those ladies will take cold! The snow-air is piercing. And they
+are--most of them--heated with dancing. Cannot we prevail upon them to
+close the windows, now that the mysterious prowler is secured? We shall
+hear all about him when the gentlemen return, and they will not stay out
+of doors longer than is necessary."
+
+They began to pour back into the room, while she was speaking, laughing,
+and talking, all together shaking the snow-powder from their hair and
+hands, and anathematizing the cold and their thin boots. The particulars
+of the midnight disturbance were quickly disseminated. The ebon
+sentinels had, directed by the barking of their canine associates,
+discovered, under a holly hedge on one side of the yard, a man lying
+upon the earth, and almost buried in the snow he seemed not to have
+strength to throw off. He was either drunk or so nearly frozen as to be
+incapable of answering coherently their demands as to what was his
+name and what his business upon the premises. The interrogations of the
+gentlemen and the ungentle shakings administered by his captors elicited
+nothing but groans and muttered oaths. He could not, or would not, walk
+without support, and to leave him where he was, or to turn him adrift
+into the public road, would be certain death. Therefore Mr. Aylett
+had ordered him to be confined for the night in a garret room. In the
+morning he might be examined to more purpose.
+
+"But he ought to have a fire, and something hot and nourishing to
+drink!" exclaimed Mrs. Button, upon hearing the story. "He will freeze
+in that barn of a place--poor wretch!"
+
+"I imagine he has no need of additional stimulants," said Mrs. Aylett,
+dryly, again resorting to her smelling-bottle. "From what the gentlemen
+say, I judge that he had laid in a supply of caloric sufficient to last
+through the night. And the first use he would make of fire would be
+to burn the house over our heads. His lodgings are certainly more
+comfortable than those selected by himself. There is little danger of
+his finding fault with them. What manner of looking creature is he?"
+
+"An unkempt vagabond!" rejoined Randolph Harrison, rubbing his blue
+fingers before the fire. "His clothes are ragged, and frozen stiff. I
+suppose he has been out in the storm ever since it set in. There were
+icicles upon his beard and hair, his hat having fallen off. It is a
+miracle he did not freeze to death long ago. It is a bitter night."
+
+"Did you say he was an old man?" inquired the hostess languidly, from
+the depths of her easy chair.
+
+"He is not a young one, for his hair is grizzled. But we will form
+ourselves into a court of inquiry in the morning, with Mr. Aylett as
+presiding officer--have in the nocturnal wanderer, and hear what account
+he can give of himself. Who knows what romantic history we may hear--one
+that may become a Christmas legend in after years?"
+
+"You will get nothing more sensational than the confessions of a
+hen-roost robber, I suspect," said Mrs. Aylett, more wearily than was
+consistent with her role of attentive hostess.
+
+Her husband noticed the tokens of exhaustion, and interposed to spare
+her further exertion.
+
+"Our friends will excuse you if you retire without delay, Clara. You
+still feel the effects of your agitation and faintness."
+
+This was the signal for a general dispersion of the ladies--the
+gentlemen, or most of them, adjourning to the smoking-room.
+
+Since the late extraordinary influx of visitors, Mabel had shared her
+aunt's chamber, but, instead of seeking this now, she went straight from
+the parlor to the supper-room, where she found, as she had expected,
+Mrs. Sutton in the height of business, directing the setting of the
+breakfast-table, clearing away the debris of the evening feast, and
+counting the silver with unusual care, lest a stray fork or spoon had,
+by some hocus-pocus known to the class, been slipped into the pocket of
+the supposititious burglar.
+
+"Aunt," began Mabel, drawing her aside, "that poor wretch up-stairs must
+be cared for. It is the height of cruelty to lock him up in a fireless
+room, without provisions or dry clothing. If he should die, would we be
+guiltless?"
+
+Mrs. Sutton's benevolent physiognomy was perplexed.
+
+"Didn't I say as much in the other room, before everybody, my dear? And
+didn't SHE put me down with one of her magisterial sentences? She is
+mistress here--not you or I. Besides, Winston has the key of that east
+garret in his pocket, and I would not be the one to ask him for it,
+since he has had his wife's opinion upon the subject of humanity to
+prisoners."
+
+"I shall not trouble him with my petition. I discovered by accident,
+when I was a child, that the key of the north room would open that door.
+If I order, upon my own responsibility, that a cup of hot coffee, and
+some bread and meat be taken up to him, you will not deny them to me, I
+suppose?"
+
+"Certainly not, my child! but I dare not send a servant with them.
+Winston's orders were positive--they all tell me--that not a soul should
+attempt to hold communication with him. And what he says he means."
+
+"Then," replied Winston's sister, with a spark of his spirit, "I will
+take the waiter up myself. I cannot sleep with this horror hanging
+over me--the fear lest, through my neglect or cowardice, a
+fellow-being--whose only offence against society, so far as we knows
+is his dropping down in a faint or stupor under a hedge on the Ridgeley
+plantation--should lose his life."
+
+"Your feelings are only what I should expect from you, my love; but
+think twice before you go up-stairs yourself! It would be considered an
+outrageous impropriety, were it found out."
+
+"Less outrageous than to let a stranger perish for want of such
+attention as one would vouchsafe to a stray dog?" questioned Mabel, with
+a queer smile. "Roger! pour me out a bowl of coffee at once. Put it on
+a waiter with a plate of bread and butter--or stay! oysters will be
+more warming and nourishing. I am very sure that Daphne is keeping a
+saucepanful hot for her supper and yours. Hurry!"
+
+The waiter, whose wife was the cook, ducked his head with a grin
+confirmatory of his young mistress' shrewd suspicion, and vanished
+to obey her orders, never dreaming but she wanted the edibles for her
+private consumption. He enjoyed late and hot suppers, and why not she?
+Thanks to this persuasion, the coffee was strong, clear, and boiling,
+the oysters done to a turn, and smoking from the saucepan.
+
+Taking the tray from him, with a gracious "Thank you! This is just as
+it should be," Mabel negatived his offer to carry it to her room, and
+started up-stairs.
+
+Mrs. Sutton followed with a lighted candle.
+
+"Winston or no Winston, you shall not face that desperado alone," she
+said, obstinately. "There is no telling what he may do--murder you,
+perhaps, or at least knock you down in order to escape. Winston talks as
+if he were the captain of the forty thieves."'
+
+"He is pretty well hors de combat now, at any rate," smiled Mabel, but
+allowing her aunt to precede her with the light to the upper floor. "And
+should he offer violence--scalding coffee may defend me as effectually
+as Morgiana's boiling oil routed the gang. MY captain had to be carried
+up-stairs by four servants, who left him upon a pile of old mattresses
+in one corner of the room. Here we are!"
+
+They were in a wide hall at the top of the house, the unceiled rafters
+above their heads, carpetless boards beneath their feet. Mabel set her
+waiter upon a worm-eaten, iron-bound chest, and went further down the
+passage to get the key of the north room. Her light footstep stirred
+dismal echoes in the dark corners; the wind screamed through every crack
+and keyhole, like a legion of piping devils; rumbled lugubriously over
+the steep roof. The one candle flickering in the draught showed Mabel's
+white bust and arms, like those of a phantom, beaming through a cloud
+of blackness, when she stooped to try the key in the lock of the
+prison-chamber.
+
+After fitting it, she knocked before she turned it in the rusty
+wards--again, and more loudly--then spoke, putting her lips close to the
+key-hole:
+
+"We are friends, and have brought you supper. Can we come in?"
+
+There was no answer, and with a beating heart she unlocked the door,
+pushed it ajar, and motioned to Aunt Rachel to hold her candle up, that
+she might gain a view of the interior.
+
+The wan, uncertain rays revealed the heap of mattresses, and upon them
+what looked like a mass of rough, wet clothing, without sound or motion.
+
+"He is pretending to be asleep! Take care!" whispered Mrs. Sutton,
+trying to restrain Mabel as she pressed by her into the room.
+
+"He is dead, I fear!" was the low answer.
+
+Forgetful of her nephew's prohibition and her recent fears, the good
+widow entered, and leaned anxiously over the stranger's form. A tall,
+gaunt man, clad in threadbare garments, which hung loosely upon the
+shrunken breast and arms, black hair and beard, mottled with white,
+ragged, and unshorn, and dank from exposure to the snow and sleet; a
+chalky-white face, with closed and sunken eyes, sharpened nose, and
+prominent cheek-bones--this was what they beheld as the candle flamed
+up steadily in the comparatively still air of the ceiled apartment. The
+miserable coat was buttoned up to his chin, and the shreds of a coarse
+woollen comforter, torn from his throat at his capture, still hung about
+his shoulders. His clothes were sodden with wet, as Harrison had said,
+and the solitary pretence at rendering him comfortable for the night,
+had been the act of a negro, who contemptuously flung an old blanket
+across his nether limbs before leaving him to his lethargic slumbers.
+He had not moved since they tossed him, like a worthless sack, upon
+this sorry resting-place, but lay an unsightly huddle of arms, legs, and
+head, such as was never achieved, much less continued, by any one save a
+drunken man or a corpse. Mabel ended the awed silence.
+
+"This is torpor--not sleep, nor yet death," she said, without recoiling
+from the pitiful wreck.
+
+Indeed, as she spoke, she bent to feel his pulse; held the emaciated
+wrist in her warm fingers until she could determine whether the feeble
+stroke were a reality, or a trick of the imagination.
+
+"Dr. Ritchie should see him immediately. He is in the smoking-room. If
+you call him out, it will excite less remark than if I were to do it.
+Don't let Winston guess why you want him," were her directions to her
+aunt, uttered quickly, but distinctly.
+
+"You will not stay here! At least, go into the hall! What will the
+doctor think?"
+
+"I shall remain where I am. The poor creature is too far gone to presume
+upon my condescension," with a faint sarcastic emphasis.
+
+At Mrs. Sutton's return with the physician, she perceived that her niece
+had not awaited her coming in sentimental idleness. A thick woollen
+coverlet was wrapped about the prostrate figure, and Mabel, upon her
+knees on the dusty hearth, was applying the candle to a heap of waste
+paper and bits of board she had ferreted out in closets and cuddy-holes.
+It caught and blazed up hurriedly in season to facilitate the doctor's
+examination of the patient, thrown so oddly upon his care. Mrs. Sutton
+had not neglected, in her haste, to procure a warm shawl from her room,
+and she folded it about the girl's shoulders, whispering an entreaty
+that she would go to bed, and leave the man to her management and Dr.
+Ritchie.
+
+Mabel waved her off impatiently.
+
+"Presently! when I hear how he is!" moving toward the comfortless couch.
+
+The physician looked around at the rustle of her dress, his pleasant
+face perturbed, and perhaps remorseful.
+
+"This is a bad business! I wish I had examined him when he was brought
+in. There would have been more hope of doing something for him then.
+But, to tell the truth, I was one of the five or six prudent fellows who
+stayed upon the piazza, and witnessed the capture from a distance. I had
+no idea of the man's real situation. Mrs. Sutton! can I have brandy, hot
+water, and mustard at once! Miss Mabel! may I trouble you to call your
+brother? He ought to be advised of this unforeseen turn of affairs."
+
+His emissaries were prompt. In less than ten minutes, all the appliances
+the household could furnish for the restoration of the failing life were
+at his command. An immense fire roared in the long-disused chimney; warm
+blankets, bottles of hot water and mustard-poultices were prepared by
+a corps of officious servants; the master of the mansion, with three
+or four friends at his heels, and a half-smoked cigar in his hand, had
+looked in for a moment, to hope that Dr. Ritchie would not hesitate to
+order whatever was needed, and to predict a favorable result as the meed
+of his skill.
+
+Half an hour after her brother's visit, Mabel tapped at the door to
+inquire how the patient was, and whether she could be of use in any way.
+She still wore her evening dress, and the fire of excitement had not
+gone out in her eyes and complexion.
+
+"Don't sit up longer," said the doctor, with the authority of an old
+friend. "It will not benefit your protege for you to have a headache,
+pale cheeks, and heavy eyes to-morrow, while it will render others,
+whose claims upon you are stronger, very miserable."
+
+She thanked him laconically for his thoughtfulness, and bade him
+"good-night," without a responsive gleam of playfulness. Her heart was
+weighed down with sick horror. The almost certainty of which he spoke
+with professional coolness, was to her, who had never within her
+recollection stood beside a death-bed, a thing too frightful to be
+anticipated without dread, however its terrors might be alleviated by
+affection and wealth. As the finale of their Christmas frolic--perhaps
+the consequence of wilful neglect in those who should have known
+better than to abandon the wanderer to the ravages of hunger, cold, and
+intoxication--the idea was ghastly beyond description.
+
+She was about to diverge from the main hall on the second floor into the
+lateral passage leading to Mrs. Sutton's room in the wing, when her name
+was called in a gentle, guarded key by her sister-in-law.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX. -- HE DEPARTETH IN DARKNESS.
+
+
+"COME in! I want to talk to you!" said Mrs. Aylett, beckoning Mabel into
+her chamber, from the door of which she had hailed her. "Sit down, my
+poor girl! You are white as a sheet with fatigue. I cannot see why you
+should have been suffered to know anything about this very disagreeable
+occurrence. And Emmeline has been telling me that Mrs. Sutton actually
+let you go up into that Arctic room."
+
+"It was my choice. Aunt Rachel went along to carry the light and to
+keep me company. She would have dissuaded me from the enterprise if she
+could," responded Mabel, sinking into the low, cushioned chair before
+the fire, which the mistress of the luxurious apartment had just wheeled
+forward for her, and confessing to herself, for the first time, that she
+was chilly and very tired.
+
+"But where were the servants, my dear? Surely you are not required, in
+your brother's house, to perform such menial services as taking food and
+medicine to a sick vagrant."
+
+"Winston had forbidden them to go near the room. I wish I had gone up
+earlier. I might have been the means of saving a life which, however
+worthless it may seem to us, must be of value to some one."
+
+"Is he so far gone?"
+
+The inquiry was hoarsely whispered, and the speaker leaned back in her
+fauteuil, a spark of fierce eagerness in her dilated eyes, Mabel, in
+her own anxiety, did not consider overstrained solicitude in behalf of
+a disreputable stranger. She had more sympathy with it than with the
+relapse into apparent nonchalance that succeeded her repetition of the
+doctor's report.
+
+"He does not think the unfortunate wretch will revive, even temporarily,
+then?" commented the lady, conventionally compassionate, playing with
+her ringed fingers, turning her diamond solitaire in various directions
+to catch the firelight. "How unlucky he should have strayed upon our
+grounds! Was he on his way to the village?"
+
+"Who can say? Not he, assuredly. He has not spoken a coherent word. Dr.
+Ritchie thinks he will never be conscious again."
+
+"I am afraid the event will mar our holiday gayeties to some extent,
+stranger though he is!" deplored the hostess. "Some people are
+superstitious about such things. His must have been the spectral visage
+I saw at the window. I was sure it was that of a white man although
+Winston tried, to persuade me to the contrary."
+
+"It is dreadful!" ejaculated Mabel energetically. "He, poor homeless
+wayfarer, perishing with cold and want in the very light of our
+summer-like rooms; getting his only glimpse of the fires that would have
+brought back vitality to his freezing body through closed windows! Then
+to be hunted down by dogs, and locked up by more unfeeling men, as if
+he were a ravenous beast, instead of a suffering fellow-mortal! I
+shall always feel as if I were, in some measure, chargeable with his
+death--should he die. Heaven forgive us our selfish thoughtlessness, our
+criminal disregard of our brother's life!"
+
+"I understood you to say there was no hope!" interrupted Mrs. Aylett.
+
+"So Dr. Ritchie declares. But I cannot bear to believe it!"
+
+She pressed her fingers upon her eyeballs as if she would exclude some
+horrid vision.
+
+"My dear sister! your nerves have been cruelly tried. To-morrow, you
+will see this matter--and everything else--through a different medium.
+As for the object of your amiable pity, he is, without doubt, some low,
+dissipated creature, of whom the world will be well rid."
+
+"I am not certain of that. There are traces of something like refinement
+and gentle breeding about him in all his squalor and unconsciousness.
+I noticed his hands particularly. They are slender and long, and his
+features in youth and health must have been handsome. Dr. Ritchie
+thought the same. Who can tell that his wife is not mourning his
+absence to-night, as the fondest woman under this roof would regret
+her husband's disappearance? And she may never learn when and how he
+died--never visit his grave!"
+
+"I have lived in this wicked world longer than you have, my sweet Mabel;
+so you must not quarrel with me if these fancy pictures do not move me
+as they do your guileless heart," said Mrs. Aylett, the sinister shadow
+of a mocking smile playing about her mouth. "Nor must you be offended
+with me for suggesting as a pendant to your crayon sketch of widowhood
+and desolation the probability that the decease of a drunken thief or
+beggar cannot be a serious bereavement, even to his nearest of kin.
+Women who are beaten and trampled under foot by those who should be
+their comfort and protection are generally relieved when they take to
+vagrancy as a profession. It may be that this man's wife, if she were
+cognizant of his condition, would not lift a finger, or take a step to
+prolong his life for one hour. Such things have been."
+
+"More shame to human nature that they have!" was the impetuous
+rejoinder. "In every true woman's heart there must be tender memories of
+buried loves, let their death have been natural or violent."
+
+"So says your gentler nature. There are women--and I believe they are in
+the majority in this crooked lower sphere--in whose hearts the monument
+to departed affection--when love is indeed no more--is a hatred that
+can never die. But we have wandered an immense distance from the unlucky
+chicken-thief or burglar overhead. Dr. Ritchie's sudden and ostentatious
+attack of philanthropy will hardly beguile him into watching over his
+charge--a guardian angel in dress-coat and white silk neck-tie--until
+morning?"
+
+"Mammy is to relieve him so soon as he is convinced that human skill can
+do nothing for his relief," said Mabel very gravely.
+
+Her sister-in-law's high spirits and jocular tone jarred upon her
+most disagreeably, but she tried to bear in mind in what dissimilar
+circumstances they had passed the last hour. If Clara appeared
+unfeeling, and her remarks were distinguished by less taste than was
+customary in one so thoroughly bred, it was because the exhilaration
+of the evening was yet upon her, and she had not seen the death's-head
+prone upon the pillows in the cheerless attic. Thoughts of poverty and
+dying beds were unseemly in this apartment when the very warmth and
+fragrance of the air told of fostering and sheltering love. The heavy
+curtains did not sway in the blast that hurled its whole fury against
+the windows; the furniture was handsome, and in perfect harmony with the
+dark, yet glowing hues of the carpet, and with the tinted walls. A tall
+dressing mirror let into a recess reflected the picture, brilliant with
+firelight that colored the shadows themselves; lengthened into a deep
+perspective the apparent extent of the chamber and showed, like a fine
+old painting, the central figure in the vista.
+
+Mrs. Aylett had exchanged her evening dress for a cashmere wrapper, the
+dark-blue ground of which was enlivened by a Grecian pattern of gold
+and scarlet; her unbound hair draped her shoulders, and framed her arch
+face, as she threaded the bronze ripples with her fingers. She looked
+contented, restful, complacent in herself and her belongings--one whom
+Time had touched lovingly as he swept by, and whom sorrow had forgotten.
+
+"Not asleep yet!" was her husband's exclamation, entering before
+anything further passed between the two women; and when his sister
+started up, with an apology for being found there at so late an hour,
+he added, more reproachfully than he ever spoke to his wife, "You
+should not have kept her up, Mabel! Her strength has been too much taxed
+already to-night. I hoped and believed that she had been in bed and
+asleep for an hour."
+
+"Don't blame her!" said Mrs. Aylett, hastily. "I called her in as she
+was proceeding to bed in the most decorous manner possible. I may as
+well own the truth of my weakness. I was nervously wakeful--the effect,
+in part, of the ultra-strong coffee Dr. Ritchie advised me to drink
+at supper-tine--in part, of the silly sensation I got up to terrify my
+friends. So I maneuvered to secure a fireside companion until you should
+have dispatched your cigar. Gossip is as pleasant a sedative to ladies
+as is a prime Havana to their lords."
+
+"And what is the latest morceau?" inquired Mr Aylett, indulgently, when
+Mabel had gone.
+
+He was standing by his wife's chair, and she leaned her head against
+him, her bright eyes uplifted to his, her hair falling in a long,
+burnished fringe over his arm--a fond, sparkling siren, whom no man,
+with living blood in his veins, could help stooping to kiss before her
+lips had shaped a reply.
+
+"You wouldn't think it an appetizing morsel! But I listened with
+interest to our unsophisticated Mabel's account of her Quixotic
+expedition to what will, I foresee, be the haunted chamber of Ridgeley
+in the next generation. Her penchant for adventure has, I suspect,
+embellished her portrait of the hapless house-breaker."
+
+"A common-looking tramp!" returned Winston, disdainfully. "As villanous
+a dog in physiognomy and dress as I ever saw! Such an one as generally
+draws his last breath where he drew the first--in a ditch or jail;
+and too seldom, for the peace and safety of society, finds his noblest
+earthly elevation upon a gallows. It is a nuisance, though, having him
+pay this trifling debt of Nature--nobody but Nature would trust him--in
+my house. There must be an inquest and a commotion. The whole thing is
+an insufferable bore. Ritchie has given him up, and gone to bed, leaving
+old Phillis on the watch, with unlimited rations of whiskey, and a pile
+of fire-wood higher than herself. But I did not mean that you should
+hear anything about this dirty business. It is not fit for my darling's
+ears. Mabel showed even less than her usual discretion in detailing the
+incidents of her adventure to you."
+
+Flattery of his sister had never been a failing with him, but, since his
+marriage, the occasions were manifold in which her inferiority to his
+wife was so glaring as to elicit a verbal expression of disapproval. It
+was remarkable that Clara's advocacy of Mabel's cause, at these times,
+so frequently failed to alter his purpose of censure or to mitigate it,
+since, in all other respects, her influence over him was more firmly
+established each day and hour.
+
+Old Phillis, Mabel's nurse and the doctress of the plantation--albeit
+a less zealous devotee than her master had intimated of the potent
+beverages left within her reach, ostensibly for the use of her patient
+should he revive sufficiently to swallow a few drops--was yet too drowsy
+from the fatigues of the day, sundry cups of Christmas egg-nogg, and the
+obesity of age, to maintain alert vigil over one she, in common with her
+fellow-servitors, scorned as an aggravated specimen of the always and
+ever-to-be despicable genus, "poor white folks." There was next to
+nothing for her to do when the fire had been replenished, the bottles
+of hot water renewed at the feet and heart, and fresh mustard draughts
+wound about the almost pulseless limbs of the dying stranger. She did
+contrive to keep Somnus at arm's length for a while longer, by a minute
+examination of his upper clothing, which, by Dr. Ritchie's directions,
+had been removed, that the remedies might be more conveniently applied,
+and the heated blankets the sooner infuse a vital glow through the
+storm-beaten frame. The ancient crone took them up with the tips of
+her fingers--ragged coat, vest, and pantaloons--rummaged in the same
+contemptuous fashion every pocket, and kicked over the worn, soaked
+boots with the toe of her leather brogan, sniffing her disappointment at
+the worthlessness of the habiliments and the result of her search.
+
+"Fit fur nothin' but to bury his poor carcuss in!" she grunted, and
+had recourse to her own plethoric pocket for a clay pipe and a bag of
+tobacco.
+
+This lighted by a coal from the hearth, she tied a second handkerchief
+over that she wore, turban-wise, on her head, mumbling something about
+"cold ears" and "rheumatiz;" settled herself in a rush-bottomed chair,
+put her feet upon the rounds of another, and was regularly on duty,
+prepared for any emergency, and to be alarmed at nothing that might
+occur.
+
+So strict was the discipline she established over herself in fifteen
+minutes, that she did not stir at the creaking of the bolt, or the
+shriller warning of the unoiled hinges, as the door moved cautiously
+back, and a cloaked form became dimly visible in the opening. A survey
+of the inside of the chamber, the unmoving nurse and her senseless
+charge, with the fumes of brandy and tobacco, reassured the visitant.
+Her stockingless feet were thrust into wadded slippers; over her white
+night-dress was a dark-blue wrapper, and, in addition to this protection
+against the cold, she was enveloped in a great shawl, disposed like a
+cowl about her head. Without rustle or incautious mis-step she gained
+the side of the improvised bed, and leaned over it. The face of the
+occupant was turned slightly toward the left shoulder, and away from
+the light. The apparition raised herself, with a gesture of impatience,
+caught the candle from the rickety table at the head of the mattress,
+snuffed it hurriedly, and again stooped toward the recumbent figure,
+with it in her hand.
+
+It was then that the vigilant watcher unclosed her flabby lids, slowly,
+and without start or exclamation, much as a dozing cat blinks when a
+redder sparkle from the fire dazzles her out of dreams. One hard wink,
+one bewildered stare, and Phillis was awake and wary. Her chin sank yet
+lower upon her chest, but the black eyes were rolled upward until they
+bore directly upon the strange tableau. The shawl had dropped from the
+lady's head, and the candle shone broadly upon her features, as upon the
+sick man's profile. Apparently dissatisfied with this view, she slipped
+her disengaged hand under the cheek which was downward, and drew his
+face around into full sight.
+
+"And bless your soul, honey!" Aunt Phillis told her young mistress, long
+afterward, "you never see sech a look as was on hern--while her eyes
+was thar bright and big, they was jist like live coals sot in a lump of
+dough--she growed so white!"
+
+Nevertheless the spy could return the candle to its place upon the
+table without perceptible tremor of lip or limb, and after bestowing one
+scrutinizing glance upon the nurse, who was fast asleep beneath it, she
+went to the heap of damp clothing. These she lifted--one by one--less
+gingerly than Phillis had done, and ransacked every likely hiding-place
+of papers or valuables, going through the operation with a rapid
+dexterity that astounded the old woman's weak mind, and made her ashamed
+of her own clumsiness. Anticipating the final stealthy look in her
+direction, the heavy lids fell once again, and were not raised until the
+rusty bolt passed gratingly into the socket, and she felt that the place
+was deserted by all save herself and the dying stroller.
+
+She was in no danger of dozing upon her post after this visitation. For
+the few hours of darkness that yet remained, she sat in her chair,
+her elbows upon her knees, smoking, and pondering upon what she had
+witnessed, varying her occupations by feeding the fire and such care
+of the patient as she considered advisable; likening, in her rude,
+yet excitable imagination, the rumbling of the gale in the chimney and
+across the roof-tree, to the roll of the chariot-wheels which were to
+carry away the parting soul; the tap and rattle of sleet and wind at the
+windows to the summons of demons, impatient at Death's delay.
+
+"The Lord send him an easy death, and let him go up, instead of down!"
+she groaned aloud, once.
+
+But the dubious shake of the head accompanying the benevolent petition
+betokened her disbelief in the possibility of a favorable reply. In
+her articles of faith it was only by a miracle that a "no-account white
+man," picked up out of the highway, and whose pockets were barren as
+were those she had examined, could get an impetus in that direction.
+
+The stormy dawn was revealing, with dreary distinctness, the shabby
+disorder of the lumber-room, when Dr. Ritchie appeared in his
+dressing-gown, rubbing his eyes, and yawning audibly.
+
+"Gone--hey?" was his comment upon the negress' movements.
+
+She had bound a strip of linen about the lank jaws; combed back the
+grizzled hair from the forehead into sleek respectability; crossed the
+hands at the wrists, as only dead hands are ever laid; straightened the
+limbs, and was in the act of spreading a clean sheet over her finished
+work.
+
+"Nigh upon an hour since, sir," she responded, respectfully.
+
+"He did not revive at all after I left him?"
+
+"Not a breath or a motion, sir. He went off at the last jist as easy as
+a lamb. Never tried to say nothin', nor opened his eyes after you went
+down. 'Twould a' been a pity ef you had a' lost more sleep a-settin' up
+with him. Ah, well, poor soul! 'taint for us to say whar he is now. I
+would hope he is in glory, ef I could. I 'spose the Almighty knows, and
+that's enough."
+
+The doctor arrested her hand when she would have covered the face.
+
+"He must have been a fine-looking fellow in his day!" he said, more to
+himself than to her. "But he has lived fast, burned himself up alive
+with liquor."
+
+"I didn't call nobody, sir, to help me, 'cause nobody couldn't do no
+good, and I was afeared of wakin' the gentlemen and ladies, a trottin'
+up and downstairs," continued Phillis, bent upon exculpating herself
+from all blame in the affair, and mistaking his momentary pensiveness
+for displeasure.
+
+"You were quite right, old lady! All the doctors and medicines in the
+world could not have pulled him through after the drink and the snow had
+had their way with him for so many hours--poor devil! Well! I'll go back
+to bed now, and finish my morning nap."
+
+He was at the threshold when he bethought himself of a final injunction.
+
+"You had better keep an eye upon these things, Aunty!" pointing to the
+coat and other garments she had ranged upon chairs to dry in front of
+the fire. "There will be a coroner's inquest, I suppose, and there
+may be papers in his pockets which will tell who he was and where he
+belonged. When you are through in here, lock the door and take out the
+key--and if you can help it, don't let a whisper of this get abroad
+before breakfast. It will spoil the ladies' appetites. If anybody asks
+how he is, say 'a little better.' He can't be worse off than he was in
+life, let him be where he may."
+
+"Yes, sir," answered Phillis, in meek obedience. "But I don't think he
+was the kind his folks would care to keep track on, nor the sort that
+carries valeyble papers 'round with 'em."
+
+"I reckon you are not far out of the way there!" laughed the doctor,
+subduedly, lest the echo in the empty hall might reach the sleepers on
+the second floor, and he ran lightly down the garret steps.
+
+The inquest sat that afternoon. It was a leisure season with planters,
+and a jury was easily collected by special messengers--twelve jolly
+neighbors, who were not averse to the prospect of a glass of Mrs.
+Sutton's famous egg-nogg, and a social smoke around the fire in the
+great dining-room, even though these were prefaced by ten minutes'
+solemn discussion over the remains of the nameless wayfarer.
+
+His shirt was marked with some illegible characters, done in faded ink,
+which four of the jury spelled out as "James Knowlton," three others
+made up into "Jonas Lamson," and the remaining five declined deciphering
+at all. Upon one sock were the letters "R. M." upon the fellow, "G. B."
+With these unavailable exceptions, there was literally no clue to
+his name, profession, or residence, to be gathered from his person or
+apparel. The intelligent jury brought in a unanimous verdict--"Name
+unknown. Died from the effects of drink and exposure;" the foreman
+pulled the sheet again over the blank, chalky face, and the shivering
+dozen wound their way to the warmer regions, where the expected
+confection awaited them.
+
+Their decorous carousal was at its height, and the ladies, one and all,
+had sought their respective rooms to recuperate their wearied energies
+by a loll, if not a siesta, that they might be in trim for the evening's
+enjoyment (Christmas lasted a whole week at Ridgeley) when four
+strapping field hands, barefooted, that their tramp might not break the
+epicurean slumbers, brought down from the desolate upper chamber a rough
+pine coffin, manufactured and screwed tight by the plantation carpenter,
+and after halting a minute in the back porch to pull on their boots,
+took their way across the lawn and fields to the servants' burial-place.
+This was in a pine grove, two furlongs or more from the garden fence,
+forming the lower enclosure of the mansion grounds. The intervening dell
+was knee-deep in drifted snow, the hillside bare in spots, and ridged
+high in others, where the wind-currents had swirled from base to summit.
+The passage was a toilsome one, and the stalwart bearers halted several
+times to shift their light burden before they laid it down upon the
+mound of mixed snow and red clay at the mouth of the grave. Half-a-dozen
+others were waiting there to assist in the interment, and at the head
+of the pit stood a white-headed negro, shaking with palsy and cold--the
+colored chaplain of the region, who, more out of custom and superstition
+than a sense of religious responsibility--least of all motives, through
+respect for the dead--had braved the inclement weather to say a prayer
+over the wanderer's last home.
+
+The storm had abated at noon, and the snow no longer fell, but there
+had been no sunshine through all the gloomy day, and the clouds were
+now mustering thickly again to battle, while the rising gale in the
+pine-tops was hoarse and wrathful. Far as the eye could reach were
+untrodden fields of snow; gently-rolling hills, studded with shrubs and
+tinged in patches by russet bristles of broom-straw; the river swollen
+into blackness between the white banks, and the dark horizon of forest
+seeming to uphold the gray firmament. To the right of the spectator, who
+stood on the eminence occupied by the cemetery, lay Ridgeley, with its
+environing outhouses, crowning the most ambitious height of the chain,
+the smoke from its chimneys and those of the village of cabins beating
+laboriously upward, to be borne down at last by the lowering mass of
+chilled vapor.
+
+The coffin was deposited in its place with scant show of reverence, and
+without removing their hats, the bystanders leaned on their spades, and
+looked to the preacher for the ceremony that was to authorize them to
+hurry through with their distasteful task. That the gloom of the hour
+and scene, and the utter forlornness of all the accompaniments of what
+was meant for Christian burial, had stamped themselves upon the mind and
+heart of the unlettered slave, was evident from the brief sentences he
+quavered out--joining his withered hands and raising his bleared eyes
+toward the threatening heavens:
+
+"Lord! what is man, that thou art mindful of him! For that which
+befalleth man befalleth beasts--even one thing befalleth them. All go
+unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who
+knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the
+beast that goeth downward to the earth? Man cometh in with vanity and
+departeth in darkness, and his name shall be covered with darkness. The
+dead know not anything, for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their
+love, and their hatred, and their envy is now perished, neither have
+they a portion for ever in anything that is done under the sun.
+
+"Lord! teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto
+wisdom. Oh, spare ME, that I may recover strength, ere I go hence and be
+no more!
+
+"In the name of the FATHER, SON, and HOLY GHOST--dust to dust, and ashes
+to ashes! Amen!"
+
+"By the way, Mr. Aylett, the poor wretch up-stairs should be buried at
+the expense of the county," remarked the coroner, before taking leave
+of Ridgeley and the egg-nogg bowl. "I will take the poor-house on my
+way home, and tell the overseer to send a coffin and a cart over in
+the morning. You don't care to have the corpse in the house longer than
+necessary, I take it? The sooner he is in the Potter's Field, the more
+agreeable for you and everybody else."
+
+Mr. Aylett pointed through the back window at the winding path across
+the fields.
+
+A short line of black dots was seen coming along it, in the direction of
+the house. As they neared it they were discovered to be men, each with a
+hoe or shovel upon his shoulder.
+
+"The deed is done!" said the master, smiling. "My good fellows there
+have spared the county the expense, and the overseer the trouble of
+this little matter. As for the Potter's Field, a place in my servants'
+burying-ground is quite as respectable, and more convenient in this
+weather."
+
+The jurors were grouped about the fire in the baronial hall, buttoning
+up overcoats and splatterdashes, and drawing on their riding-gloves, all
+having come on horseback. In the midst of the general bepraisement of
+their host's gentlemanly and liberal conduct, Mrs. Aylett swam down
+the staircase, resplendent in silver-gray satin, pearl necklace and
+bracelets, orange flowers and camelias in her hair--semi-bridal attire,
+that became her as nothing else ever had done.
+
+"My dear madam," said the foreman of the inquest--a courtly disciple
+of the old school of manner, and phraseology--as the august body of
+freeholders parted to either side to leave her a passage-way to the
+fireplace--"your husband is a happy man, and his wife should be a happy
+woman in having won the affection of such a model of chivalry"--stating
+succinctly the late proof the "model" had offered to an admiring world
+of his chivalric principles.
+
+The delicate hand stole to its resting-place upon her lord's arm, as the
+lady answered, her ingenuous eyes suffused with the emotion that gave
+but the more sweetness to her smile.
+
+"I AM a happy woman, Mr. Nelson! I think there is not a prouder or more
+blessed wife in all the land than I am this evening."
+
+Laugh, jest, and dance ruled the fleeting hours in the halls of the
+old country-house that night, and the presiding genius of the revel
+was still the beautiful hostess--never more beautiful, never so winning
+before. No one noticed that, by her orders, or her husband's, the window
+through which she had beheld the goblin visage was closely curtained.
+Or, this may have been an accidental disposition of the drapery, since
+no trace of her momentary alarm remained in her countenance or demeanor.
+
+In the kitchen a double allowance of toddy was served out, by their
+master's orders, to the men who had taken part in the interment on the
+hill-top. And, in their noisy talk over their potations the vagrant was
+scarcely mentioned.
+
+Only the pines, hoarser in their sough, by reason of the falling snow
+that clogged their boughs, chanted a requiem above the rough hillock at
+their feet.
+
+"Man cometh in with vanity, and departeth in darkness, and his name is
+covered with darkness!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X. -- ROSA.
+
+
+"THAT is a new appearance."
+
+"Who can she be?"
+
+"Unique--is she not?" were queries bandied from one to another of the
+various parties of guests scattered through the extensive parlors of the
+most fashionable of Washington hotels, at the entrance of a company
+of five or six late arrivals. All the persons composing it were well
+dressed, and had the carriage of people of means and breeding. Beyond
+this there was nothing noteworthy about any of them, excepting the
+youngest of the three ladies of what seemed to be a family group. When
+they stopped for consultation upon their plans for this, their first
+evening in the capital, directly beneath the central chandelier of the
+largest drawing-room, she stood, unintentionally, perhaps, upon the
+outside of the little circle, and not exerting herself to feign interest
+in the parley, sought amusement in a keen, but polite survey of the
+assembly, apparently in no wise disconcerted at the volley of glances
+she encountered in return.
+
+If she were always in the same looks she wore just now, she must have
+been pretty well inured to batteries of admiration by this date in
+her sunny life. She was below the medium of woman's stature, round and
+pliant in form and limbs; in complexion dark as a gypsy but with a
+clear skin that let the rise and fall of the blood beneath be marked
+as distinctly as in that of the fairest blonde. Her eyes were brown
+or black, it was hard to say which, so changeful were their lights
+and shades; and her other features, however unclassic in mould, if
+criticised separately, taken as a whole, formed a picture of surpassing
+fascination. If her eyes and cleft chin meant mischief, her mouth
+engaged to make amends by smiles and seductive words, more sweet
+than honey, because their flavor would never clog upon him who tasted
+thereof. Her attire was striking--it would have been bizarre upon any
+other lady in the room, but it enhanced the small stranger's beauty.
+A black robe--India silk or silk grenadine, or some other light and
+lustrous material--was bespangled with butterflies, gilded, green, and
+crimson, the many folds of the skirt flowing to the carpet in a
+train designed to add to apparent height, and, in front, allowing an
+enchanting glimpse of a tiny slipper, high in the instep, and tapering
+prettily toward the toe. In her hair were glints of a curiously-wrought
+chain, wound under and among the bandeaux; on her wrists, plump and
+dimpled as a baby's, more chain-work of the like precious metal, ending
+in tinkling fringe that swung, glittering, to and fro, with the restless
+motion of the elfin hands, she never ceased to clasp and chafe and fret
+one with the other, while she thus stood and awaited the decision of her
+companions. But instead of detracting from the charm of her appearance,
+the seemingly unconscious gesture only heightened it. It was the
+overflow of the exuberant vitality that throbbed redly in her cheeks,
+flashed in her eye, and made buoyant her step.
+
+"What an artless sprite it is!" said one old gentleman, who had stared
+at her from the instant of her entrance, in mute enjoyment, to the great
+amusement of his more knowing nephews.
+
+"All but the artless!" rejoined one of the sophisticated youngsters.
+"She is gotten up too well for that. Ten to one she is an experienced
+stager, who calculates to a nicety the capabilities of every twist of
+her silky hair and twinkle of an eyelash. Hallo! that IS gushing--nicely
+done, if it isn't almost equal to the genuine thing, in fact."
+
+The ambiguous compliment was provoked by a change of scene and a new
+actor, that opened other optics than his lazy ones to their extremest
+extent. A gentleman had come in alone and quietly--a tall, manly
+personage, whose serious countenance had just time to soften into a
+smile of recognition before the black-robed fairy flew up to him--both
+hands extended--her face one glad sunbeam of surprise and welcome.
+
+"YOU here!" she exclaimed, in a low, thrilling tone, shedding into his
+the unclouded rays of her glorious eyes, while one of her hands lingered
+in his friendly hold. "This is almost too good to be true! When did you
+come? How long are you going to stay? and what did you come for? Yours
+is the only familiar physiognomy I have beheld since our arrival, and
+my eyes were becoming ravenous for a sight of remembered things. Which
+reminds me"--coloring bewitchingly, with an odd mixture of mirth and
+chagrin in smile and voice--"that I have been getting up quite a little
+show on my own account, forgetful of les regles, and I suppose
+the horrified lookers-on think of les moeurs. May I atone for my
+inadvertence by presenting you, in good and regular form, to my somewhat
+shocked, but very respectable, relatives? Did you know that I was
+in Congress this year--that is, Mr. Mason, my aunt's husband, is an
+Honorable, and I am here with them?"
+
+The gentleman gave her his arm, and they strolled leisurely in the
+direction of the party she had deserted so unceremoniously.
+
+"I did not know it, but I am glad to learn that you are to make a
+long visit to the city. I have business that may detain me here for a
+week--perhaps a fort-night," was his answer to the first question she
+suffered him thus to honor.
+
+Then the introduction to Mr. and Mrs. Mason, their married daughter,
+Mrs. Cunningham, and her husband, was performed. The Member's wife was
+a portly, good-natured Virginia matron, whose ruling desire to make all
+about her comfortable as herself, sometimes led to contretemps that were
+trying to the subjects of her kindness, and would have been distressing
+to her, had she ever, by any chance, guessed what she had done.
+
+She opened the social game now, by saying, agreeably: "Your name is not
+a strange one to us, Mr. Chilton. We have often heard you spoken of in
+the most affectionate terms by our friends, but not near neighbors, the
+Ayletts, of Ridgeley,----county. Is it long since you met or heard from
+them?"
+
+"Some months, madam. I hope they were in their usual health when you
+last saw them?"
+
+Receiving her affirmative reply with a courteous bow, and the assurance
+that he was "happy to hear it," Mr. Chilton turned to Rosa, and engaged
+her in conversation upon divers popular topics of the day, all of which
+she was careful should conduct them in the opposite direction from
+Ridgeley, and his affectionate intimates, the Ayletts. He appreciated
+and was grateful for her tact and delicacy. Her unaffected pleasure at
+meeting him had been as pleasant as it was unlooked-for, aware as he
+was, from Mabel's letter immediately preceding the rapture of their
+engagement, that Rosa must have been staying with her when it occurred.
+The slander that had blackened him in the esteem of his betrothed had,
+he naturally supposed, injured his reputation beyond hope of retrieval
+with her acquaintances. Rosa, her bosom companion, could not but have
+heard the whole history, yet met him with undiminished cordiality, as a
+valued friend. Either the Ayletts had been unnaturally discreet, or the
+faith of the interesting girl in his integrity was firmer and better
+worth preserving than he had imagined in the past. Perhaps, too, since
+he was but mortal man, although one whose heritage in the school of
+experience had been of the sternest, he was not entirely insensible
+to the privilege of promenading the long suite of apartments with the
+prettiest girl of the season hanging upon his arm, and granting her
+undivided attention to all that he said, indifferent to, or unmindful
+of, the flattering notice she attracted.
+
+Over and above all these recommendations to his peculiar regard was her
+association with the happy days of his early love. Not an intonation,
+not a look of hers, but reminded him of Ridgeley and of Mabel. It was a
+perilous indulgence--this recurrence to a dream he had vowed to forget,
+but the temptation had befallen him suddenly, and he surrendered himself
+to the intoxication.
+
+Yes! she was going to the President's levee that evening, Rosa said.
+A sort of raree-show--was it not? with the Chief Magistrate for head
+mountebank. He was worse off in one respect than the poorest cottager
+in the nation he was commonly reported to govern, inasmuch as he had
+not the right to invite whom he pleased to his house, and when the mob
+overran his premises he must treat all with equal affability. She pitied
+his wife! She would rather, if the choice were offered her, be one of
+the revolving wax dummies used in shop-windows for showing the latest
+style of evening costume and hair-dressing--for the dolls had no wits of
+their own to begin with, and were not expected to say clever things, as
+the President's consort was, after she had lost hers in the crush of the
+aforesaid mob, who eyed her freely as an appendage to their chattel, the
+man they had bought by their votes, and put in the highest seat in the
+Republic. No! she was not provided with an escort to the White House.
+She did not know three people in Washington beside her relatives, and,
+looking forward to creeping into the palatial East Room at her uncle's
+back, or in the shadow of her cousin's husband, the vision of enjoyment
+had not been exactly enrapturing--BUT, her companion's proposal to join
+their party and help elbow the crowd away from her, lent a different
+coloring to the horizon.
+
+BUT--again--flushing prettily--was he certain that the expedition would
+not bore him? Doubtless he had had some other engagement in prospect
+for the evening, before he stumbled over her. He ought to know her well
+enough not to disguise his real wishes by gallant phrases.
+
+"I have never been otherwise than sincere with you," Frederic said,
+honestly; "I had thought of going to the levee alone, as a possible
+method of whiling away an idle evening. If you will allow me to
+accompany you thither, I shall be gratified--shall derive actual
+pleasure from the motley scene. It will not be the only time you and I
+have studied varieties of physiognomy and character in a mixed assembly.
+Do you recollect the hops at the Rockbridge Alum Springs?"
+
+"I do," replied Rosa, laconically and very soberly.
+
+He thought she suppressed a sigh in saying it. She was a warm-hearted
+little creature with all her vagaries, and he was less inclined to
+reject her unobtrusive sympathy than if a more sedate or prudent person
+had proffered it.
+
+It was certain he could not have selected a more entertaining associate
+for that evening. She amused him in spite of the painful recollections
+revived by their intercourse. She did not pass unobserved in the dense
+crowd that packed the lower floor of the White House. Her face, all glee
+and sparkle, the varied music of her soft Southern tongue, her becoming
+attire--were, in turn, the subject of eulogistic comment among the
+most distinguished connoisseurs present. It was not probable that these
+should all be unheard by her cavalier, or that he should listen to them
+with profound indifference.
+
+He was astonished, therefore, when she protested that she had had
+"enough of it," and proposed that they should extricate themselves from
+the press and go home. It was contrary to the commonly received tenets
+of his sex respecting the insatiable nature of feminine vanity, that she
+should weary so soon of adulation which would have rendered a light head
+dizzy. Mrs. Mason was not ready to leave the halls of mirth. She had
+met scores of old friends, and was having a "nice, sociable time" in a
+corner, while Mrs. Cunningham had "not begun to enjoy herself, looking
+at the queer people and the superb dresses."
+
+Of course, they had no objection to their wilful relative doing as she
+liked, but did not conceal their amazement at her bad taste.
+
+"Take the carriage, dear! You'll find it around out there somewhere,"
+drawled the easy-tempered aunt. "And let Thomas come back for us. He
+will be in time an hour from this."
+
+"Would it be an unpardonable infraction of etiquette if we were to walk
+home?" questioned Rosa of Mr. Chilton, when they were out of Mr. Mason's
+hearing. "The night is very mild."
+
+"But your feet. Are they not too lightly shod for the pavement?"
+
+"I left a pair of thick gaiters in the dressing-room, which I wore in
+the carriage."
+
+"Then I will be answerable for the breach of etiquette, should it ever
+be found out," was the reply, and Rosa disappeared into the tiring-room
+to equip herself for the walk.
+
+It was a lovely night for December--moonlighted and bland as October,
+and neither manifested a disposition to accelerate the saunter into
+which they had fallen at their first step beyond the portico. Rosa
+dropped her rattling tone, and began to talk seriously and sensibly of
+the scene they had left, the flatness of fashionable society after the
+freshness of novelty had passed from it, and her preference for home
+life and tried friends.
+
+"Yet I always rate these the more truly after a peep at a different
+sphere," she said. "Our Old Virginia country-house is never so dear and
+fair at any other time as when I return to it after playing at fine lady
+abroad for a month or six weeks. I used to fret at the monotony of my
+daily existence; think my simple pleasures tame. I am thankful that I
+go back to them, as I grow older, as one does to pure, cold water, after
+drinking strong wine."
+
+"You are blessed in having this fountain to which you may resort in your
+heart-drought," answered Frederic, sadly. "The gods do not often deny
+the gift of home and domestic affections to woman. It is an exception
+to a universal rule when a man who has reached thirty without building
+a nest for himself, has a pleasant shelter spared, or offered to him
+elsewhere."
+
+"Yet you would weary, in a week, of the indolent, aimless life led by
+most of our youthful heirs expectant and apparent," returned Rosa. "I
+remember once telling you how I envied you for having work and a career.
+I was youthful then myself--and foolish as immature."
+
+"I recollect!" and there was no more talk for several squares.
+
+Rosa was getting alarmed at the thought of her temerity in reverting to
+this incident in their former intercourse, and meditating the expediency
+of entering upon an apology, which might, after all, augment, rather
+than correct the mischief she had done, when Frederic accosted her as if
+there had been no hiatus in the dialogue.
+
+"I recollect!" he repeated, just as before. "It was upon the back piazza
+at Ridgeley, after breakfast on that warm September morning, when the
+air was a silvery haze, and there was no dew upon the roses. I, too,
+have grown older--I trust, wiser and stronger since I talked so largely
+of my career--what I hoped to be and to do. When did you see her--Miss
+Aylett," abruptly, and with a total change of manner.
+
+"The Rubicon is forded," thought Rosa, complacently, the while her
+compassion for him was sincere and strong. "He can never shut his heart
+inexorably against me after this."
+
+Aloud, she replied after an instant's hesitation designed to prepare him
+for what was to follow--"I was with Mabel for several days last May. We
+have not met since."
+
+"She is alive--and well?" he asked, anxiously.
+
+An inexplicable something in her manner warned him that all was not
+right.
+
+"She is--or was, when I last heard news of her; we do not correspond.
+She does not live at Ridgeley now."
+
+There she stopped, before adding the apex to the nicely graduated
+climax.
+
+"Not live with her brother! I do not understand."
+
+"Have you not heard of her marriage?"
+
+"No!"
+
+He did not reel or tremble, but she felt that the bolt had pierced a
+vital part, and wisely forbore to offer consolation he could not hear.
+
+But when he would have parted with her at the door of her uncle's
+parlor, she saw how deadly pale he was, and put her hands into his,
+beseechingly.
+
+"Come in! I cannot let you go until you have said that you forgive me!"
+
+There were tears in her eyes, and in her coaxing accents, and he yielded
+to the gentle face that sought to lead him into the room. It was fearful
+agony that contracted his forehead and lips when he would have spoken
+reassuringly, and they were drops of genuine commiseration that drenched
+the girl's cheeks while she listened.
+
+"I have nothing to forgive you! You have been all kindness and
+consideration--I ought not to have asked questions, but I believed
+myself when I boasted of my strength. I thought the bitterness of the
+heart's death had passed. Now, I know I never despaired before! Great
+Heavens! how I loved that woman! and this is the end!"
+
+He walked to the other side of the room.
+
+Rosa durst not follow him even with her eyes. She sat, her face
+concealed by her handkerchief, weeping many tears for him--more for
+herself, until she heard his step close beside her, and he seated
+himself upon her sofa.
+
+"Rosa! dear friend! my sympathizing little sister! I shall not readily
+gain my own pardon for having distressed you so sorely. When you can do
+it with comparative ease to yourself, I want you to tell me one or
+two things more, and then we will never allude to irreparable bygones
+again."
+
+"I am ready!" removing her soaked cambric, and forcing a fluttering
+smile that might show how composed she was; "don't think of me! I was
+only grieved for your sake, and sorry because I had unwittingly hurt
+you. I was in hopes--I imagined--"
+
+"That I had ontlived my disappointment? You said, that same September
+day, that women hid their green wounds in sewing rooms and oratories.
+Mine should have been cauterized long ago, by other and harsher means,
+you think. It seldom bleeds--but tonight, I had not time to ward off the
+point of the knife and it touched a raw spot. Don't let me frighten you!
+now that the worst is upon me, I must be calmer presently. You were
+at Ridgeley, in September, a year since, when she who was then Miss
+Aylett"--compelling himself to the articulation of the sentence that
+signified the later change--"received her brother's command to reject
+me?"
+
+"I was."
+
+"He would never tell me upon what evil report his prohibition was based.
+He was more communicative with his sister, I suppose?"
+
+And Rosa, following the example of other women--and men--who vaunt their
+principles more highly than she did hers, made a frank disclosure of
+part of the truth and held her tongue as to the rest.
+
+"I couldn't help seeing that something was wrong, for Mabel, who, up to
+the receipt of her brother's letter and one from you that came by the
+same mail, had been very cheerful and talkative, suddenly grew more
+serious and reserved than was her habit at any time; but she told me
+nothing whatever, never mentioned your name again in my hearing. Mrs.
+Sutton did hint to me her fear that Mr. Aylett had heard something
+prejudicial to your character, which had greatly displeased him and
+shocked Mabel, but even she was unaccountably reticent. Intense as was
+my anxiety to learn the particulars of the story, and upon what evidence
+they were induced to believe it, I dared not press my inquiry into what
+it was plain they intended to guard as a family secret."
+
+His reply was just what she had foreseen and guarded against.
+
+"It would have been a kind and worthy deed, had you written to warn me
+of my danger, and advised me to make my defence in person. As it was,
+I was thrown off roughly and pitilessly--my demand upon the brother
+for the particulars of the accusation against me--my appeal to the
+sister--loving and earnest as words could make it--for permission to
+visit her and learn from her own lips that she trusted or disowned me,
+were alike disregarded. Mr. Aylett's response was a second letter, more
+coldly insulting than the first--hers, the return of my last, after she
+had opened and read it, then the surrender of my gifts, letters, notes,
+everything that could remind her that we had ever met and loved.
+Mrs. Sutton, too, my father's old and firm friend, deserted me in my
+extremity. And she must have been acquainted with the character and
+extent of the charges preferred against me. I had hoped better things
+from her, if only because I bear her dead husband's name. Did she never
+speak in your hearing of writing to me?"
+
+"She did--but said, in the next breath, that it would be useless, since
+the minds of the others were fully made up. I knew she thought Winston
+arbitrary, and Mabel credulous; but she was afraid to interfere. As for
+myself, what could I have told you that you had not already heard? I
+could only hope that the cloud was not heavy, and would soon blow over.
+From the hour in which it cast the first shadow upon her, Mabel was
+estranged from me--the decline of our intimacy commenced. The Ayletts
+take pride in keeping their own counsel. Winston, who never liked me,
+and whom I detested, was as confidential with me in this affair as my
+old playfellow and school-mate. Believe me when I declare that if my
+intercession could have availed aught with her, I would have run the
+risk of her displeasure and Winston's anathemas by offering it."
+
+"I do believe you! Nor need you expatiate to me upon the obduracy of the
+Aylett pride. Surely, no one living has more reason than I to comprehend
+how unreasoning and implacable I find it is. I looked for injustice at
+Winston Aylett's hands. I read him truly in our only private interview.
+Insolent, vain, despotic--wedded to his dogmas, and intolerant of
+others' opinion, he disliked me because I refused to play the obedient
+vassal to his will and requirements; stood upright as one man should in
+the presence of a brother-mortal, instead of cringing at his lordship's
+footstool. But he was powerless to do more than annoy me without his
+sister's co-operation."
+
+"She stood in great, almost slavish, awe of him," urged Rosa, in
+extenuation of Mabel's infidelity.
+
+"Aye!" savagely. "And love was not strong enough to cast out fear! She
+was justifiable if she hesitated to entrust herself and her happiness
+to the keeping of one she had known but two months. It was prudent--not
+false--in her to weigh, to the finest grain, the evidence furnished by
+her brother to prove my unfitness to be her husband. But having done
+all this, she should have remembered that I had rights also. It was
+infamous, cowardly, cruel beyond degree, to cast her vote against
+me without giving me a chance of self-exculpation. Her hand--not
+his--struck the dagger into my back!"
+
+Again Rosa's fingers involuntarily (?) stole into his, to recall him to
+a knowledge of where he was, and there were fresh tears, ready to fall
+from her gazelle eyes, when his agitation began to subside.
+
+"My poor child!" he said, penitently. "I am behaving like a madman, you
+like a pitying angel! We will have no more scenes, and you must oblige
+me by forgetting this one, as fast as may be. From to-night Mabel Aylett
+is to me as if she had never been. To nobody except yourself have
+I betrayed the secret of my hurt. After this, when you think of it,
+believe that it is a hurt no longer."
+
+Rosa "had out" her fit of crying when he went away, betaking herself to
+her chamber and locking the door that her aunt might not surprise her
+while the traces of tears disfigured her cheeks. But she was anything
+but broken-hearted, and only slightly sore in spirit in the retrospect
+of what had ensued upon her communication to the discarded lover. He
+had, indeed, given more evidence of his unconquered passion for Mabel
+than she had expected. His undisguised pleasure in renewed companionship
+with herself; his excellent spirits during the greater part of the
+evening; his unembarrassed reply to her aunt's malapropos observation,
+and fluent chat upon other themes, had misled her into the hope that
+the ungenerous and uncivil conduct of the Ayletts had disgusted
+and alienated him from sister, no less than from brother. It was
+a disappointment to discover that it cost him a terrible effort to
+pronounce Mabel's name, while the abrupt intelligence of her marriage
+had distracted him to incoherent ravings, which had nearly amounted to
+curses upon the authors of his pain.
+
+"And all for a woman who could bring herself, after being engaged
+to Frederic Chilton, to marry that dolt of a Dorrance!" she said,
+indignantly. "I wonder if he would have been consoled or chagrined had
+I painted the portrait of the man who had superseded him. It is as well
+that I did not make the experiment. He would be magnanimous enough when
+he cooled down--which he will do by to-morrow morning--to pity her, and
+that is next to the last thing I want him to do. Thank goodness! the
+denouement is over, and the topic an interdicted one from this time
+forth. Now for the verification or refutation of the saying that a heart
+is most easily caught in the rebound. There was some jargon we
+learned at school about the angle of incidence being equal to that of
+reflection. You see, my dearly beloved self," nodding with returning
+sauciness at her image in the mirror before which she was combing
+her hair, "I undertake this business in the spirit of philosophical
+investigation."
+
+She needed to keep her courage up by these and the like whimsical
+conceits, when the forenoon of the next day passed away without a
+glimpse of Mr. Chilton. He had not yet left his card for the Masons, nor
+called to inquire after her health, when the summons sounded to the five
+o'clock dinner. A horrible apprehension seized and devoured her heart
+by the time the dessert was brought on, and there were no signs of his
+appearance. He had, ashamed to meet her after last night's exposure of
+his weakness, or dreading the power of the reminiscences the sight of
+her would awaken, left the city without coming to say "Farewell." That
+is, she had driven him from her forever!
+
+The room went around with her in a dizzy waltz, as the notion crossed
+her brain.
+
+"The sight and smell of all these sweets make me sick, Aunt Mary," she
+said, rising from the table. "My head aches awfully! May I go to my room
+and lie down?"
+
+"Try some of this nice lemon-ice, my love!" prescribed the plump matron.
+"The acid will set you all straight. No? You don't think you are going
+to have a chill, do you? Father!" nudging her husband who was burying
+his spoon in a Charlotte Russe, "this dear child doesn't want any
+dessert. Won't you pilot her through the crowd?"
+
+"Only to the door, uncle! Then come back to your dinner!" Rosa made
+answer to his disconcerted stare. "I can find my way to my chamber
+without help."
+
+She could have done it, had she been in possession of her accustomed
+faculties. But between the harrowing suspicion that engrossed her mind
+and the nervous moisture that gathered in her eyes with each step,
+she mounted a story too high, and did not perceive her blunder until,
+happening to think that her apartment must lie somewhere in the region
+she had gained, she consulted the numbers upon the adjacent doors, and
+saw that she had wandered a hundred rooms out of her way, She stopped
+short to consider which of the corridors, stretching in gas-lit vistas
+on either hand, would conduct her soonest to the desired haven, when
+a gentleman emerging from a chamber close by stepped directly upon her
+train.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI. -- IN THE REBOUND.
+
+
+"I beg your pardon!" said a deep, familiar voice. Then the formality
+vanished from face and address. "Is this YOU?" holding out his hand in
+hearty friendliness that instantly dispelled Rosa's forebodings. "What
+or whom are you seeking in these wilds?"
+
+The crystal beads glistened upon her lashes in the fulness and joy of
+her deliverance from doubt and fear, and before she could twinkle them
+back, broke into smaller brilliants upon her cheeks and the bosom of
+her dress. It was very babyish and foolish, but it is to be questioned
+whether she could have contrived a more telling situation had she
+studied it for a month.
+
+"What is it!" inquired Frederic, kindly, not releasing the fingers that
+twitched, more than struggled, in his. "Have you been frightened?"
+
+"Yes," with grieved, but fearless simplicity, "I was frightened because
+I thought I had offended you--perhaps driven you away--and that I should
+never be able to ask your forgiveness for my cruel abruptness last
+night! In thinking about and worrying over this, I somehow lost my way,
+and was just trying to remember by what route I reached this strange
+neighborhood, when your appearance startled me."
+
+"You did not know, then, that this is Bachelor's Hall--the haunt of
+unmated Benedicts, wifeless visitors to the city, and celibate M. C.'s?"
+he rejoined, pleasantly. "Let me be your guide to more desirable as well
+as more accessible quarters!"
+
+On the stairs he bent to scan her blushing countenance.
+
+"How am I to punish you for your naughty distrust of my friendship and
+common sense? I have been too busy all day to spare a minute for social
+pleasure. I dined at two o'clock, having an appointment at three,
+returned at half-past five, and was just coming down to your parlor to
+look you up. Another bit of unimportant news, with which I should
+not have annoyed you if you had not merited a little vexation by your
+preposterous fancies, is, that, instead of taking an early train to
+Philadelphia, I have to-day entered into engagements that will oblige me
+to prolong my stay in this place until the first of February."
+
+He looked bright and cheerful, ready for sport or badinage. Rosa caught
+herself wondering many times during that evening, and the succeeding
+days of the three weeks they passed under the same roof, if she had
+dreamed of--not beheld with her bodily optics--that one stormy burst
+of passion which had been his farewell to the hope of a final
+reconciliation with Mabel Aylett.
+
+He never spoke of her again, or referred, in the most distant manner,
+to his visit at Ridgeley. The omission was an agreeable one to Rosa for
+several reasons. Silence, she believed, was to oblivion as a means to an
+end. Judging from herself, she adopted the theory that people were apt
+to forget what they never talked of themselves, nor heard mentioned by
+others. Furthermore, she was relieved from the necessity of concocting
+diplomatic evasions, dexterously skirting the truth, to say nothing
+of plump falsehoods. These last cost her conscience some unpleasant
+twinges. To avoid narrating in full what had happened was a work of art.
+A downright lie was a stroke of heavy business, unsuited to her airy
+genius--and when the Aylett-Chilton complication was upon the tapis, it
+was difficult to avoid undertaking such.
+
+For three weeks, then, Mr. Frederic Chilton and the Virginian belle
+visited concert, theatre, and assembly-room in company, sat side by
+side in the spectators' gallery of House and Senate chamber, walked
+in daylight along the broad avenues from one magnificent distance to
+another, and on home-evenings--which were not many--chatted together
+familiarly, the well-pleased Masons thought confidentially, by the
+fireside in the family parlor. It must not be inferred from their
+constant intercourse that he had the field entirely to himself.
+Gallants of divers pretensions--first-class, mediocre, and
+contemptible--considered with a practical eye to "settlement," hovered
+about the fascinating witch as moths about a gas-burner, and had no
+citable cause of complaint of non-appreciation, inasmuch as she shed
+equal light upon all, save one. "My very old friend, Mr. Chilton,"
+she was wont to denominate him in conversation with those who inwardly
+called themselves fools for their jealousy of a man of whom she spoke
+thus frankly, with never a stammer or blush; yet they acknowledged to
+themselves all the while that they were both suspicious and envious of
+his superior advantages. However backward Frederic may have been in the
+beginning to monopolize the notice and time of his "sisterly friend,"
+he was not an insensate block, who could not perceive and value
+the compliment paid him by her partiality--ever apparent, but never
+unmaidenly. Impute it to whatever motive he might, the distinction
+titillated his vanity, touched, at least, the outermost covering of
+his heart. It might be pity, it might be pleasant, mournful memories of
+other days--it was most likely of all a sincere platonic affection, for
+one with tastes and feelings akin to hers that gave lustre to her eyes,
+and gentle meaning to her smile when he drew near. At any rate, it would
+be churlish not to accept the preference these conveyed, and to like
+her and his position as her chosen knight better every day; it was
+inevitable that he should marvel--not without melancholy-at the flight
+of time that brought so soon the day of parting.
+
+The Masons, with himself, were engaged to attend a large party on the
+last evening of January. Without analyzing the impulse that constrained
+him to do so, he had refrained from reminding Rosa that his stay in
+Washington was so nearly over, and, with masculine consistency, he was
+half disposed to be affronted that she had forgotten what he had said
+to her of its extent. He had never seen her more lively--in more radiant
+spirits and looks--than she was upon the night of the 30th. He had
+dropped into her aunt's parlor about ten o'clock, and detected Rosa in
+the act of dragging her new ball-dress from the box in which the mantua
+maker had sent it home.
+
+"Conceive, if you can--but you can't, being a man--what I have undergone
+for an hour and more!" she cried, at seeing him. "My treasure--the
+darlingest love of a dress I have ever ordered--was brought in exactly
+two seconds before a brace of honorables--lumbering machines that they
+are! knocked at the door. So, lest they should brand me as a frivolous
+doll (as if anybody with a soul, and an infinitesimal degree of love for
+the beautiful, COULD help admiring the divine thing!), I pushed the poor
+box under the sofa, and there it has lain in ignominious neglect, like
+a pearl of purest ray serene smothered in an oyster, all the time they
+were here. I was purposely cross and stupid, too, in the hope of
+getting rid of them the sooner. If you despise what most of your
+undiscriminating sex call fancy articles, consider a woman's fondness
+for a ravishing robe despicable and irrational, Mr. Chilton, you need
+not look this way. You could hardly have a severer--certainly not a more
+appropriate--punishment."
+
+"You depreciate my aesthetic proclivities," he rejoined, catching her
+tone. "You would not trust my bungling fingers to help excavate the
+gem, I know; but I may surely use my eyes--admire, as we bid children
+do--with my hands behind my back."
+
+Notwithstanding his boast of knowingness in the mysteries of feminine
+apparel, he could not have told of what material the divine robe was
+made--except that it was some shiny white stuff, with wide embroidery
+upon the flounces. But Rosa, her aunt, and cousin had gone into
+ecstacies over it, and instigated by kind-hearted Mrs. Mason, the
+enraptured owner had rushed off to Mrs. Mason's chamber to try it on,
+returning presently in full array, elate at the "perfect fit," and
+insisting upon a unanimous declaration that she "had never before worn
+anything one-thousandth part as becoming."
+
+"It is a winsome, fantastic, enchanting little being!" remarked Mr.
+Chilton, in soliloquy at his dressing-table, the next evening. "I hope
+she will enjoy the gathering to-night, as she hopes to do. Will she miss
+me at the next she attends?"
+
+Then--laughing at the sentimental visage portrayed upon the mirror--"It
+would be the acme of ludicrous folly for me to disturb myself on that
+score. We have had a pleasant time together--she and I--and tomorrow it
+will be over. There is the whole story--except that, in a month I shall
+cease to think of her, unless her name is accidentally uttered in my
+hearing--I wish I could forget some other things as easily!--and
+she will probably be the affianced darling of one of the lumbering
+Honorables--the elder and homelier of the brace, I fancy, since he is
+the wealthier, and the humming-bird should have a fitting cage."
+
+Expressing in his composed lineaments and firm stride nothing like
+disconsolateness at the programme, he flung his cloak over his arm, took
+his white gloves in his hand, cast a passing glance at the glass to see
+that his whiskers and hair were in order, and ran down the two flights
+of stairs lying between Bachelor's Hall and the Masons' private parlor.
+
+"Come in!" said a plaintive voice, in answer to his knock.
+
+Rosa was alone in the cosy apartment. She was curled up in a great
+padded chair, set upon the hearth-rug. Her dress was a plain black
+silk; she wore a scarlet shawl, and her head-gear was some odd, but
+distractingly pretty construction of white lace, a square folded in two
+unequal triangles, and knotted loosely, handkerchief-wise, the points in
+front, under her chin.
+
+"Not ready!" exclaimed Frederic, in merry reproach. "You, the model of
+punctual women!"
+
+"I am not going!" sighed the humming-bird, dolorously. "I have had
+a horrid sore throat all day--and--a--headache--and Aunt Mary got
+frightened, and forbade me to put my head out of doors."
+
+"That is a heart-rending affliction! And could you not send the
+incomparable dress as your representative?"
+
+"Don't laugh!" she said, jerking away her head. "I cannot bear it
+to-night--not that I care the millionth part of a fig for all the
+parties in christendom; and as for the dress, you think that I haven't a
+soul above such frippery and gewgaws: but I wish I had never seen it. I
+shall never wear it as long as I live!"
+
+And out came the laced cambric to absorb the gathering dew.
+
+"There is something in this I do not understand," said Frederic, setting
+a chair for himself close to hers. "Are you really suffering? I imagined
+that yours was a case of simple cold, and that Mrs. Mason advised you to
+remain indoors chiefly on account of the weather. It is raining hard!"
+
+"I am glad it is!" she replied, with the manner of one bereft of human
+sympathy, and extracting gloomy delight from the unison of nature with
+her morbid broodings. "And my throat isn't nearly so painful as I made
+Aunt Mary believe. I did not want to go out. Parties are an awful bore
+when one is sad-hearted."
+
+"You really must forgive me!" said Frederic, as she twitched her face
+away again at the laugh he could not suppress. "But sadness and you
+should not be thought of in the same week. Honestly, now! is not the
+inimitable fabric you sported for five minutes last night, at the bottom
+of what appears to you a fathomless abyss of woe? Have you tried the
+efficacy of rational consolation in the thought of how many more parties
+there will be this winter to which you can wear it? The Secretary of
+State is to give one in ten days, which is to be the sensation of the
+season. That of to-night is, in comparison, as a caucus to a general
+convention."
+
+"I shall never put on the hateful thing again. If Julia Cunningham
+chooses to bedizen herself in it, she is welcome to it--flounces and
+all. Yet I did like it! I had hoped--but no matter what! You had better
+be going, Mr. Chilton. Aunt and the rest of them went three-quarters of
+an hour ago."
+
+"Does a dress go out of fashion in so short a time?" persisted innocent
+Frederic, bent upon mitigating her sorrow. "If my memory serves me
+aright, I have seen ladies wear the same ball-dress several times in the
+same winter."
+
+"You will never see this on me," snapped Rosa, her eyes ominously fiery
+again. "Did you hear me advise you of the lateness of the hour?"
+
+"Suppose I decline appearing at all in the festal scene?" said the
+gentleman. "I shall not be missed. I will just run down and dismiss the
+carriage--then, with your permission, will return and spend the evening
+here."
+
+Her cheeks looked as if they had been touched with wet vermilion, when
+he resumed his place near her, and the folds of the handkerchief in her
+hand hung more limply.
+
+"I ought not to allow this sacrifice!" she faltered gratefully. "Because
+I have the vapors, I have no right to keep you within reach of the
+infection. It is shamefully, wickedly selfish!"
+
+"It is no such thing!" he contradicted. "If you would know the truth,
+I was, myself, averse to attending this 'crush.' But for your
+indisposition, I should hail with unmixed pleasure the chance that
+releases me from the obligation to form a part of the throng. It is
+far more in consonance with my feelings to pass this, our last evening
+together, as we have spent so many others, in quiet talk at this
+fireside. I had not supposed it possible that I could ever feel so
+much at home in a hotel--a Washington caravansary especially--as I have
+within the last three weeks. Do you know, or have you not burdened your
+memory with such unimportant memoranda as the fact, that I must set my
+face Philadelphia-ward to-morrow?"
+
+"I had not dreamed that the time was so near at hand--it seemed such a
+little while since the evening of our arrival--until I happened, last
+night, after you left us, to take up Mrs. Rogers' invitation-card for
+this evening. THEN, I recollected!"
+
+Her listless resignation had in it something piteous, and the lever of
+compassion impelled him to further efforts of cheer.
+
+"I have to thank you for all the enjoyment of my visit to this,
+heretofore to me, dismal city. If you should ever visit Philadelphia--as
+I earnestly hope you will--you must acquaint me with your whereabouts
+immediately upon your arrival. I should be sorry to think that our
+friendship is to end here and now."
+
+"As well here and now, as anywhere and at any time!" returned Rosa, yet
+more resignedly. "And the end must come, sooner or later. This was what
+I was saying over to myself when you came in. I am a fool--a baby--to
+mind it!" angrily dashing away the obtrusive brine from her mournful
+eyelids. "I WISH you would leave me alone for a few minutes, Mr.
+Chilton, until I can behave myself!"
+
+For a second it seemed that her companion would take her at her word,
+so puzzled and troubled was his countenance, and he moved slightly, as
+about to obey the petulant behest; then sat still.
+
+"I have found no fault in your behavior!" he said, too coolly to please
+Rosa's notion.
+
+"I know you despise me!" she burst forth, chokingly. "I believe I am
+hysterical, and the more I rail at my stupidity and folly, the
+more unmanageable my nerves--if it is my nerves that are out of
+order--become. But I have been so happy, so content and grateful,
+lately! And everything will be so different after--after TO-MORROW!"
+
+Her voice had failed to a sobbing whisper, and the diaphanous cambric
+veiled her bowed face.
+
+Frederic Chilton did not stir a finger or attempt to speak for a full
+minute, but in that minute he thought a volume, felt acutely.
+
+This, then, was what he had been doing in his hours of relaxation from
+the business which had occupied his mind to the banishment of nearly
+every other consideration; that had driven into comparative obscurity
+the old gnawing grief which had incorporated itself with his being! The
+intimacy with a beautiful, sprightly girl had been a holiday diversion
+to him after arduous brain-labor, recreation sought conscientiously and
+systematically, that his mental powers might be clearer and fresher for
+the next day's toil in court and among perplexing records; in hunting up
+titles and disputed property, and proving their validity. He had gained
+the cause that had brought him to the capital, and cost him so much
+fatigue and anxiety, and was proud of his success. But what of this
+other piece of work? Would not the most cold-blooded flirt, who ever
+prated of fidelity, when he meant betrayal and desertion, blush to
+father this business? And she, poor, guileless lamb, must bear the
+pain, the mortification, perhaps the contumely, which ought to be his in
+seven-fold measure!
+
+"Stay, Rosa!" he said, huskily, when she attempted to rise. "Do not
+leave me yet. I may not be altogether so unworthy, so basely callous as
+I have given you reason to suppose. Can it be that I have misconstrued
+what you have said, or do you really care that our separation is so
+near? I had not thought of this."
+
+"I understand." She lowered her flag of distress and confronted him
+sorrowfully, not in resentment. "You believed me incapable of deep
+and lasting feeling; saw in me no more than the world does, a giddy
+coquette, feather-haired and shallow-hearted. Be it so. Perhaps it is
+best that you should not be undeceived. Such injustice and prejudice
+are the penalties a woman must suffer who wears a tinsel cloak over
+her finer affections--admits but few, sometimes but one, to her sanctum
+sanctorum. The gushing, loving, extensively-loving class fare better.
+You have been very kind and attentive to me in my strangerhood here,
+Mr. Chilton. I must always revert to your conduct with gratitude. By the
+way"--a hysterical laugh breaking into her dignified acknowledgment of
+benefits received--"that is the same, in substance, that you said to me
+a while ago, isn't it? So we are even--owe each other nothing."
+
+"Except to love one another." The solemn accents hushed her reckless
+prattle. "Rosa, can you learn this lesson?"
+
+She had shrunk down--sunk is not the word to convey an idea of the
+prostration of strength, the collapse of resolution, expressed by the
+figure cowering in the deep chair, its face upborne and hidden by the
+shaking hands. They were cold as ice, Frederic felt, when he would have
+drawn them aside.
+
+"We will have no foolish reserves, my child. Much, if not all, the
+happiness of our future lives may depend upon our perfect sincerity now.
+You do not require to be told how poor is the offering of my heart.
+You are the only person who has ever entered into the secret of its
+emptiness and desolation; seen blight, where there should be bloom;
+ashes, where flame should glow. But such as it is, it is yours, if
+you will have it. If you are willing to trust yourself with me, I will
+cherish as I now honor you, truly and forever; leave no means untried
+that can add to your happiness. Dare you make the venture?"
+
+Her unstudied caress was beautiful and pathetic in its lowliness of
+humility and earnest affection--too earnest for the commonplace outlet
+of words. It was to slip to her knees at his feet, and kiss his hand,
+then lay her cheek upon it, as some dumb, devoted thing might do.
+
+Then she was lifted into his arms, and kissed with a fervor she mistook
+for awakening passion, and her heart bounded more madly in the belief
+that her victory was complete, that he would henceforward be hers in
+feeling as in name.
+
+Yet the words breathed into her ear as her head rested upon his bosom
+might have taught her the fallacy of her conviction and her hopes.
+
+"My noble, faithful girl! What have I to offer you in payment for all
+this?"
+
+"I ask nothing, except the right to be with, and to serve you!"
+responded Rosa.
+
+And she thought she spoke the whole truth for once.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII. -- AUNT RACHEL WAXES UNCHARITABLE.
+
+
+"A SLY, artful, treacherous jade?" articulated Mrs. Sutton,
+energetically. "I have no patience with her. And they say she is so
+overjoyed at her conquest that she trumpets the engagement everywhere.
+Such shameless carrying on I never heard of. If she ever crosses my path
+I shall treat her to some wholesome truths."
+
+"What good would that do, aunt?" asked Mabel Dorrance, without raising
+her head from her sewing. "And what has she done that should incense you
+or any one else against her? She was free to choose a husband, and we
+have no right to cavil at her choice. I hope she will be very happy. I
+used to love her--we loved each other very fondly once. There are some
+excellent traits in Rosa's character, and when she is once married she
+will be less volatile."
+
+"Don't you believe it. Her flightiness and insincerity are ingrain! I
+believed in her once myself--she had such beguiling ways, it was hard
+to disapprove of anything she said or did. But I was secretly aware, all
+the time, that there was a radical defect in her composition. A woman
+who has been engaged, or as good as engaged, to six or eight different
+men, cannot retain much purity of mind or strength of affection. I
+heard you tell her yourself once that such unscrupulous flirtation and
+bandying of hearts were profane touches that rubbed the down from the
+peach."
+
+"That was the extravagant talk of a silly, romantic girl," replied
+Mabel, with a smile that changed to a sigh before the sentence was
+finished. "I was somewhat given to lecturing other people, in those
+days, upon subjects of which I knew little or nothing. Nine men out
+of ten care little how roughly the peach has been rubbed, provided the
+flavor is not injured to their taste. It is only once in a great while
+that you meet with one whose palate is so nice that he can detect the
+difference between fruit that has been hawked through the market and
+that just picked from the tree. First love is a myth at which rational
+people laugh."
+
+"Perhaps so," said Mrs. Sutton dubiously.
+
+In view of the circumstances of Mabel's marriage, she felt that
+it behooved her to be circumspect in condemnation of transferred
+affections.
+
+"But that does not alter the fact of Rosa Tazewell's infamous behavior
+to Alfred Branch and others of her beaux. Isn't the poor fellow drinking
+himself into his grave, all through his disappointment? And here she is
+going to be as honored a wife as if she had never perjured herself, or
+ruined an honest, loving man's prospects for life!"
+
+Mabel went on with her work, and did not reply.
+
+"I have had uncomfortable suspicions about certain passages in her
+intercourse with us, since I heard this news," continued Mrs. Sutton,
+edging her chair toward her niece, and dropping her voice. "I am afraid
+I can date the beginning of her cruelty to Alfred back to that September
+she spent here--to the latter part of it, I mean. Little scenes come to
+my memory that caused me trifling uneasiness then. I shall never
+forget, for instance, how she eyed you, the morning Winston came home so
+unexpectedly."
+
+And she described the incident recorded in the latter part of our
+opening chapter.
+
+"Can it be," she pursued, "that she had even then designs upon the man
+she is about to marry? She knew all the circumstances of the trouble
+that ensued, and if disposed to be meddlesome, she had the means at her
+command."
+
+"I told her nothing," said Mabel briefly.
+
+"But she pumped me pretty effectually," confessed the aunt shamefacedly.
+"I thought there could be no harm in giving her a synopsis of the
+case--she being your intimate friend."
+
+Another gleam of pensive amusement crossed Mabel's face. She knew
+too well the nature of her aunt's "synopsis" to doubt that Rosa was
+conversant with every phase of the affair, concerning which her own lips
+had been so sternly sealed.
+
+"You have nothing with which to reproach yourself," she said,
+tranquilly. "She marries with her eyes open."
+
+"You don't imagine for one instant that she would be annoyed by any such
+scruples as beset you!" cried Mrs. Sutton scoffingly. "Why, the woman
+would sooner go to the altar with a handsome, dashing libertine, who had
+broken hearts by the dozen, than marry a quiet, honest Christian, who
+had never breathed of love to any ears except hers. The aim of her life
+is to create or experience a sensation. I don't quite see how she could
+have made trouble in that sad affair, but I should like to be positive
+that she did not."
+
+"You may safely acquit her of that sin," rejoined Mabel. "There was
+neither need nor room for her interference. Whatever may have been her
+inclination, she was shrewd enough to perceive that the natural course
+of events was bringing about the desired end--if it were a desirable one
+to her--without her help or hindrance. But, aunt! doesn't it strike
+you that this is a very profitless talk, and very uncharitable? It is
+a sorry task, this volunteering our assistance to the dead past to bury
+its dead. And I, for one, have too much bound up in the future to offer
+my service in the painful work. Look! is not this pretty?"
+
+She was embroidering a white merino cloak for an infant, in a pattern
+so rich and elaborate, that Mrs. Sutton groaned in commingled admiration
+and sympathy as she inspected it.
+
+"You are throwing time and strength away upon this work!" she
+expostulated. "I don't know another lady in your circumstances who would
+not take her friends' advice, and put out all the sewing you need to
+have done. But your eyes and fingers have labored incessantly for six
+months upon the finest work you could devise, and you begin to look
+like a shadow. I don't wonder Mr. Dorrance seems uneasy sometimes. He
+complained this morning that you did not take enough exercise in the
+open air."
+
+"He is not anxious, nor should he be. I am well, and stronger than
+you will believe. As to the work, it has been one great delight of
+my existence during the period you speak of. I could not endure that
+anybody but myself should assist in fashioning the dainty, tiny garments
+that make my hope an almost present reality. Every stitch seems to bring
+nearer the fulfilment of the dear promise. I only regret that this is
+the last of the set. I shall be at a loss for occupation for the next
+two months. And I fear from something Herbert said to-day, that he does
+not intend for me to return to Albany until the spring fairly opens. Dr.
+Williams has been talking to him about my cough."
+
+"Dr. Williams is a fussy old woman, and Mr. Dorrance"--began Mrs.
+Sutton.
+
+Mabel quietly took up the word.
+
+"Mr. Dorrance is ignorant of diseases and medicines, as men usually are
+who have not studied these with a view to practise upon themselves or
+others. I have said that he is not really uneasy; but he says, and with
+truth, that the Northern March and April are raw and cold, and will try
+my strength severely. Winston and Clara share in his fears. It is very
+kind in them to tender me the hospitalities of their house for so long
+a time, but I should feel more at home in my own, during my illness and
+convalescence."
+
+"Why not tell your husband this plainly?"
+
+"Because it might bias his judgment and embarrass his action. I am
+willing to do as he thinks best."
+
+There were not many subjects upon which Mrs. Sutton was irascible, but
+she patted the floor with her foot now as if this was one of them--her
+discontent finding vent at length in what she regarded as a perfectly
+safe query.
+
+"Will he remain with you?"
+
+"He cannot. His business is large and increasing. He can afford but this
+one fortnight vacation."
+
+"How do you expect to get along without him?"
+
+"I expect my dear old aunt to come often and see me," said Mabel
+affectionately, parrying the catechism "Clara suggested, of her own
+accord, when the extension of my visit was discussed, that you should be
+invited to be with me late in April--and I don't want you to refuse.
+Do you understand, and mean to be complaisant? You are all the mother I
+have ever known, auntie."
+
+"My lamb! you need not fear lest I shall not improve every opportunity
+of seeing and comforting you. I shall return a civil and grateful reply
+to Mrs. Aylett's invitation, for your sake! and for the same reason
+try and remember, while I remain her guest, that her right to be and to
+reign at Ridgeley is superior to yours or mine."
+
+The good lady was not to be harshly censured if she now and then, in
+private confabulation with her favorite, let fall a remark which was the
+reverse of complimentary to her niece-in-law. Mabel's marriage was
+the signal for a radical reorganization of the Ridgeley domestic
+establishment, by which Mrs. Sutton was reduced from the busy,
+responsible situation of housekeeper to the unenviable one of unnoticed
+and unconsulted supernumerary.
+
+"Not that I wish you to desert your old quarters, still less to feel
+like a stranger with us," said Mrs. Aylett graciously, while she
+affixed shining brass labels to the keys of closets, sideboards, and
+store-rooms--the keys Aunt Rachel could distinguish from one another,
+and all others in the world, in the darkest night, without any labels
+whatever; which had grown smooth and bright by many years' friction of
+her nimble fingers. "But Mr. Aylett wishes me to assume the real, as
+well as nominal, government of the establishment"--Mrs. Aylett was fond
+of the polysyllable as conveying better than any other term she could
+employ the grandeur of her position as Baroness of Ridgeley. "He insists
+that the servants are growing worthless and refractory under the rule of
+so many. Hereafter--this is his law, not mine--hereafter, those attached
+to the house department are to come to me about their orders, and the
+plantation workmen to him. I shall undoubtedly have much trouble in
+curing the satellites appointed to me of their irregular habits, and
+reducing them to something resembling system; but Winston's extreme
+dissatisfaction with the anarchy that prevailed under the ancien regime
+moves me to the undertaking."
+
+"They have always--for generations back, I may say--been called
+excellent servants; faithful in the discharge of their duties, and
+attached to their owners," returned Mrs. Sutton tremulously. "And since
+I have been in charge--ever since my dear sister's death, I have done
+my best with them, as with everything else committed by my nephew to my
+care. But of course I have nothing to urge against your plan. If I can
+help you in any way"---
+
+"Thank you! You are extremely kind, my dear madam," honeyedly. "But
+I should be ashamed and sorry to be compelled to call upon you for
+assistance in performing what you have done so easily and successfully
+for fifteen years. I must learn confidence in my own powers, if I would
+be respected by underlings. They would be quick to detect the power
+behind the throne; let me hold counsel with you ever so secretly, and my
+authority would be weakened by the discovery. I have not the vanity to
+believe that my maiden attempt at housewifery will be attended by the
+distinction that has crowned yours, but practice will perfect in this,
+as in other labors. And my dear Mrs. Sutton, Mr. Aylett bids me say, in
+his name, as it gives me pleasure to do in my own, that although your
+occupation is gone, you are ever welcome to a home at Ridgeley, free of
+all expense. It is our hope that you may still content yourself here,
+even if Mabel has gone from the nest. I suppose, however, nothing will
+satisfy her, when she goes to housekeeping, but having you with her as
+a permanent institution. My brother intimated as much to me before his
+marriage."
+
+Declining with mild hauteur, that gave great, but secret amusement to
+her would-be benefactress, the handsome offer of a free asylum, Mrs.
+Sutton went to live with a cousin of her late husband's, whose snug
+plantation was situated about twelve miles from the Aylett place, and
+in the neighborhood of the Tazewells. It was a pleasant, but not a
+permanent arrangement, she gave out to her numerous friends, any of whom
+would have accounted themselves favored by an acceptance of a home for
+life in their families.
+
+"Ridgeley was changed and lonely since Mabel's departure, and her own
+habits were too active to be conformed to those of so small a household.
+Indeed, there was nothing for her to do there any longer, so she was
+glad to avail herself of Mrs. William Sutton's invitation to stay a
+while with her. The children made the house so lively. In the fall,
+the house Mr. Dorrance was having built for his Southern bride would be
+ready for them, and Mabel's claim upon her aunt's society and services
+must take precedence of all others."
+
+The fall came, and Mabel wrote detailed descriptions of the beautiful
+home Herbert had prepared for her; wrote, moreover, with more feeling
+and animation, of the new and precious hopes of happiness held out to
+her loving heart in the prospect of what the spring would give into her
+arms, but said nothing of her aunt's coming to her for the winter, or
+for an indefinite period, the bounds of which were to be set only by
+her beloved relative's wishes. The omission was trying enough to
+the foster-mother's heart and patience, even while she believed the
+knowledge of it to be confined to herself. She could still hold up her
+head bravely among her kindred and acquaintances, and talk of the "dear
+child's" good fortune and contentment with it; how popular and beloved
+she was among them, and what an elegant house her generous husband had
+bestowed upon her; could still hint at the instability of her own plans,
+and the possibility that she might, at any day or hour, determine to
+leave her native State and follow her "daughter" into what the latter
+represented was not an unpleasant exile.
+
+An end was put to this innocent deception--for, if any deception can
+be termed innocent, it is surely that by which he who practises it
+is himself beguiled--the blameless guile was then arrested by a story
+repeated to her by her indignant hosts, as having emanated directly
+from Mrs. Aylett. She had given expression, publicly, at a large
+dinner-party, to her amazement and pity at the self-delusion under which
+"poor, dear Mrs. Sutton" labored, in expecting to take up her residence
+with Mr. and Mrs. Dorrance.
+
+"My brother laments her hallucination as much, if not more than his wife
+does," she said, in her best modulations of creamy compassion. "But,
+indeed, my dear Mrs. Branch, they are not accountable for it. Not a
+syllable has ever escaped either of them which a reasonable person
+could construe into a request that she should become an inmate of their
+household. So careful have they been to avoid exciting her expectations
+in this regard, that they have refrained from extending to her an
+invitation for even a month. Those who are most familiar with the poor
+lady's peculiarities do not require to be told how ill-advised would be
+the arrangement she desires. Mabel is a thoroughly sensible woman,
+and too devoted a wife to advocate anything so injudicious, while her
+husband is naturally jealous for her dignity and the inviolability of
+her authority in her own house. Mrs. Sutton left Ridgeley in opposition
+to our earnest entreaties that she would spend the evening of her days
+with us. I was assured then, as I am now, that she would receive
+the same love and respect nowhere else. But she could not brook the
+semblance of interference with her rule where she had reigned so long
+and irresponsibly. And while we may deplore, we can hardly find fault
+with this weakness. It must have been a trial--and not an ordinary
+one--to be obliged, at her age, to resign the sceptre she had swayed for
+upward of fifteen years."
+
+"'Their words are smoother than oil, but in their mouths is a drawn
+sword,'" quoted Mrs. Sutton, in meek protest against the sugared malice
+of this slander when it was told to her. "This is none of Mabel's
+doings. She loves me dearly as ever, but one might as well hope to move
+the Blue Ridge as to teach that pragmatical husband of hers to consult
+her wishes and her good, before he does his own. His head is hard as a
+flint, and his heart--never mind! Heaven forgive me if I am unjust to
+him! I should be thankful that he does not really mean to misuse my
+darling. Now, my dears, you see how undesirable an inmate of any house I
+am rated to be. If you wish to retract your offer of a hiding-place for
+my old head, I shall not take it amiss. Thanks to Providence and my
+dear Frederic I have enough, to maintain me decently anywhere in this
+country. I shall never be chargeable to anybody for my food, victuals,
+and lodgings. If you are willing to let me board here and do odd
+stitches for the children when they tear their aprons and rub out
+the knees of their trowsers--just to keep me out of mischief, you
+understand!--I promise to be as little officious in housewifely concerns
+as it is in my nature to be."
+
+William Sutton and his wife--a woman who was both sagacious and
+amiable--reiterated their assurances that she could not confer a greater
+boon upon them than by remaining where she was, and with them she had
+stayed until Mr. Aylett sent over the Ridgeley carriage, one day in
+the third week in February, with a note from Mabel, begging her aunt to
+present herself, without needless delay, at the homestead, since she was
+not reckoned sufficiently strong to attempt the uneven and muddy roads
+that still separated them. Mrs. Aylett also dispatched a billet by the
+coachman, the graceful burden of which was the same as that of Mabel's
+petition, and the two long-sundered friends were speedily together;
+fellow-partakers of a bountiful and painstaking hospitality, which kept
+them continually in mind that they were guests, and not at home.
+
+The dialogue relative to Rosa Tazewell's matrimonial project took place
+on the third day of Mrs. Sutton's visit, in Mabel's chamber, and when
+the former, having talked off the topmost bubbles of her righteous
+wrath, recollected several very important letters--business and
+friendly--she ought to have written a week ago, and trotted off to her
+room where she could perform the neglected duty without visible
+and outward temptation to that she was more fond of doing--to wit,
+talking--the young wife continued to work steadily, and with apparent
+composure. It was not a bright face on which the light from the western
+windows fell, yet it was not unhappy. She had never pretended to herself
+that her marriage was a step toward happiness, but she had believed
+that it would secure to her a larger share of peace, immunity from
+disturbance, and independence of thought and action, than fell to her
+lot in her brother's house, and for these negative benefits she longed
+wearily.
+
+Mr. Aylett was not wantonly or openly unkind to his ward, and ungenerous
+persecution was utterly incompatible with the temper and habits of his
+lady wife, but between them they had contrived to make the girl's life
+very miserable. It was Winston's cue--adopted, let us hope, from the
+strict sense of duty he avowed had ever actuated him in his treatment
+of the charge bequeathed him by his father--to deport himself with calm,
+seldom-relaxed severity to one who had showed herself to be entirely
+unworthy of confidence; to exercise unremitting surveillance upon
+her personal association with young people out of the family and her
+correspondence, and to curb by look and oral reproof the most distant
+approach to what he condemned as indiscreet levity. In a thousand
+ways--many of them ingenious, and all severe, she was made to feel the
+curtailment of her liberty, and given to understand that it was the just
+retribution of her unlucky love-affair with an unprincipled adventurer.
+Mrs. Aylett professed to discountenance this policy--to be Mabel's
+secret friend and ally, while she deemed it unwise to combat her
+husband's will by overt measures for his sister's protection.
+
+Thus, for a year, the object of his real displeasure and her affected
+commiseration lived under a cloud, too proud to complain of her
+thraldom, but feeling it every second; mourning, in the seclusion of
+the trebly barred chambers of her heart, over her shattered idol and
+squandered affections, and fancying, in the morbid distrust engendered
+by the discovery of her lover's baseness, and the weight of her
+brother's unsparing reprobation of her insane imprudence, that she
+descried in every face, save Aunt Rachel's, contempt or rebuke for the
+faux pas that had so nearly cast a stigma upon her name and lineage.
+
+In Herbert Dorrance's honest admiration and assiduous courtship the
+most suspicious scrutiny could detect no tincture of either of these
+feelings, and it was not long before she took refuge in his society from
+the risk of being wounded and angered by the supposed exhibition of them
+in others. Here was one man who could not but know of her folly, in
+all its length, breadth, and depth, who was a witness of her daily
+chastisement for it at her guardian's hands, yet who esteemed her
+unsullied by the unworthy attachment, undegraded by punishment.
+Gratitude had a powerful auxiliary in her feverish longing to escape
+from scenes that kept alive to the quick, memories she would have
+annihilated, had her ability been commensurate with her will. All other
+associations with the house in which she, and her father before her, had
+been born, and in which she had passed her childhood and girlish days,
+were overrun by the thickly thronging and pertinacious recollections
+of the two short weeks Frederic Chilton had spent there with her. He
+haunted her walks and drives; trod, by her side, the resounding floor of
+the vine-covered portico, sat with her in parlor and halls; sang to her
+accompaniment when she would have exorcised the phantom by music--was
+always, whenever and wherever he appeared--the tender, ingenuous, manly
+youth she had loved and reverenced as the impersonation of her ideal
+lord; the demi-god whom she had worshipped, heart and soul--set, in
+her exulting imagination no lower than the angels, and beheld in the
+end,--with besmirched brow and debased mien, a disgraced sensualist,
+not merely a deceiver of another woman's innocent confidence, and her
+tempter to dishonor and wretchedness, but a poltroon--a whipped coward
+who had not dared to lift voice or pen in denial or extenuation of his
+crime.
+
+The law of reaction is of more nearly universal application in moral and
+in physical science than men are willing to believe. We have seen how
+cunningly Rosa calculated upon it, and wiser people than she, every day,
+attribute the most momentous actions of their lives to its influence.
+
+"My advice to every woman is to marry for GOODNESS--simple integrity of
+word and deed!" said a lady, once in my hearing.
+
+She was an excellent scholar, attractive in person and in manner,
+gifted in conversation and opulent in purse. Her hand had been sought
+in marriage by more than one, and in early womanhood she had made choice
+among her suitors of a man whose plausible exterior was the screen of a
+black heart and infamous life. Convinced of her mistake barely in time
+to escape copartnership in his stained name and ruined fortunes, she set
+up the history of her deadly peril as a beacon to others as ardent
+and unwary as her old-time self. Either to put a double point upon the
+moral, or to insure herself against similar mishap in the future, she
+wedded an amiable and correct fool, a mere incidental in the work of
+human creation, who was as incapable of making his mark upon the age
+that produced him as an angle-worm is of lettering solid granite.
+
+Mabel's husband was not a simpleton, or characterless; but if he had
+been, his prospects of success would not have been materially damaged
+by her knowledge of his deficiencies. A union with him was a safe
+investment, and must be several degrees more supportable than was her
+position at Ridgeley, banned by its owner and patronized by his wife. I
+neither excuse nor blame her for thus deciding and transacting. Should
+I censure, a majority of my readers--nearly all of the masculine
+portion--would pick holes in my unpractical philosophy, scout my
+reasoning as illogical, brand my conclusions as pernicious--winding up
+their protest with the sigh of the mazed disciples, when stunned by the
+great Teacher's deliverance upon the subject of divorce, "If the case of
+the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry!"
+
+Which dogma I likewise decline to dispute--falling back thankfully upon
+the blessed stronghold of unambitious story-tellers--namely, that my
+vocation is to describe what IS--not make fancy-sketches of millennial
+days, when rectitude shall be the best, because most remunerative
+policy; when sincerity shall be wisdom--proven and indisputable, and
+consistency the rule of human faith and practice the world over, instead
+of being, as it now is, one of the lost (or never invented) fine arts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII. -- JULIUS LENNOX. --
+
+
+
+"You are puttin' your eyes out, workin' so stiddy, honey, and it's
+gettin' dark."
+
+Mabel aroused herself from her intent attitude, and looked at the
+window. There was a brassy glimmer in the cloudy west; the rest of the
+sky was covered by thick vapors.
+
+"The days are still very short," she said, folding her work, and
+becoming aware that her eyes ached from long and close study of the
+intricate pattern.
+
+It was Mammy Phillis who had interrupted her reverie, and she now laid
+an armful of seasoned hickory wood upon the hearth, and set herself
+about mending the fire, taking up the ashes which had accumulated since
+morning, putting the charred sticks together, and collecting the embers
+into a compact bed.
+
+"We're goin' to have fallin' weather 'fore long," she observed,
+oracularly. "The wind has changed since dinner, and when the wind whirls
+about on a sudden, we upon this ridge is the fust to find it out. I must
+see that them lazy chil'len, Lena and Lizy, fills your wood-box to-night
+with dry wood; I'd be loth to have you ketch cold while you are here."
+
+"You are very good, Mammy, but why do you trouble yourself to attend to
+my fire? You should have sent up Lena with that great load of logs."
+
+"I ain't easy without I see to you myself, at least once a day. It
+'minds me of the good ole times to wait upon you. O, Lord! how long?"
+shaking her tartan turban with a portentous groan, her chin almost
+scraping the hearth, as she stooped to blow into the crater of fiery
+coals.
+
+Mabel was too well versed in the customs of the race and class to
+take alarm at the mysterious invocation. She watched the old woman's
+movements in a sort of pensive amusement at the recollection of an
+incident of her childhood, brought vividly to her mind by the servant's
+air and exclamation.
+
+She was playing in the yard one day, when "Mammy" emerged from her
+cottage-door, and came toward her, with a batch of sweet cakes she had
+just baked for her nursling.
+
+In crossing the gravel walk leading to the "house," she struck her toe
+against the brick facing of this, and the cakes flew in all directions.
+
+"Good Lord! my poor toe and my poor chile's cakes!" was her vehement
+interjection; and as she bent to gather up the cookies, she grunted out
+the same adjuration, coupled with "my poor ole back!"--a negress' stock
+subject of complaint, let her be but twenty years old and as strong as
+an ox.
+
+"Mammy!" said the privileged child, reprovingly, "I thought you were too
+good a Christian to break the commandments in that way. You shouldn't
+take the Lord's name in vain."
+
+"Gracious! Sugar-pie! how you talk! Ef I don't call 'pon Him in time of
+trouble, who can I ask to help me?" was the confident reply.
+
+With no thought of any more formidable cause of outcry than a cramp
+in the much-quoted spine, Mabel dreamed on sketchily and indolently,
+enjoying the sight of the once-familiar process of building a wood-fire,
+until the yellow serpents of flame crept, red-tongued through the
+interstices of the lower logs, and the larger and upper began to sing
+the low, drowsy tune, more suggestive of home-cheer and fireside comfort
+than the shrill, monotonous chirp of the famous cricket on the hearth.
+The pipe-clayed bricks on which the andirons rested were next swept
+clean; the hearth-brush hung up on its nail, and the architect of the
+edifice stepped back with a satisfied nod.
+
+"I have often wished for a glimpse of one of your beautiful fires,
+Mammy, since I have been in Albany," said Mabel, kindly. "Our rooms and
+halls are all heated by furnaces. An open fireplace would be a novelty
+to Northerners, and such a roaring, blazing pile of hard wood as that,
+be considered an unpardonable extravagance."
+
+"Humph! I never did have no 'pinion of them people." Phillis tossed her
+turban and cocked her prominent chin. "It's all make money, and save!
+save! If I was 'lowed to go with you, I'll be bound I'd see you have
+sech things as you've been 'customed to. The new folks, them what comed
+from nothin' and nowhar, and made every dollar they can call their own
+with their own hands, don't know how to feel for and look after real
+ladies."
+
+"You are wrong about that, if you mean that I have not every comfort
+I could ask. My house is warm in the bitterest weather, and far more
+handsomely furnished than this. And I have many kind friends. I like the
+Northern people, and so would you, if you knew them well."
+
+"They send dreadful poor samples down this way, then," muttered Phillis,
+significantly. "And, some as pertends to be somebody is nobody, or wuss,
+ef the truth was known. Don't talk to me 'bout 'em, Miss Mabel, darling!
+'Twas a mighty black day for us when one on 'em fust laid eyes upon
+Mars' Winston. You've hearn, ain't you, that my house is to be tore
+down, and I'm to go into the quarters 'long with the field hands and
+sich like common trash? So long as our skins is all the same color, some
+folks can't see no difference in us."
+
+"I had not heard it. I am sorry."
+
+Mabel spoke earnestly, for "Mammy's house," a neat frame cottage a
+story-and-a-half high, embowered in locust-trees, and with a thrifty,
+although aged garden--honeysuckle clambering all over the front, was
+to her one of the dearest pictures of her early days. She could see
+herself, now--the motherless babe whom Aunt Rachel and Mammy had never
+let feel her orphanage--sitting on the door-step, bedecking her doll
+with the odorous pink-and-white blossoms in summer time, and in autumn
+with the light-red berries.
+
+"Why is that done?" she asked.
+
+"I spiles the prospect, honey!" fiercely--ironical. "Northern folks
+has tender eyes, and I hurts 'em--me and my poor little house what ole
+marster built for me when Mars' Winston was a baby, and your blessed ma
+couldn't be easy 'thout I was near her--WE spiles the prospect! So, it
+must be knocked down and carted away for rubbish to build pig-pens, I
+'spose, and me sent off to live 'mong low-lived niggers, sech as I've
+always held myself above. She ain't never put it into Mars' Winston's
+head to cut down the trees that shets off the "prospect" of the colored
+people's burying-ground from her winder. There's some things she'd as
+lief not see. I oughtn't to mind this so much, I know, for I ain't got
+long for to stay here nohow, but I did hope to die in my nest!" sobbing
+behind her apron.
+
+"I am very sorry--more grieved than you can think!" repeated Mabel. "If
+I could help you in any way, I would. But I cannot!"
+
+"Bless your heart! Don't I know that, dear! Here, you ain't got no more
+power nor me. But I WAS a-thinkin' that maybe you wouldn't think me too
+old for a nuss when you come to want one, and could manage to take me
+with you when you went home. I'se a heap of wear in me yit, and there
+ain't nothing 'bout babies I don't understand."
+
+Mabel colored painfully.
+
+"If I had my way"--she began--then altered her plan of reply. "I could
+not enter into such an arrangement without consulting Mr. Dorrance,
+Mammy, and I am afraid he would not think as favorably of it as you and
+I do. He has been brought up with different ideas, you see."
+
+"Um-HUM!"
+
+An interjection capable of as many and as varied meanings in the mouth
+of a colored woman of her stamp as was little Jean Baptiste's "altro!"
+It signified now--"I comprehend a great deal more than you want me to
+perceive--you poor, downtrodden angel!"
+
+"Um-HUM. I always did say he was his sister's own brother--for all they
+don't look a bit alike. What's born into a man never comes out!"
+
+"Mr. Dorrance is my husband, Mammy! I shall not let you speak
+disrespectfully of him. He does what he believes to be right and just,"
+returned Mabel, sternly.
+
+"I ain't a-goin' to arger that with you, my sugar-plum! You're right to
+stand up for him. I beg your pardon ef I've seemed sassy or hurt your
+feelin's. And I dar' say, there mayn't be nothin' wuss 'bout him nor his
+outside. And that don't matter so much, ef people's insides is clean and
+straight in the sight of the Lord. But HER outside is all that's decent
+about her, ef you'll listen to me--"
+
+"You are forgetting yourself again!" said Mabel, unable to suppress a
+smile. "Mrs. Aylett is your mistress--"
+
+The woman's queer behavior arrested the remonstrance. Stepping on tiptoe
+to the door she locked it, and approached her young mistress with an
+ostentatious attempt at treading lightly, shaking her head and pursing
+up her mouth in token of secrecy, while she fumbled in her bosom for
+something that seemed hard to get at. Drawing it forth at last she laid
+it in Mabel's lap--a small leather wallet, glossy with use, tattered at
+the corners, and tied up with a bit of dirty twine.
+
+"What is this, and what am I to do with it?"
+
+Mabel shrank from touching it, so foul and generally disreputable was
+its appearance.
+
+"Keep both your ears open, dearie, and I'll tell you all I know!"
+
+And with infinite prolixity and numerous digressions she recounted how,
+in removing the sodden clothing of the unknown man who had been picked
+up on the lawn on that memorable stormy Christmas night, more than a year
+before, this had slipped from an inner breast-pocket of the coat, "right
+into her hand." Not caring to disturb the doctor's examination of his
+patient, or to tempt the cupidity of her fellow-servants by starting the
+notion that there might be other valuables hidden in the articles they
+handled so carelessly, she had pocketed it, unobserved by them, guessing
+that it would be of service at the inquest. Her purpose of producing
+it then was, according to her showing, reversed by Mrs. Aylett's stolen
+visit to the chamber and minute inspection of garments she would not
+have touched unless urged to the disagreeable task by some mighty
+consideration of duty, self-interest, or fear.
+
+"'Then,' thinks I"--Phillis stated the various steps of her
+reasoning--"'you wouldn't take the trouble to pull over them nasty,
+muddy close, 'thout you expected to get some good out on 'em, or was
+afeard of somethin' or 'nother fallin' into somebody else's hands.'
+Whichsomever this mought be,'twasn't my business to be gittin' up a
+row and a to-do before the crowner and all them gentlemen. 'Least
+said soonest mended,' says I to myself, and keeps mum about the whole
+thing--what I'd got, and what I'd seen. But when I come to think it all
+over arterward, I was skeered for true at what I'd done, and for fear
+Mars' Winston wouldn't like it. What reason could I give him for hidin'
+of the pocketbook, ef I give it up to him? Ef I tole all the truth,
+SHE'D be mad as a March hare, and like as not face me down that all
+I had said was a dream or a lie, or that I was drunk that night and
+couldn't see straight. I'd hearn her tell too many fibs with a smooth
+tongue and a sweet smile not to be sure of that! So, all I should git
+for my care of the repertation of my fam'ly would be her ill-will, and
+to be 'cused by other people of stealin', and for the rest of my days
+she'd do all she could to spite me. For I'm sure as I stand here, Miss
+Mabel, that she knew, or thought she knew, somethin' 'bout that poor,
+despisable wretch that died up in the garret. What else brought him
+a-spyin' 'round here, and what was there to make her faint when she
+ketched sight of him a-lookin' in at her through the winder? and what
+COULD a sent her upstars when everybody else was asleep, fur to haul his
+close about, and poke them fine white fingers of hern into his pockets,
+and pull his WHISKERY face over to the light so's to see it better?
+Depend 'pon it, there's a bad story at the bottom of this somewhere.
+I've hearn of many a sich that came of gentlemens' marrying forringers
+what nobody knowed anything about. Anyhow, I want you to take keer of
+this 'ere pocketbook. Ef I was to die all of a suddent, and 'twas found
+'mong my things, some mischief mought be hatched out on it. It's safer
+in your hands nor it is in mine. Now, I'll jest light your lamp, and
+you can 'xamine it, and pitch it into the fire, ef you like, when you're
+through."
+
+In a cooler moment Mabel would have hesitated to obey the advice of an
+ignorant, prejudiced person, her inferior in station and intelligence.
+But in the whirl of astonishment, incredulity, and speculation created
+by the tale she had heard, she untied the string which formed the
+primitive fastening of the worn wallet, and unclosed it.
+
+The main compartment contained four tickets, issued by as many different
+pawnbrokers, testifying that such and such articles had been deposited
+with them for and in consideration of moneys advanced by them to Thomas
+Lindsay; a liquor-seller's score against William Jones--unpaid; and a
+tavern bill, in which brandy and water, whiskey and mint-juleps, were
+the principal items charged against Edmund Jackson. This last was
+the only paper which bore the indorsement "Rec'd payment," and this
+circumstance had, probably, led to its preservation. The adjoining
+division of the wallet was sewed up with stout black thread and Mabel
+had to resort to her scissors before she could get at its contents.
+These were a couple of worn envelopes, crumpled and dog-eared, and
+stained with liquor or salt water, but still bearing the address, in a
+feminine hand, of "Lieutenant Julius Lennox, U. S. N." In addition to
+this, one was directed to Havana, Cuba; the other to Calcutta, in care,
+of a mercantile or banking-house at each place. A third cover bore the
+superscription, "CERTIFICATE," in bold characters.
+
+The negress' watchful eyes dilated with greedy expectancy at Mrs.
+Dorrance's ghastly face when this last had been examined, but she
+was foiled if she hoped for any valuable addition to her store of
+information, or anything resembling elucidation of her pet mystery.
+
+"It will take me some time to read all these," remarked Mabel, still
+scanning the half-sheet she held. "You had better not wait, Mammy. They
+are safe with me. No one else shall see them, and no harm can come to
+you through them."
+
+She promised mechanically what she supposed would soonest buy for
+her privacy and needed quiet, and gave no heed to the manifest
+disappointment of her visitor.
+
+When she was at last alone, Mrs. Dorrance relocked the door, and bent
+close to the lamp, as if more light upon the surface of the document
+would tend to clear up the terrible secret thus strangely committed
+to her discretion and mercy. The paper was a certificate, drawn up in
+regular form, and signed by a clergyman, whose address was appended
+below, in a different hand writing--of a marriage between Julius Lennox
+and Clara Louise Dorrance.
+
+"Her very name!" repeated the whitening lips. "I remember asking her
+once what the 'L' in her signature stood for."
+
+But while she said it, there was a look in the reader's eye that bespoke
+inability or reluctance to grapple with the revelation threatened by the
+discovery.
+
+"The letters may tell me more!" she added, in the same frightened
+whisper, refolding the certificate.
+
+They did--for they were in the long, sloping chirography of her
+sister-in-law, and signed "Your ever-fond, but lonely wife." Each
+contained, moreover, allusions to "Ellis," to "Clermont," to "Julia,"
+and to "Herbert"--all family names in the Dorrance connection; spoke
+gratefully of her parents' kindness to his "poor Louise" in the absence
+of "her beloved Julius;" and was liberally spiced with passionate
+protestations of her inconsolableness and yearnings for his return. Both
+were dated ten years back, and the paper was yellow with time, besides
+being creased and thumbed as by many readings.
+
+"What am I to do?" thought Mabel, sinking into her chair, trembling all
+over with terror and incertitude.
+
+If there were one sentiment in Winston Aylett's heart that equalled
+his haughtiness, it was love for his wife. But could it be that he had
+totally forgotten pride and his habitual caution in the selection of
+the woman who was to be the partner of his home, fortune, and
+reputation--possibly the mother of children who were to perpetuate
+the noble name he bore? By what miracle of unrighteous craft, what
+subornation of witnesses, what concealments, what barefaced and
+unscrupulous falsehoods had this adventuress been imposed upon him as
+unmarried, when the evidence of her former wedlock was held by a low
+stroller--a drunken wretch who might betray it in an unguarded or
+insane hour, and who, judging from his exterior, would not be averse
+to publishing or selling the information if he could make more money
+by doing this than by preserving the secret. And how came he by these
+papers?
+
+Confused, partly by his numerous aliases, more by incapacity to conceive
+of such depth and complication of horror as were revealed by the
+idea, the perplexed thinker did not, for a while, admit to herself the
+possibility that the nameless vagabond may have been Clara's living
+husband, instead of a mercenary villain who had secured surreptitiously
+the proofs of a marriage she wished the world to forget. Having learned
+that she had wedded, a second time, in her maiden name, and that
+her antecedents were unsuspected in her present home, the thought
+of extorting a bribe to continued silence, from the wealthy lady of
+Ridgeley, would have occurred to any common rascal with more audacity
+than principle. It was but a spark--the merest point of light that
+showed her the verge of the precipice toward which one link after
+another of the chain of circumstantial evidence was dragging her.
+
+Groping dizzily among her recollections of that Christmas night, there
+gleamed luridly upon her the vision of Mrs. Aylett's strange smile,
+as she said, "It may be that his wife, if she were cognizant of his
+condition, would not lift a finger or take a step to save his life, or
+to prolong it for an hour!"
+
+Then, in response to Mabel's indignant reply--the momentary passion
+darting from her hitherto languorous orbs, and vibrating in her accents,
+in adding--"There are women in whose hearts the monument to departed
+affection is a hatred that can never die."
+
+If this man were a stranger, from whom she had nothing to fear, why her
+extraordinary agitation at seeing him, even imperfectly, through the
+window? She must have known him well to recognize him in the darkness
+and at that fleeting glimpse. Perhaps she had believed him dead, until
+then! This would account for her clandestine visit to his chamber, to
+which Mrs. Sutton and her niece had gone, without effort at concealment;
+explain the rigid examination of his clothing ensuing upon her scrutiny
+of his features.
+
+"I must be mad!" Mabel said, here, pressing her hand to her head. "There
+does not live the woman, however wicked and hypocritical, who could sit
+at ease in the midst of ill-gotten luxury, on an inclement night, and
+talk smilingly of other things, if she suspected that one she had known,
+much less loved, lay dying in wretchedness and solitude so near her."
+
+The vagrant was some evil-disposed spy, whose person Clara knew, and
+whose intentions she had reason to dread were unfriendly. Had she
+dared--for she was daring--to attempt this nefarious plot against the
+fair fame and happiness of an honorable gentleman, her family would not
+have become her accomplices. They could not have blinded themselves to
+the perils of the enterprise, the extreme probabilities of detection,
+the consequences of Winston's anger. Herbert, at least, would have
+forbidden the unlawful deceit. When his sister was wedded to Winston,
+he believed that her first husband was no longer in the land of the
+living--as she must also have done.
+
+"For he is a good--an upright man!" thought the wife. "But he was privy
+to the fact of her previous marriage! Why have I never heard of it? He
+has invariably spoken of Clara as having lived single in her mother's
+house up to the date of her union with my brother."
+
+She could not but remember, likewise, that there was a certain tone
+about the Dorrance connection she had never quite comprehended or
+liked--a reticence with respect to details of family history, while
+they were voluble upon generalities, over-fond of lauding one another's
+exploits, virtues, and accomplishments; referring in wonderful pride to
+"our beloved father," and extolling "our precious mother," who, by the
+way, was so little in request among the children, that she had, since
+Clara's marriage, occupied apartments in a second-rate boarding-house in
+Boston. Mabel, when convinced of the futility of her hope of having
+Aunt Rachel with her, had proposed to offer Mrs. Dorrance a house in
+the commodious mansion of her youngest son; but Herbert, with no show
+of gratification at what he must have known was a sacrifice of her
+inclinations, had coolly reasoned down the suggestion. The whole
+tribe--if she excepted her husband, and perhaps Clara--had, to her
+perception, a tinge of Bohemianism, although all were in comfortable
+circumstances, and lived showily. Mabel had often chided herself for
+uncharitable judgment and groundless prejudice, in admitting these
+impressions of her relatives-in-law; but they returned upon her in this
+twilight reverie with the force of convictions she was, each moment,
+less able to combat. What darker secret lay back of the concealment
+her rectitude of principle and sense of justice declared to be
+unjustifiable? and might not this concerted and persistent reserve imply
+others yet more culpable?
+
+It showed her correct estimate of her brother's character, that she
+never for a second accused him of connivance in the deceit practised
+upon his relations and neighbors. He would not have scrupled to wed
+a widow, knowing and acknowledging her to be such. Nothing--not love,
+tenfold more ardent and irrational than that he felt for his siren
+wife--could have wrought upon him to introduce to the world, as Mrs.
+Aylett of Ridgeley, one who had been before married, and was ashamed,
+for any cause whatever, to avow this. The blemish left by the acrid
+breath of common scandal upon a woman's fame was to him ineffaceable by
+any process yet discovered by pitying man or angels. The maligned one
+may not have erred from the straitest road of virtue and discretion, but
+she had been "talked about," and was no consort for him. In his State
+and caste, private marriages were things disallowed, and but one shade
+more respectable than liasons that did not pretend to the sanctity of
+wedlock. What would he say when the contents of this dingy pocket-book
+were spread before him? Ought his sister to do this?
+
+COULD she? He had not earned compassionate consideration from her by
+any act of gentleness and forbearance. He had handled the lopping-knife
+without ruth, and let the gaping wounds bleed as long as the bitter
+ichor would ooze from her heart. She had learned hardness and
+self-control from the lesson, but not vindictiveness. Now that the power
+was hers to visit upon his haughty spirit something of the humiliation
+and distress he had not spared her; that it was her turn to
+harangue upon mesalliances and love-matches, and want of circumspect
+investigation into early records before committing one's self to
+a contract of marriage--she recoiled at the thought; felt, in her
+exceeding pity for the trustful husband, a stirring of the love she had
+herself once borne him in the days when the changed homestead was her
+world, and its master a king among men.
+
+And yet--and yet--was it the truest friendship--the most prudent course
+to prolong the ignorance which left him liable at any moment to be
+shocked into the perpetration of some desperate deed by the discovery,
+through some other channel, of his wife's perfidy, and the abominable
+snare that bad been woven about him!
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV. -- "BORN DEAD."
+
+
+MABEL was still turning the vexed question of right and expediency over
+in her fast-heating brain, the next evening, as she sat in the parlor,
+and feigned to hearken to the diligent duett-practising going on at the
+piano, her husband and Mrs. Aylett being the performers.
+
+Mrs. Sutton had gone home that afternoon, engaging to return for a
+longer sojourn in the course of a month. Mr. Aylett read his newspaper
+at one side of the centre table, and his sister employed her fingers and
+eyes at the other with a trifle of fancy-work---an antimacassar she
+was crocheting for her hostess. Her industrious or fidgetty habits were
+chronic and inveterate, and people, in remarking upon them, did not
+reflect that this species of restlessness is in itself a disease, seldom
+analyzed, more seldom cured. There are few students or physicians of
+human nature, in this world of superficial observers, who go deep enough
+into the springs of man's action to distinguish the external symptoms
+of heart-cancer from ossification, or to learn the difference between
+satiety and atrophy. A night of nervous sleeplessness, a day of
+irresolution and dread, had aggravated almost beyond her control the
+restlessness which in Mabel was the unerring indication of unhealthiness
+of mind and body. To sit still was impracticable; to talk connectedly
+and easily would soon be as difficult. She was glad to see Aunt Rachel
+go--immeasurably relieved when a musical evening was proposed by the
+brother and sister, seconding the motion with alacrity that called forth
+a pleased smile from the one, and a look of surprised inquisitiveness
+from the other.
+
+"You have grown more fond of instrumental music," said Mrs. Aylett, half
+interrogatively. "You used always to prefer vocal."
+
+"Try me and see what an appreciative listener I am," rejoined Mabel,
+with a sickly smile, and the concert commenced.
+
+Overmuch thought upon the revelation of the preceding day had begotten
+in her, fears of the imminence of the dangers to Winston's peace of
+mind--a persuasion that the birds of the air and the restless air itself
+might bear to him the news she still withheld. Mammy had averred, upon
+her cross-examination, that "not a living soul had ever seen the wallet"
+since it fell from the dying man's pocket--an affirmation Mabel could
+not decide whether to believe or discredit. If she could but be certain
+that the secret was all hers!
+
+She trembled guiltily when her brother folded his last paper, and
+sauntered around to the back of her chair, leaning upon it, while he
+affected to be interested in her work, and the too-ready scarlet blood
+pulsed now hotly in her cheeks with each moment of his mute observation.
+
+"I heard a piece of news to-day," he said, presently, in his most even
+tone; but Mabel's start upon her seat was almost a leap, while her
+fingers moved faster and more irregularly.
+
+"I suspect, from your unsettled demeanor this evening, that it reached
+you before it did me," continued he. "I can attribute your badly
+suppressed pertubation to no other cause. Mrs. Sutton is such an
+indefatigable gossip, that this item could hardly have passed her by.
+Has she told you that Rosa Tazewell is shortly to become Mrs. Chilton?"
+
+"She has."
+
+He thought she was nerving herself to a simulation of hardihood, and the
+long-indulged habit of censorship was strong upon him.
+
+"I had trusted, until to-day, Mabel, that you had conquered that
+disgraceful weakness," he resumed, yet more pitilessly.
+
+Domination was one of his besetting sins. He never saw a helpless or
+cowering thing without feeling the inclination to set his foot upon it,
+and the least show of resistance in such, piqued him into despotism.
+
+"I was aware that it was not dead when you married a man worth a
+thousand such scoundrels as that fellow in Philadelphia. I believed that
+the sentiment was powerful in impelling you to that marriage, and that
+this irrevocable measure would be an antidote to the evil. It was a wise
+course, and I commended you for pursuing it. But I am too well read in
+your countenance and moods not to see that there is something far amiss
+with you. You have been playing a part for twenty-four hours, and you
+have played it wretchedly. Your nervous flutters and laugh, your sudden
+changes of complexion, and the incoherence of your language, would
+betray you to the least penetrating observer. I caution you to be on
+your guard lest your husband should take just offence at all this. The
+need of dissimulation is the evidence that something is radically wrong
+in your moral nature, and is derogatory to your lawful partner. I am
+ashamed to remind you of the golden maxim of wedded life--that without
+perfect and mutual confidence there can be no substantial happiness.
+Does Dorrance know of your escapade at the Springs?"
+
+"If you refer to my engagement to Mr. Chilton, I told him of it before
+our marriage."
+
+"I rejoice to hear it--am pleased at this one proof of good sense and
+right feeling," in lofty patronage. "You owed him no less. You have,
+without doubt been informed long since how I obtained the most important
+proof against that villain?"
+
+"I have not heard Mr. Chilton's name in a year until yesterday," said
+Mabel, the scarlet spots ceasing to flicker, and her voice hard as was
+his own.
+
+Unable to interpret her sudden steadiness of demeanor and accent,
+Winston leaped to the irritating conclusion that she was sullen, and
+meditated a defiant retreat from this untimely usurpation of his olden
+authority.
+
+"It was injudicious--miserably ill-judged in Dorrance not to acquaint
+you with this. I have always feared lest his indulgence might not be the
+most salutary method of repressing your self-will and pride of opinion.
+You, more than any other woman I know, require the tight rein of
+vigilant discipline. I intimated as much to Dorrance when he asked my
+consent to your engagement. But this is his lookout, not mine. What I
+began to say was that, in MY opinion, he would have acted more sensibly
+had he not encouraged your squeamish repugnance to talking of your early
+fault and its mortifying consequences."
+
+"Fortunately for me, my husband is a man of feeling and delicacy!" Mabel
+was goaded to boast. "I said to him, the evening of our betrothal, that
+the subject you have chosen to revive to-night was painful to me, and he
+has respected the reluctance you condemn."
+
+"He would have overcome it more quickly and thoroughly had he informed
+you that he had had the honor of horse-whipping your ci-devant
+betrothed!" sneered Winston, with white dinted nostrils. "That he was
+the author of the letter, a portion of which I copied for your perusal,
+when I announced the dissolution of your provisional engagement--the
+main agent, in effect, of the rupture, since but for him I should
+have had much difficulty in proving what I had believed from the
+beginning--that the rascal ought to be shot for presuming to think of
+you in any other light than as the merest acquaintance. And he should
+never have been that, had I been with you that unlucky summer."
+
+"We have been over that ground so often, Winston, that both of us should
+be tolerably familiar with it," rejoined Mabel, decidedly. "I prefer
+that, instead of reviewing the circumstances of what you term my 'early
+fault,' you should show me the evidence of your singular assertion
+respecting Mr. Dorrance's agency in a matter in which he could not at
+that time have had the slightest personal interest. Or, shall I ask him?
+It is an enigma to me."
+
+Without other answer than a contemptuous laugh, Winston left the room,
+unnoticed by the musicians. But before she could form a conjecture as
+to the meaning of his abrupt movement, he was back with a letter in his
+hand.
+
+"Documentary testimony!" he said, shortly, passing it to her. "I should
+have forwarded it entire, instead of transcribing an extract, but for
+Clara's fear lest you should be led thereby to dislike her brother
+before you had ever seen him. I take it there is no danger of
+prejudicing you against him now!"
+
+The letter was from Herbert Dorrance, and began thus:
+
+"Mr. Aylett:
+
+"Dear Sir,--Your favor of the 15th, enclosed in one from my sister,
+reached me this morning."
+
+Then followed the expose of Frederic Chilton's misdeeds, which Winston
+had transferred to his own epistle to Mabel, as the leading argument in
+his refusal to sanction her engagement.
+
+Mabel read it through without flinching; then turned over to the first
+page and put her finger upon a paragraph.
+
+"Who was the lady here mentioned?"
+
+Mr. Aylett shrugged his fine shoulders.
+
+"I have never interested myself to inquire. Beyond the statement of your
+friend's rascality, the story was nothing to me."
+
+"Herbert!"
+
+The ringing call--sharp and clear--checked the pianists in the middle of
+a bar.
+
+"Step here a moment, if you please!"
+
+The novelty of the imperative tone and the glitter of his wife's eyes
+moved Mr. Dorrance to more prompt compliance than he would have adjudged
+to be dignified and husbandly in the case of another man.
+
+Mabel held out the letter at his approach, still pointing to the passage
+she had asked her brother to explain.
+
+"To whom does this refer? Who was the relative whose husband was a naval
+officer?"
+
+Herbert Dorrance's constitutional phlegm was a valuable ally in the very
+contracted quarters into which this question drove him, but his sister
+was his deliverer. Affecting forgetfulness of the letter and its
+contents, he glanced down one page, Mrs. Aylett leaning upon his arm,
+and reading with him.
+
+"I don't think you need mind telling the name, here and at this late
+day, Herbert," she said, seriously and slowly, "provided Mabel will
+never repeat the story when it can do harm. Have you never heard any of
+us speak of poor Ellen Lester, my mother's niece, who died several
+years before your marriage?" accosting her sister-in-law, with a face so
+devoid of aught resembling cowardly or guilty fears, that Mabel's brain,
+tried and shaken, tottered into disbelief at her own wild surmises.
+
+"Not that I remember!"
+
+"Is that so? Yet it might easily have been. She accompanied her husband
+upon his last voyage, and the ship was never heard of again. Her
+parents are dead, too, so there are few to cherish her memory. She was a
+school-fellow of mine, and Herbert loved her as a sister."
+
+Mabel was gazing fixedly at her husband's stolid countenance and averted
+eyes, and made no rejoinder until the silent intensity of her regards
+compelled him to look up. Reading distrust and alarm in these, he shook
+off his sister's warning hold.
+
+"When you wish to catechise me upon family matters, Mabel, it is my wish
+that you should do it in private," he said, roughly. "Then you shall
+learn all that it concerns you to know. There are subjects into which
+only prurient curiosity cares to pry."
+
+"I beg your pardon!" answered Mabel, quietly. "I have but to say, in
+self-defence, that I did not ask to see the letter."
+
+"It is a matter of profound indifference to me whether you did or not,"
+was the reply. "For aught that I know or cared, you may have read it a
+year and a half ago. I retract nothing that is set down there. Clara,
+shall we go on with our music?"
+
+Glancing around stealthily at the finale of the (sic) he saw that
+Mabel's chair was vacant, and Mr. Aylett was reading composedly beneath
+the lamp.
+
+Clara made the same discovery at the same moment, and came forward
+laughing to her husband.
+
+"What had you been saying to our dear, excitable Mabel, that challenged
+the introduction of that unfortunate document?"
+
+"Told her of Frederic Chilton's intended marriage!" curtly, and without
+laying aside his volume.
+
+"Preposterous!"
+
+"I agree with you--but it is the truth."
+
+Herbert stood apart glowing at the fire.
+
+"You must have approached the subject unskilfully," urged the
+peacemaker. "These old sores are oest left alone."
+
+"It is best for married woman to have none," retorted Winston, doggedly.
+
+"She does not persist in doubting his unworthiness, does she?" queried
+the wife, aside, but not so cautiously that her brother did not hear
+her.
+
+He wheeled about suddenly.
+
+"She SHALL believe it, or call me a liar to my face!" he uttered,
+angrily. "I will put a stop to this sentimental folly!"
+
+"You are late in beginning your reforms," observed Mr. Aylett, dryly.
+
+"You are a less sensible man than I give you credit for being, if you
+ever begin!" interposed his sister.
+
+"Leave Mabel to herself until she recovers from the shock--if it be
+one--of this intelligence. The surest means of keeping alive a dying
+coal is to stir and blow upon it. And even we"--lifting the heavy locks
+of her husband's hair in playful dalliance--"even we are mortal. We
+have had our peccadilloes and our repentances, and have now our little
+concealments of affairs that would interest nobody but ourselves. Do
+you hear what I am saying, Herbert! Leave off your high tragedy airs and
+attend to reason, as expressed in your sister's advice. While your wife
+is my invalid guest, I will not have her subjected to any inquisitorial
+process. There is a time for everything under the sun, saith the
+preacher. This is the season for tender forbearance, and if need be, of
+forgiveness."
+
+Herbert blessed her humane tolerance in his alarmed heart, when Mabel
+awoke from her troubled slumbers at midnight, in extreme pain, that
+culminated before dawn, in convulsions.
+
+Two physicians were hastily summoned, and when Mrs. Sutton arrived about
+noon, she met Phillis outside the door of the sick-chamber, carrying a
+lifeless infant in her arms, and weeping bitterly.
+
+This was the end of the months of hopeful longing and glad anticipation
+which were Heaven's messengers of healing and comfort to the sick and
+lonely heart. The cunningly-fashioned robes were never to have a wearer,
+the clasping arms to remain still empty. Oh wondrous mystery--past
+finding out--of the human soul! Had the lungs once heaved with breath,
+the heart given one throb; the eyes caught one beam of Heaven's light
+ere they were sealed fast in eternal darkness, she, who travailed with
+the infant through the inexpressible agony of birth, would have been
+written a mother among women; have had the right accorded her, without
+the cavil of formalist or the disputations of science, to claim the
+precious thing as her own still--a living baby-spirit that had fluttered
+back to the bosom of the Almighty Father, after alighting, for one
+painful moment, upon the confines of the lower world. As it was, custom
+ordained that there should be no mourning for what had never really
+been. Anguish, hope, and the patient love at which we do not scoff when
+the mother-bird broods over the eggs that may never hatch--these were to
+be no more named or remembered. In silence and without sympathy she must
+endure her disappointment. The tenderest woman about whose knees cluster
+living children, and who has sowed in tears the blessed seed, that in
+the resurrection-morn shall be gathered in beauteous sheaves of richest
+recompense--would smile in pitying contempt over the tiny headstone
+which should be lettered--"Born Dead."
+
+All this and much more Mabel was to learn with the return of health and
+reason, but she lay now, like one who had passed for herself the narrow
+sea that separates the Now from the Hereafter; her features chiselled
+into the unmoving outlines of a waxen image, only a feeble flutter of
+breath and pulse telling that this was lethargy, not death. They watched
+her all night, Mrs. Sutton on one side and Phillis on the other, the
+family physician stealing in with slippered tread from hour to hour, to
+note with his sensitive touch if the few poor drops of vital blood yet
+trickled from veins to heart, always with the same directions, "Give her
+the stimulant while she can swallow it. It is the only hope of saving
+her."
+
+Armed with this, the two devoted women fought the Destroyer, praying
+inaudibly, while they wrought, for the life of the child they had reared
+to her sorrowful womanhood.
+
+"HE'S asleep, and so is SHE!" whispered Phillis, once, pointing
+alternately to the adjoining room where Herbert Dorrance awaited the
+issue of this critical stage of his wife's illness, and to Mrs. Aylett's
+chamber across the hall. "The Lord forgive 'em both! It won't be they
+two that will shed many tears if so be she doesn't see the light of
+another day--the murdered lamb! They tormented the life out of her. I
+passed by her room last night before bed-time, and heard her a-sobbin'
+and talkin' to herself, and walkin' up and down the floor, and THEY
+a-bangin' away on the pyano down in the parlor!"
+
+The faithful creature's prejudice wronged one of the hated pair. Mrs.
+Aylett's slumbers upon her downy couch might be none the less serene for
+her sister-in-law's danger, but Herbert's was the sleep of exhaustion,
+not callousness. He had been up all the previous night, and racked by
+the wildest anxiety throughout the intervening day, and to compass this
+vigil was beyond his physical powers. Mabel would not miss him, and
+he could do nothing for her--would only be in the way, being totally
+unpractised in the art of nursing, he reasoned; and there was no telling
+what new draught upon his strength the morrow might bring. He would just
+lie down for an hour; then he would be fresh for whatever service might
+be required of him. With this prudent resolve, he threw himself along
+the bed in the spare-room, and was oblivious of everything sublunary
+until sunrise.
+
+"If there should be any change, call me!" Mrs. Aylett had enjoined,
+plaintively. "Winston will not hear of my sitting up, but I shall not
+close my eyes all night, so do not hesitate to disturb me, if I can be
+of any use whatever."
+
+Which, it is idle to remark, was the last thing either of the nurses
+thought of doing. If their darling were, in truth, dying, they were
+the fittest persons to receive her latest sigh; for had they not been
+present at her birth, and did not her mother go to glory from their
+supporting arms?
+
+There was a change, and not a favorable one, before daybreak. The
+patient, from mutterings and restless starts, passed into violent
+delirium, laughing, crying, and singing in a style so opposed to the
+prescribed diagnosis of her case, as to lash the provincial doctor to
+his wits' end, and extinguish in Aunt Rachel's sanguine heart the faint
+hope to which she had clung until now. Herbert, awakened finally by the
+turbulent sounds from the room he had been told must be kept perfectly
+quiet, jumped up, and showed himself, with disordered hair and blinking
+eyes, in the door of communication, just as Mabel struggled to rise, and
+pleaded weepingly with those who held her down that they would restore
+her child to her.
+
+"I had her in my arms not a moment ago!" she insisted. "See! the print
+of her little head is here on my breast! You have taken her away among
+you! I saw it all--those who ordered that it should be done and those
+who did it, when I was too weak to hold her, or to keep them back!"
+
+And passing from the height of furious invective to deadly and earnest
+calm, she told them off upon her fingers.
+
+"Clara Aylett! Rosa Tazewell! Winston Aylett! (he married Clara Louise
+Dorrance, you know!) Herbert Dorrance! JULIUS LENNOX!"
+
+The household was astir by this time, and Mrs. Aylett entered from the
+hall as her brother did from his bedroom. There was but one spectator
+who was sufficiently composed to note and marvel at the scared look
+exchanged by the two at the sound of the last name. This was Mr. Aylett,
+who, from his position behind his wife, had an excellent view of all the
+actors in the exciting tableau before she fell back, swooning, in his
+arms.
+
+He was alone with her in their chamber when she revived, and the
+earliest effort of her restored consciousness was to seize both
+his hands in hers, and scan his face searchingly--it would seem
+agonizingly--until his fond smile dispelled the unspoken dread.
+
+"Ah!" she murmured, hiding her face upon his bosom, "she is still alive,
+then! I thought--I thought"--a mighty sob--"Don't despise your weak,
+silly wife, darling! but it was very terrible! I believed it was the
+last struggle, and was appalled at the sight. And my poor Herbert! he
+was frightfully overcome. Did you notice him? Will you send him to me,
+dear? I can soothe him better than any one else--prepare him for what
+is, I fear, inevitable. I shall not give way again to my terrors."
+
+The brother and sister were still together when word was brought, two
+hours later that Mabel had fallen into a profound sleep--a good omen,
+the doctor said.
+
+"Thank Heaven!" ejaculated Herbert, fervently, his eyes softening until
+he turned away to conceal his emotion.
+
+He was haggard with solicitude, while Mrs. Aylett's healthful bloom
+betokened slight interest in the termination of the seizure, a glance
+at which had thrown her into a faint. Nor did she echo the thanksgiving.
+She waited until the messenger had gone, and continued the conversation
+her entrance had interrupted.
+
+"I incline to the belief that she caught the name, in some manner, on
+Christmas before last. HE was delirious, too, and although doctor and
+nurse reported that he did not speak articulately after he was brought
+in, she may have heard more than they. From what has been told me, I
+gather that she was in the room with him alone, while Mrs. Sutton was
+down-stairs looking for Dr. Ritchie. In a lucid interval he may have
+given his name--possibly some particulars of his history. Unless--are
+you positive there has been no indiscretion on your part, or that others
+may have talked negligently to her, because she was a member of the
+family?"
+
+"There are topics of which we--your mother, sister, and brothers--never
+speak, even to one another. You may trust us that far," rejoined
+Herbert, emphatically. "Nor do I see what we can do, except wait for
+other proof that Mabel really knows anything beyond a name she has
+picked up at random and never, to my knowledge, repeated, save in her
+ravings. Should she recover, the test can be easily applied, and we can
+judge then, how to handle the dilemma."
+
+"Should she recover!" He said the words reluctantly, as loth to express
+the doubt.
+
+His sister's lips twitched nervously into a sinister smile. It was as if
+she would have whispered, had she dared, "Heaven forbid!"
+
+"You have chosen a toilsome and a perilous path, Clara," he resumed,
+by and by. "I do not wonder that you are, with all your courage and
+sanguine trust in your own powers, sometimes disquieted, and often
+weary."
+
+"Who says that I am ever weary? And did you ever know me to disquiet
+myself in vain?" with the low, musical ripple of laughter that belonged
+to her sunniest mood. "Had I been born in the classic age, I should have
+been a devout disciple of Epicurus. Don't imagine that my success has
+not, thus far, amply repaid me for my toil and ingenuity. Having lived
+upon excitement all my days, I should starve without it. Pleasure, like
+safety, is the dearer for being plucked from that evergreen nettle,
+Danger!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV. -- THE GOOD SAMARITAN.
+
+
+THE snows of ten winters had powdered the nameless stranger's grave in
+the servant's burial-ground of the Ridgeley plantation. For nine years
+the wallet taken from his person had lain unopened in a hidden drawer of
+Mabel Dorrance's escritoire, and the half-guessed secret been hidden
+in her breast. Mammy Phillis had followed her mistress to the tomb,
+six months after her removal from her beloved cottage to the despised
+"quarters." She never held up her head from the day of her degradation,
+died from a broken heart, murmured those who best knew her--of a "fit
+of spleen," said Mrs. Aylett, in cool reprehension of her unmannerly
+vassal.
+
+Mabel had guarded the mystery well. Her husband examined her--covertly,
+as he thought; awkwardly, according to her ideas--with regard to the
+vagaries of her delirium, and was foiled by the grave simplicity of her
+manner and replies.
+
+"All she knows or remembers is substantially this," Herbert jotted
+down in his notes for his sister's perusal: "she has associated in some
+way--she cannot tell exactly how or why--the name with the tramp who
+died in the garret. She is not sure that it was his designation. Thinks
+it was not, or that, if used by him, it was an alias. Has an impression
+that it was marked upon his clothing, or upon a paper found in his
+pocket. Showed no agitation and little interest in the subject, except
+when she inquired if I saw the stranger at all--living or dead. Was glad
+I could reply truly, 'No.' Answer seemed to gratify her, which you may
+consider a disagreeable augury. Am convinced that her illness
+resulted from natural and unavoidable causes--that neither F---C---nor
+J----L---had any connection with it. It will be months before mind and
+body recover their tone."
+
+"Lawyerly! ergo, absurd and unsatisfactory!" pronounced the reader,
+to whom the foregoing leaf had been committed on the morning of her
+brother's departure with his slowly-convalescing wife for their Albany
+home. "But until the nettle pricks more nearly, I shall continue to
+enjoy my roses."
+
+They had blossomed thickly about her path during this decade. Her
+matronly beauty was the wonder and praise of the community. The changing
+seasons that had bleached the locks upon her husband's temples and
+heightened his forehead had spared the bronzed chestnut of her luxuriant
+tresses. Her figure was larger and fuller, but graceful, and more
+queenly than of yore--if that could be. There was not an untuneful
+inflection in her voice, or a furrow between her brows. Under her
+careful management the homestead wore every year an air of increased
+elegance. No other furniture for many miles on both sides of the river
+could compare with hers; no other servants were so well-trained, no
+grounds so beautifully ornamented and trimly kept.
+
+"But for all that Ridgeley is a lonely, desolate place to me," said Mrs.
+Sutton, one early spring morning to her niece and crony, Mrs. William
+Sutton. "A house without children is worse than a last year's bird's
+nest. It is a riddle to me how Clara Aylett contrives to occupy her
+time."
+
+"She should have some of these socks to darn, if it hangs upon her
+hands," replied Mrs. William, humorously, running her five fingers
+through the toe of one she had just picked up from the great willow
+basket set between the two upon the porch-floor.
+
+"The Lord isn't very apt to make mothers out of that sort of material,"
+said the elder lady. "Nor fathers out of Winston Ayletts. They are so
+wrapped up in their self-consequence as to have no thought for others."
+
+"Yet they say Mr. Aylett regrets that he has no heir. It is a great pity
+Mabel lost her only child as she did. The family will become extinct in
+another generation. It is such a noble estate, too!"
+
+"Large families were never the rule among the Ayletts," responded Aunt
+Rachel. "But I did hope my dear Mabel would be an exception to the rest
+in this respect. She would adopt a little girl, but her husband will not
+consent. Those Dorrances are a cold-hearted race. He, too, is heaping up
+riches, without knowing who shall gather them. Heigh-ho!"
+
+Her darning-needle quilted the yawning heel of Tommy Sutton's sock with
+precision and celerity, and she ruminated silently upon the vicissitudes
+and failures of mortal life until she was interrupted by Mrs. William's
+exclamation:
+
+"There is Mrs. Tazewell's carriage at the gate, and the driver has a
+letter in his hand. I hope the old lady is not worse!"
+
+Aunt Rachel met the man at the steps, with neighborly anxiety.
+
+"How is your mistress, Jack?"
+
+"'Bout the same, ma'am. But Miss Rosa--she came last night very
+unexpected, and it kinder worsted Mistis to see her so poorly. This note
+is from Miss Rosa, ma'am, and I am to take back an answer."
+
+Mrs. Sutton read it standing in the porch--the scented leaflet that had
+a look of the writer all over it, from the scarlet monogram at the
+top of the sheet and upon the envelope, to the flourish of the
+signature--"Rosa T. C."--the curl of the C carried around the rest like
+a medallion frame:
+
+"DEAR, GOOD AUNT RACHEL,--I have come to Old Virginia to try and shake
+off an uncomfortable cough which has haunted me all winter. The Northern
+quacks can do nothing for me. One ray of this delicious sunshine is
+worth all their nostrums. I was not prepared to find mamma helpless, or
+I should not have descended upon her so unceremoniously. Being here, I
+cannot retreat in good order or with safety to my health, nor without
+wounding her. Frederic must return to Philadelphia next week, by which
+time I hope to be quite invigorated. Now for my audacious proposal.
+Can you come over and tell me how to get well in the quickest and least
+troublesome way? Dear Auntie! you loved me once. When you see what a
+poor, spiritless shadow I have grown--or lessened--to be, you will care
+a little bit for me again, for the sake of lang syne."
+
+Mrs. Sutton wiped her spectacles and gave the note to her niece.
+
+"There is but one thing for me to do, you see, my dear. Jack! I shall be
+ready in twenty minutes."
+
+If the line of duty wavered before her sight during the three-mile
+drive, it lay straight and distinct ahead of her when she stood in
+Rosa's chamber.
+
+"My child!" she ejaculated, upon the threshold "you did not tell me that
+you were confined to your bed!"
+
+"I ought not to be!"
+
+The rebellious pout and tone were Rosa's, as were also the black
+eyes--unnaturally large and bright though they were--but the pretty lips
+were wan, and strained by lines of pain; the pomegranate flush was no
+longer variable, and was nestled in hollows, and the hands were wasted
+to translucency.
+
+"I am quite strong enough to be up, and would be, if my tyrannical
+doctors and their tractable tool, my lord and master, had not decreed
+that I shall lie here until midday, if I am very obedient; eat my meals;
+take their poisonous medicines, and abstain from coughing. If I offend
+in any of these particulars I am not to rise until three o'clock--when
+they are in an especially glum humor--not at all that day. But now you
+are here, we shall combat them valorously. Dear Auntie!" putting the
+thin arms about the old lady's plump neck, and laughing through a spring
+rain of tears, "how good and safe it is to be with you again! And you
+are the same kind, lovely darling! no older by a day--no uglier by a
+solitary wrinkle! I couldn't sleep last night, for fearing you would not
+come to me!"
+
+"You should not have doubted it, dear!" said the motherly voice, blithe
+as affectionate, while soft, agile fingers undid the tight embrace, and
+commenced, from the force of habit, to arrange the tumbled bed-clothes.
+"Wherever I can be of most use is the place in which I wish to be."
+
+"I know you have always lived for others," answered Rosa, with an
+involuntary sigh, a shadow glooming her eyes.
+
+"For whom else should I live and work?" laughed Mrs. Sutton, in her
+cheerful, guileless fashion. "My personal wants are few and easily
+supplied, and I like to be busy. I account it a privilege to be able to
+fuss about my friends when they are ailing."
+
+By way of doing as she liked, she attacked the disorderly room. Rosa's
+three trunks stood in a row against the wall--all of them open--the tray
+of the largest lying beside it upon the carpet, the lid of this thrown
+back and the contents in utter confusion; laces hanging over the sides
+and trailing upon the floor. A casket of medicines was uppermost in the
+next trunk, crushing a confused medley of collars, ribbons, gloves, and
+handkerchiefs. A dressing-gown lay upon the seat of one chair, a skirt
+over the back of another; boots and slippers peeped from the valance
+of the antique bedstead; there was a formidable array of bottles upon
+mantel and bureau--conspicuous among them cod-liver oil, cologne,
+and laudanum--incongruous appendages to the various appliances of the
+toilette scattered between them.
+
+Mrs. Sutton understood it all--the hurry and agitation of the
+unlooked-for arrival; the faintness and prostration of the consumptive;
+the restless night, and the well-meant but inefficient ministrations
+of negroes in an establishment where the mistress had been feeble for
+years, and was now chained to her room and chair by paralysis.
+
+"And Rosa was always an indolent flyabout in health; accustomed to have
+a score of servants at her heels to pick up whatever she dropped or
+threw aside," she said to herself. "My Mabel was a pink of neatness and
+order compared with her. Dear me! here is a bottle of oil, cracked, and
+an immense grease-spot in the front breadth of a splendid silk dress! I
+hope these things do not annoy her as they would me!"
+
+Whether the universal disarray made Rosa uncomfortable or not, she
+enjoyed the aspect of the tidy apartment, when her nurse brought her
+noiseless labors to a close by exchanging her night-gown for a flannel
+wrapper; putting clean linen upon her and the bed; combing the tangled
+hair and washing her hands, wrists, and face in tepid water, interfused
+with cologne.
+
+"It prevents a sick person from taking cold when bathed, and freshens
+her up wonderfully, I think," was her explanation of the fragrant
+preparation.
+
+"YOU freshen me more than all things else combined!" said Rosa,
+gratefully. "Ah, auntie! how often I have thought of, and wished for
+you this tedious and dismal winter! I used to spend entire weeks in bed,
+attended by a horrid hired nurse, who took snuff and drank--ugh! and
+snubbed and terrified me whenever I--as she described it--'took a notion
+into my head;' that is, when I asked for something she thought was too
+troublesome for her ladyship to prepare, or wanted Fred to stay all
+night in my room, or sit by me in the evening, and pet me. She 'couldn't
+bear to have men around, cluttering up everything!' she would growl the
+instant his back was turned, with a deal more of the same talk, until
+I was afraid to ask him to take a seat the next time he came in. He was
+continually bringing home baskets of fruit, and game, and bouquets for
+me. She let me have the flowers, but she ate nine-tenths of the nice
+things herself, I never suspecting her, and he was too delicate to ask
+if I enjoyed his presents. At length he surprised her in the act of
+devouring a bunch of hot-house grapes, for which he had paid almost
+their weight in gold, and then all came to light, and he sent her off in
+a hurry. Poor Fred, there were great tears in his eyes when he learned
+what persecution I had undergone, rather than vex him by complaints."
+
+"It would have been better had you told him sooner, dear! It would have
+spared you and him much suffering."
+
+"I knew how engrossed he was by his business, and how ignorant he was of
+household or medical matters, and I saved him all the bother I could.
+I have tried, in some things and some times, to be a good wife, Aunt
+Rachel! But often I have failed, O, how egregiously! and"--beginning to
+weep--"the thought pierces my heart by day and by night. What if I never
+have an opportunity of doing any better, of covering up the traces of my
+footsteps?"
+
+Mrs. Sutton patted the wasted hand with her cool one, but essayed no
+other soothing.
+
+"Where is your husband now? I understood from your note that he was with
+you."
+
+"He rode over to Dr. Ritchie's this morning, directly he had given me my
+breakfast. He thinks highly of his skill, and he would not be contented
+without bringing him to see me. I really believe he is anxious I should
+get well! Strange--isn't it? when I am such a burden upon his mind and
+hands."
+
+Aunt Rachel smiled.
+
+"Not at all strange, you ridiculous child! Two of the most dearly-loved
+wives I ever knew were invalids, and bedridden, not for weeks only,
+but for years. You can best show your gratitude for his affection and
+kindness by getting better rapidly while he is here, that he may leave
+you with a lighter heart."
+
+"He is kind! too kind!" murmured Rosa, composing herself among the
+cushions, as if to sleep.
+
+She was quiet so long that Mrs. Button had leisure for some reflections
+relating to her own personal action in the somewhat embarrassing
+position she occupied. She had never seen Frederic Chrlton from the day
+he left Ridgeley as Mabel's betrothed. His visits to the neighborhood
+since his marriage had been few and brief, and she had studied to avoid
+him whenever she happened to be with the William Suttons during one of
+these. He might have guessed her design, or unwittingly favored it on
+his own account. The meeting would not be more pleasant to him than to
+her. But why had he allowed his wife to send for her? The alteration in
+him must indeed be great, if he could, without a conflict with resentful
+and painful memories, bow his pride to sue for the services of a
+relative of the Ayletts, and formerly one of their household, even in
+such a cause as that which now commanded her sympathies.
+
+At this point of her cogitation she became aware that Rosa's eyes were
+wide open, and staring at her with a whimsical blending of curiosity,
+melancholy, and gratification.
+
+"Aunt Rachel!" she said, bluntly, "you are a very good woman! the best
+and most forgiving human being I ever heard of. I should not feel one
+particle of surprise to see you float up gently through the roof, at
+any minute--cap, spectacles, and all--translated to the society of
+your sister angels--and no questions asked by St. Peter at the gate of
+Paradise!"
+
+"My love!"
+
+Well as she knew her erratic disposition and wild style of speech, Mrs.
+Sutton moved her hand toward the patient's pulse.
+
+"I am not raving! I speak the words of truth and soberness--very sad
+soberness, too! Believing as you do that Frederic was once the cause of
+much sorrow to you and to one you loved, and having no reason to care
+one iota for me, but rather to distrust me, you nevertheless obey my
+call upon you for service, as if I had every right to make it. And
+when here, you treat me just as you would Mabel, were her situation as
+deplorable, her need equal to mine."
+
+"Why shouldn't I?" questioned Mrs. Sutton, simply. "I have no ground for
+a quarrel with you. And if I had--well, the truth is, my dear, I have a
+poor memory for such things!"
+
+Rosa caught at the scarcely perceptible emphasis upon the "YOU," and
+disregarded the remainder of the remark.
+
+"You cannot yet acquit Frederic of wrong-doing! Indeed, Mrs. Sutton, he
+has been foully wronged among you. It is not because he is my husband
+that I say this. Mabel's name has never passed his lips---nor mine in
+his hearing, since I became his wife. And every one of the family has
+been equally guarded when he was by. I doubt, sometimes, if he has ever
+heard whom she married or where she lives--so carefully has he shunned
+every reference to her or any of the Ridgeley people. During the nine
+years we have lived together, he has given me no cause to suspect that
+he ever thinks of her, or laments the broken engagement. If I have made
+myself wretched by imagining the contrary, it was my fault, not
+his--my foolish, wicked jealousy. I would scorn to imply a doubt of
+his integrity, by reminding him of the charges proferred against him
+by Winston Aylett, and believed by his sister--much less ask him to
+contradict them. I never put any faith in them from the outset. It
+comforts me to recollect that my confidence in him stood fast when
+everybody else distrusted him--my noble, slandered darling! But my
+declaration of his innocence is founded upon his blameless life and
+upright principles. No one could be with him as I have been, and
+doubt him. He is a perfect man--if there was ever a sinless
+mortal--great-hearted, gentle, and sincere. Do not I know this? Have I
+not proved him to the utmost?"
+
+Her rapid, impassioned declamation was ended by a copious flood of grief
+that provoked a frightful fit of coughing. When this was subdued she was
+weaker than a year-old infant, and lay between stupor and dreaming for
+so long a time, that Mrs. Sutton became alarmed.
+
+There must be no repetition of this scene. She most ward off similar
+mishaps by whatever measures she could force or cajole her conscience
+into adopting. Rosa's state was more precarious than her account had led
+her friend to believe, or than the nurse's experienced eye had seen at
+their meeting. The main hope of her recovery was in the warmer climate
+and assiduous attendance. Above all, she should not be allowed to
+exhaust herself by talking, or hysterical paroxysms. She had no more
+self-control than a child, and she must be treated as such. Mrs.
+Sutton's jesuitical resolve was to humor her by every imaginable device,
+even to feigned friendship for Frederic Chilton.
+
+Fortified by this resolution, she heard, without any show of pride or
+trepidation, the clatter of horses' hoofs in the yard; the sound of
+voices below stairs, as Mr. Chilton ushered the physician into the
+parlor, and the light, careful tread with which he mounted to his wife's
+apartment. His momentary pause at the entrance, and surprised look at
+beholding the other tenant of the chamber, were the best passport to
+her indulgence he could have desired. It was clear to her instantly that
+poor Rosa's passion for manoeuvring had survived the wreck of health and
+prostration of spirits. She had never chosen the straight path if she
+could find a crooked or a by-road, and her project for obtaining Mrs.
+Sutton's services and company had been put into execution, without
+consultation with her husband. However reprehensible this might be in
+the abstract, it was not in the kind old soul to betray her, as she
+advanced, placidly and civilly, to reassure the startled man.
+
+"How are you, Mr. Chilton? You hardly expected to meet me here, I
+suppose? But I am a near neighbor of Mrs. Tazewell now, and hearing
+that Rosa was sick, I came over to see if I could do anything for her,
+knowing how infirm her mother is."
+
+"You are very kind!" He grasped her hand more tightly than he intended,
+or was conscious of. "We were ignorant ourselves of Mrs. Tazewell's
+true condition. Mrs. Chilton's sisters have forwarded more encouraging
+reports to her of her mother's illness than they would have been
+warranted in doing by anything except the fear that a faithful account
+would operate injuriously upon the daughter's health. I should have
+chosen some other home for my wife, had I known the actual state of
+affairs here. Change of scene and climate was imperatively demanded."
+
+He spoke low and rapidly--hardly above his breath; but the black eyes,
+unclosing, flashed upon him.
+
+"So you have come back!" said Rosa's weak voice. "You stayed away an
+eternity!"
+
+Her coquettish displeasure and the asperity of her accent contrasted
+so oddly with her vehemently expressed attachment for her husband and
+extolment of his virtues, that Mrs. Sutton regarded her in speechless
+amazement. She submitted to his kiss, without returning it--even raising
+her hand pettishly as to repel further endearments. "I should have died
+of the blue devils if Aunt Rachel hadn't, by the merest accident, heard
+that I was ailing, and driven over, like the Good Samaritan she is, to
+take pity upon me in my destitution; to pour oil--not cod-liver--into my
+wounds, and wine into my mouth. She is better than all the men-doctors
+that were ever created; so if you have brought your bearded Esculapius
+home with you, you may tell him, with my compliments, that I won't see
+him yet awhile. He was an old beau of mine, and I hope I have too much
+respect for what I used to be, to let him get a glimpse of me until
+Dr. Sutton has set me up in better flesh and looks. She brought me some
+enchanting jelly--one of her magical preparations for the amelioration
+of human misery, and I am to have a bowl of her unparalleled
+chicken-broth for dinner. I wish dinner-time were come! the very thought
+makes me ravenous. I am to do nothing for a week, but eat, drink, and
+sleep, at the end of which period I shall be dismissed as thoroughly
+cured. So, Mr. Chilton, you can go back to your beloved clients whenever
+you please!"
+
+To Mrs. Sutton's apprehension this was an infelicitous introduction of
+herself to the husband's toleration. Certainly, she did not know many
+men who would have parried the thrusts at themselves with the dexterity
+he manifested, and acknowledged her merits and kindly offices willingly
+and gracefully. He did not apologize for his protracted absence, nor
+insist upon conveying his physician to the sick-chamber; but he chatted
+for five minutes or thereabouts upon such topics as he knew would
+entertain the captious invalid, and finally arose from the bed-side,
+where he had been sitting, fondling her hot hands, with a good-humored
+laugh.
+
+"But all the while I am enjoying myself here, the hirsute Galen
+aforesaid is munching the invisible salad of the solitary in the parlor!
+I am to eject him incontinently, am I? My conscience will not let me
+withhold the admission, when I do this, that my wife's judgment in the
+matter of medical attendants is vastly superior to mine. While Mrs.
+Sutton is so good as to remain with you, you are right in thinking that
+you have need of no other physician."
+
+Aunt Rachel would have entered a disclaimer, but Rosa spoke before she
+could open her mouth.
+
+"I didn't say that, Frederic! There was never such another impatient
+and inconsiderate creature upon the globe as yourself. It would be
+unpardonably rude in us to send the man away, if he is a charlatan,
+without letting him see me. Have him up, by all means, and let us hear
+what priggish nonsense he has to say. He will feel the easier when it is
+done."
+
+Dr. Ritchie's private report to Mrs. Sutton, who accompanied him to the
+lower floor, under color of seeing that he was served with luncheon, was
+discouraging. The disease had made fearful inroads upon a constitution
+that had never been robust, and the nervous excitability of the patient
+was likely to accelerate her decline. She might linger for several
+months. It would not surprise him to hear that she had died within
+twelve hours after his visit. It was but fair and professional he added,
+that he should, through Mrs. Sutton, advise Mr. Chilton of her state,
+although, unless he were mistaken, he had already anticipated his
+verdict.
+
+This Mrs. Sutton found was the case, when she essayed that evening to
+insure him against the awful shock of his wife's unexpected dissolution.
+
+"She has never been entirely well since the death of our second child, a
+year ago," he said. "The little one was buried on a very stormy day, and
+the mother would not be dissuaded from going to the cemetery. The severe
+cold, acting upon a system enfeebled by grief, induced an attack of
+pneumonia. Dr. Ritchie but coincides with every other physician I have
+consulted."
+
+"It is a pity you are obliged to leave her so soon," observed the
+sympathizing nurse. "Although she may be more comfortable a week hence
+than she is now."
+
+"A week! I had no intention of returning in less than a month's time.
+I made all my arrangements to that effect before leaving home.
+Rosa's reference to my desire to go back to my clients was sheer
+badinage"--smiling mournfully. "You have heard her talk often enough
+to understand how little of earnest there is in the raillery." More
+insincerity! For, contradictory as it may appear, Mrs. Sutton felt
+constrained to believe his unsupported word, in opposition to his wife's
+written assertion that he designed to return to his practice the ensuing
+week.
+
+"She thought I would be more apt to come if I imagined that he would
+soon be gone!" was her grieved reflection. "If she could beguile me
+hither by this assurance, she trusted to her coaxings and my compassion
+to retain me. O Rosa! Rosa! cannot even the honest hour teach you to be
+truthful?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI. -- THE HONEST HOUR.
+
+
+The shadow of death drew on apace to the sight of all, save the
+consumptive, and her semi-imbecile mother. These seemed alike blind to
+the fatal symptoms that were more strongly defined with every passing
+day. The paralytic sat in her wheeled chair, in the March sunshine,
+at the window of her chamber, and talked droningly of other times and
+paltry pleasures to that one of her daughters or grand-children whose
+turn it was to minister to her comfort and amusement, and insisted
+upon having all the neighborhood news repeated in her dull ear with
+wearisome--to the narrator--amplifications and reiterations, shaking
+with childish laughter at the humorous passages, and whimpering at the
+pathetic. Rosa cheated time of heaviness by unceasing demands upon her
+attendants for service and diversion. Unable to sleep, except at long
+intervals, in snatches of fitful dozing, she had a horror of being alone
+for an instant, from dusk until dawn; was ingenious in contrivances
+to surprise an unwary watcher nodding upon her post; plenteous and
+plaintive in lamentations, if the device succeeded. Fifty times a night
+her pillows must be shaken, her drink, food, or medicine given, and
+after each of these offices had been performed, occurred the petition:
+
+"Now--sit where I can see you whenever I open my eyes! It drives me
+crazy to imagine for a moment that I am by myself. I want to be sure
+all the while that some living human being is near at hand. I have such
+frightful dreams! I awake always with the impression that I am drowning
+or suffocating, or floating away into a sea of darkness alone!"
+
+With the light of day, her spirits revived, and her hopes of speedy
+recovery.
+
+"You need not grudge waiting upon me now, for I shall be up and about
+shortly--well and spry as the best of you!" she would say. "And while I
+am playing invalid, I mean to have my quantum of attention. I have been
+avaricious of devotion all my life, and this is a golden chance that may
+never happen again."
+
+Her husband she would not willingly suffer to leave her for an instant.
+But for Mrs. Sutton's management and kindly authority, he would have
+been condemned to take his meals at her bedside and from the same tray
+with herself. She would be removed from the bed to the lounge by no
+other arms than his, and at any hour of the twenty-four he was liable
+to be called upon to read, sing, or talk her into composure. Variable as
+ever in mood and fancy, and more capricious in the exhibition of these,
+she was fond, sullen, teasing, and mirthful with him as the humor of
+the moment dictated; sometimes assailing him with reproaches for his
+indifference and want of regard for her wishes and tastes, now that she
+was no longer young, pretty, and sprightly; at others, clinging to him
+with protestations of repentance and love, bewailing her waywardness and
+imploring his forbearance; then, taking him to task for the slightest
+inadvertence--the spilling of a drop of her medicine or jarring of her
+sofa or bed; anon lauding him to the skies as the most skilful nurse she
+had, and enjoining upon all about her to render verbal testimonial
+to his irreproachableness as husband and man--oh! it was a wearisome,
+oftentimes a revolting duty to listen to and bear with it all--keep in
+mind though one did that the intolerable restlessness preluded centuries
+of dreamless repose.
+
+Mrs. Sutton could endure everything else better--and she believed that
+it was the same with Frederic--than the needless and puerile trickery to
+which Rosa resorted to achieve the most trivial purposes. If she wished
+that one of her sisters should pass the day with her, or to sit up for
+a part of the night, she worked upon her by means of others'
+intercessions, or broached the subject by covert passages, the end of
+which, she flattered herself, was successfully masked, until her train
+was ready for explosion. Did she set her fancy upon any particular
+article of diet, the same tortuous course was pursued to present the
+delicacy in question to the mind of him or her who, she designed, should
+be the provider. Under her sauciest rattle of fun or perversity lurked
+some subtle meaning. She had either some end to subserve, or wanted to
+possess herself of some bit of information she could have gained sooner
+and more easily by direct inquiry. Cajolery and intrigue had become a
+second nature, stronger than the original; and it never occurred to her
+that her wiles, in her mental and bodily decadence, were transparent as
+they had once been artful.
+
+A discovery, made on the fourth day of her visit, excited Mrs. Sutton's
+sympathies in behalf of the much enduring husband to a pitch it required
+long and serious pondering upon the wife's weakness and critical
+condition to restrain from indignant demonstration.
+
+Rosa was sleeping more soundly than usual under the influence of an
+anodyne, and Frederic, with a whispered apology to his coadjutor, went
+into the next room, leaving the door ajar. From her seat, Mrs. Sutton
+had a distinct view of him in an opposite mirror--a circumstance of
+which she was not aware for several minutes. Happening, then, to look
+up from her knitting she saw that he was writing, and half an hour
+afterward that he was leaning back in his chair, looking at something
+in the hollow of his hand, a mingling of such love and sadness in his
+countenance that she felt it would be unlawful prying into his most
+sacred feelings for her to watch him longer. He turned his head at the
+slight rustle she made in removing to another part of the room, and
+beckoned to her. At her approach, he arose and held out a morocco case,
+containing the miniature of a child--a bright-eyed, delicate-featured
+girl of seven or eight summers--exquisitely painted.
+
+"You have never seen my little Florence, I think?"
+
+"I have not. She is pretty--and resembles you strongly."
+
+He did not color or laugh at the unconscious compliment, or seem pleased
+at her praise of his darling. Instead, there crept over his face a shade
+of more painful sadness, darkening his eyes and compressing his lip, as
+he answered--
+
+"So every one says. She is the dearest child in the world--a sunbeam of
+gladness in any house--amiable, affectionate, and intelligent. I wish
+you would read her last letter to me. She is a better correspondent than
+many grown people." Then, smiling, apologetically, "If my commendation
+seem overstrained, you will excuse a father's partiality."
+
+The letter--although the unformed chirography betrayed the writer's
+inexperience in pen-practice--was correctly spelled and easy in
+style, crowded with loving messages to "dear papa and mamma;" relating
+anecdotes of school and home life, and while expressive of her longings
+for her parents' return, professing willingness to stay where she was
+"until mamma should be well enough to come back."
+
+"I pray every night that God will cure her, and make us all happy
+again," she wrote. "I dreamed one night last week that I saw her dressed
+for a party, all rosy and funny and laughing, as she used to be, and
+that she kissed me, and put her arm around me, and called me 'baby
+Florence' and 'little one,' in her sweet voice. Wasn't it strange? I
+awoke myself crying, I was so happy! I do try to be brave, and not fret
+about what cannot be helped, papa, because I promised you I would; but
+sometimes it is right hard work. It is always easier for a whole day
+after I get one of your nice, long letters. It is not QUITE as good as
+having real talk with you, but it is the best treat I can have when you
+are away."
+
+Mrs. Sutton wiped her eyes.
+
+"The dear child!" she said, in the subdued tone habitual to the
+frequenters of the sick-room. "No wonder you want to see her! Why didn't
+you give her a holiday, and bring her to Virginia with you?"
+
+"I dreaded the effect of a child's high animal spirits and thoughtless
+bustle upon her mother's health"--the shadow thickening into trouble.
+"The next best thing to having her with me is to know that she is kindly
+and lovingly looked after by my married sister, of whom she is very
+fond. Florence is merrier, if not always happier, with her young cousins
+than if she were condemned to the repression and joyless routine of
+a house where the care of the sick is the most engrossing business to
+all."
+
+The more Mrs. Sutton meditated upon this conversation, the more
+enigmatical it appeared that the mother never spoke of missing her only
+living child--never pined for the sound of her vivacious talk and the
+sight of her winning ways. Curiosity--her strong love for all children,
+and a lively interest in Florence and Florence's father, the two who
+assuredly did feel the separation--got the ascendency over discretion
+that night, when Rosa, too nervous to sleep, begged her to talk, "to
+scare away the horrors that were sitting, a blue-black brood, upon her
+pillow."
+
+"Your little daughter would be an endless source of entertainment to
+you if she were here," said downright Aunt Rachel, with no show of
+circumlocution. "I am surprised you do not send for her."
+
+"Children of that age are a nuisance!" returned Rosa, peevishly. "And
+of all tiresome ones that I ever saw, Florence is the most trying. She
+doesn't talk after I bid her hold her tongue, but her big, solemn eyes
+see and her ears hear all that passes. If there is one thing that pushes
+me nearer to the verge of distraction than another it is to have my own
+words quoted to me when I have forgotten that I ever uttered them. And
+she--literal little bore!--is always pretending to take all that I say
+in earnest. If I were to tell her to go to Guinea, it is my belief
+she would put on her bonnet, cloak, and gloves, pocket a biscuit for
+luncheon and a story-book to read by the way, and set out forthwith,
+asking the first decent-looking man she met in the street at what wharf
+she would find a vessel bound for Africa."
+
+Mrs. Sutton was obliged to laugh.
+
+"She must be a truthful, sincere little thing!"
+
+"Didn't I tell you she is TOO outrageously literal and unimaginative?
+Just let me give you an example of how she tires and vexes me. One day,
+about a fortnight before I left home, she set her heart upon spending
+the whole of Saturday afternoon with me. Her father objected, for he
+understands, if he does not sympathize with me, what a trial she is to
+flesh and spirit. But I was moderately comfortable, and my nerves were
+less unruly than usual, so I said we would try and get on together.
+
+"No sooner had he gone than the catechism commenced:
+
+"'Now, mamma, what can I do to amuse you?'
+
+"She talks like a woman of fifty.
+
+"'What should you propose if I were to leave it to you?' I asked.
+
+"'I suppose,' said my Lady Cutshort, 'that it would excite you too much
+to talk, so I had better read aloud. What book do you prefer?'
+
+"I named one--a novel I had not finished--and resigned myself to
+martyrdom. She reads fluently--her father says prettily; but the
+piping voice rasped my auriculars to the quick, and I soon stopped the
+exhibition. Then we essayed conversation, but our range of themes was
+limited, and a dismal silence succeeded to a short dialogue. By and by I
+told her that I was sleepy, hoping she would take the hint and leave my
+room.
+
+"'Then, mamma, I will just get my work-basket, and sit here, as still as
+a mouse, and prevent all disturbance.'
+
+"With that, she gets out her miniature thimble and scissors, and falls
+to work upon a pair of slippers she was embroidering for her father's
+birthday present, sitting up, starched and prim as an old maid, her lips
+pursed, and her forehead gravely consequential. I could not close my
+eyes without seeing her still, like an undersized nightmare, her
+hair smooth to the least hair, her dress neat to the smallest fold,
+stitching, stitching, the affected, conceited marmoset!
+
+"At last I said:
+
+"'Put down your sewing, Florence, and look out of the window at the
+people going by. You must be very tired.'
+
+"'Not in the least, mamma, dear,' answered Miss Pert. 'I like to work,
+and there is nothing interesting going on outside.'
+
+"I tossed and sighed, and she was by me in a second.
+
+"'Darling mamma! my poor, sweet little mother!' in her reed-like chirp;
+'can I do nothing to make you feel better?' putting her hands upon my
+head and stroking my face until my flesh crawled.
+
+"'Yes,' said I, out of all patience. 'Take yourself off, and don't
+let me see you again until to-morrow morning! You kill me with your
+teasing.'
+
+"And would you believe it? she just put up her sewing in the basket and
+went directly out, without a tear or a murmur, and when her father
+came home he could not prevail upon her, by commands or persuasions,
+to accompany him further than the door of my chamber. So he, who won't
+admit that she can do anything wrong, instead of whipping her for her
+obstinacy, as he ought to have done, guessed she 'had some reason' for
+her disobedience which she did not like to tell, and interrogated poor,
+persecuted me. When he had heard my version of the manner in which we
+had spent the afternoon, he only said, 'I should have foreseen this. But
+the child--she is only a child, Rosa!--did her best!' and he looked
+so mournful that I, knowing he blamed me for his bantling's freak of
+temper, told him plainly that he cared a thousand times more for this
+diminutive bundle of hypocrisy than he ever did for me, and that his
+absurd favoritism was fast begetting in me a positive dislike for her. I
+couldn't endure the sight of the sulky little mischief-maker for a week
+after her complaint of barbarity had brought the look into his face I
+knew so well."
+
+"O Rosa, she is your own flesh and blood! and, as her father said, a
+mere baby yet! You said, too, that she refused to assign any cause to
+him for her singular conduct."
+
+"She might better have made open outcry than have left upon his mind
+the impression that I had banished her cruelly and unnecessarily. But
+I despair of giving you an idea of how provoking she can be. She is a
+Chilton, through and through, in feature, manner, and disposition--one
+of those 'goody' children, you know! a class of animals that are simply
+intolerable to me. She is too precocious and unbaby-like to be in the
+least interesting. You should have seen my little Violet to understand
+what a constant disappointment Florence is. She was myself in miniature,
+and moreover the most witching, prankish, peppery elf that was ever
+made. The best trait in Florence's character was her love for her
+baby-sister. She gave up everything to her while she was alive, and they
+told me that she would not eat, and scarcely slept, for days after her
+death. Her father will have it that she is singularly sensitive, and
+has marvellous depths of feeling; but if this be so, it is queer I
+never found it out. Nobody could help adoring Violet--my sweet, lost,
+beautiful angel!"
+
+The hysterical sobs were pumping up the tears now in hot torrents, and
+these Mrs. Sutton was fain to assuage by loving arts she would not--but
+for the danger of allowing them to flow--have been in the temper to
+employ, so full was her heart of yearning pity for the hardly-used
+babe, and displeasure at the mother's weak selfishness. It was easier to
+forgive and forget Rosa's sins; to lessen, in the retrospect, her worst
+faults into foibles, than it would have been to overlook the more venal
+failings of one less mercurial, and whose personal fascinations did not
+equal hers.
+
+Ere the close of another day, Mrs. Sutton had excused her unnatural
+insensibility to her child's virtues and affection, by representing to
+herself how fearfully disease had warped judgment and perception; had
+cast over the enormities she could not palliate the pall of solemn
+remembrance of the truth that death's dark door was already as surely
+shut between mother and daughter, as if the grave held the former. A
+week of chill March rains and wind was disastrous to the patient, who
+had seemed to draw her main supplies of strength from the sunshine
+admitted freely to her room, with the spring air, redolent with the
+delicious odors of the freshly-turned earth, the budding trees, and
+early blossoms from the garden beneath her windows. She shrank and
+shivered under the ungenial sky, while the drizzling mist soaked life
+and animation out of the fragile body. Occasional fits of delirium,
+increased difficulty of breathing, and a steady decline of the slender
+remains of vital force, warned her attendants that their care would not
+be required much longer. She was still obstinate in her disbelief of the
+grave nature of her malady. The most distant reference to her decease
+would arouse her to angry refutation of the hinted doubt of her
+recovery, and excited her to offer proof of her declaration that she was
+less ill than others supposed; she would summon up a poor counterfeit
+of energy and mirth, more ghastly than her previous lassitude; deny
+that she suffered from any cause, save the unfailing nervous depression
+consequent upon the unfavorable weather.
+
+Then came a day on which the sun looked forth with augmented splendor
+from his sombrely curtained pavilion; when the naked branches of the
+deciduous trees, the serried lances of the evergreens, and the
+broad leaves of the tent-like magnolias--the pride of the Tazewell
+place--shone as from a bath of molten silver. The battered flowers
+ventured into later and healthier bloom, and a robin, swinging upon
+the lilac spray nearest Rosa's window, sang blithe greeting to the
+reinstated spring.
+
+Rosa heard him--opened her eyes, and smiled.
+
+"One--maybe the very same--used to sing there every morning when I was a
+girl--used to awake me from my second nap. I could sleep all night then,
+and never dream once!"
+
+A messenger had been sent, at daybreak, for her sisters and brother, who
+resided several miles away, but as yet Mrs. Sutton and Frederic were her
+only nurses. She had dozed almost constantly during the night, and
+been delirious when awakened to take nourishment or tonics, muttering
+senseless and disconnected words, and moaning in pain, the location and
+nature of which she could not describe to the solicitous watchers.
+
+"I remember that Mabel and I," she continued, dreamily, after a long
+pause--then correcting herself, "I ask your pardon, Frederic! I said I
+wouldn't speak of her ever again to you, but we were so much together in
+those days. Moreover, it has troubled me at times, that you did not know
+who your real friends were, and she did like you--and--and--what am I
+saying! You shouldn't let me run on so!"
+
+She raised her hand with difficulty, and tried to wipe away the film
+gathering over her dilated eyes.
+
+"Never mind, my darling! Do not attempt to talk! You are too weak and
+tired!" said her husband, tenderly.
+
+"Tired!" catching at the word, "That is it! There is nothing else the
+matter, whatever Dr. Ritchie and the rest of them may say. Tired! for
+how many years I have been THAT! It seems like a thousand. This world is
+a tiresome place to most people, I think I shall never forget how jaded
+Mabel looked that week," breaking off, as before, with a frightened
+start, such as a dreamer gives when he fancies he is falling from an
+immeasurable height. "Indeed, Fred, dear!" feeling for his hand upon
+the coverlet, "I did not mean to wound or offend you. It was a terrible
+ordeal for you, my love! But you came out of it as silver seven times
+refined. That is what the text says--isn't it? And you and Aunt Rachel
+are friends once more! That is one good deed I have done. I hope it
+will be recorded up THERE! Heaven knows there are not so many that I can
+afford to have one overlooked!"
+
+Another season of dozing, and she awoke, rubbing her hands feebly
+together, as to cleanse them.
+
+"My hands ought to be whiter--purer! I know what ails them. I should
+have picked up the letter she--Mrs. Sutton--wrote you. But I loved you
+so--even then!" beseechingly. "You will not hate me when I am gone? I
+mean when you get back to Philadelphia, and I am well enough to be left
+here. I was sure, if you got it, you would come to Ridgeley, and I let
+it go down the stream--down--down! Frederic!"
+
+"I am here, dearest!" slipping his arm under, and raising her, as her
+shrill cry rang out, and she grasped the empty air. "Rosa, my WIFE!"
+
+"I thought I was strangling--in the water! I am your wife--am I not? She
+couldn't take you from me if she were here. I wish she were! I always
+liked Mabel. She was a good, true woman--but she did not love you as I
+did!"
+
+Panting for breath, she leaned upon her husband's breast, and her
+eyelids fell together again. Only for a moment! Then a smile--fond,
+sweet, and penitent--played among the ashy shadows encircling her mouth.
+"Poor little Florence! I am sorry I was cross to her. Tell her so,
+papa!" Her husband stooped to kiss her, laid her back upon the pillows,
+closed the sightless eyes, and left Mrs. Sutton alone with the dead.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII. -- AFTER FIFTEEN YEARS.
+
+
+"OLD Mrs. Tazewell has departed this life at last!" said Winston Aylett,
+entering his own parlor one bleak November evening on his return from
+the village post-office. "I met Al. Branch on the road just now. For a
+wonder he was sober--in honor of the occasion, I suppose. He and Gus.
+Tabb are to sit up with the corpse to-night."
+
+"When did she die?" queried his wife, drawing her skirts aside, that he
+might get nearer the fire.
+
+"At twelve o'clock to-day. That is, she ceased the unprofitable business
+of respiration at that hour. She died, virtually, five years ago. She
+has been little better than a mummy for that period."
+
+"Poor old lady!" said Mabel Dorrance, regretfully, from her corner
+of the hearth. "Hers was a kind heart, while she could think and act
+intelligently. One of my earliest recollections is of the dainties
+with which she used to ply me when I visited Rosa. She was an indulgent
+parent and mistress, yet I suppose few even of those most nearly related
+to her will mourn her loss."
+
+"It would be very foolish if they did!" Mr. Aylett picked up the tongs
+to mend the fire. "And very unnatural did they not rejoice at being
+rid of a burden. The old place has been going to destruction all these
+years, and it could not be sold while she cumbered the upper earth."
+
+No one replied directly to this delicate and feeling observation, and
+Mrs. Aylett presently diverted the conversation slightly by saying,--
+
+"And Alfred Branch has gone to tender his services to the family! There
+is something romantic in his constancy to a memory. From the day of
+Rosa's death, he has embraced every chance of testifying his respect
+for and wish to serve her friends. He is a sadder wreck than was Mrs.
+Tazewell. You would hardly recognize him, Mabel. His hair and beard are
+white as those of a man of sixty-five, and his face bloated out of all
+comeliness."
+
+"White heat!" interjected Mr. Aylett. "He can not last much longer."
+
+"And all because a pretty girl said him 'Nay!'" pursued the wife.
+
+Mr. Aylett and Mr. Dorrance made characteristic responses in a breath.
+
+"The greater blockhead he!" said one.
+
+The other, "His was never a rightly balanced mind, I suspect. I always
+thought him weak and impressionable."
+
+"Are your adjectives synonymous?" asked Mrs. Aylett playfully.
+
+"Generally!"
+
+Her brother had been reading at a distant window, while the daylight
+sufficed to show him the type of his book. He now laid it by, and came
+forward into the redder circle of radiance cast by the burning logs. He
+was in his forty-third year, saturnine of visage, coldly monotonous in
+accent, a business machine that did its work in good, substantial style,
+and undertook no "fancy jobs." He had amassed a handsome fortune, built
+a handsome house, and married a handsome woman, all of which appendages
+to his consequence he contemplated with grim complacency. As regarded
+spiritual likeness, mutual affection, and assimilation of feeling and
+opinion, he and his wife had receded, the one from the other, in the
+fourteen years of their wedded life. There had been no decided rupture.
+Both disliked altercations, and where radical opposition of sentiment
+existed, they avoided the unsafe ground by tacit consent. Mabel's
+uniform policy was that of outward submission to the mandates of her
+chief.
+
+"After all, it makes little difference!" she fell into the habit of
+saying in the earlier years of matronhood, and he interpreted her
+listless acquiescence in his decrees as faith in the soundness of his
+judgment, the infallibility of his decisions. No woman of sense and
+spirit ever becomes an exemplar in unquestioning obedience to a mortal
+man, unless through apathy--fatal torpor of mind or heart. Of this fact
+in moral history our respectable barrister was happily ignorant. He was
+no better versed in the lore of the heart feminine than when he accepted
+Mabel Aylett's esteem and friendly regard in lieu of the shy, but ardent
+attachment a betrothed maiden should have for the one she means to make
+her husband.
+
+He respected her thoroughly, and loved her better than he did
+anybody else. She was the one woman he recognized as his sister's
+superior--supremacy due to the influence of single-minded integrity and
+modest dignity. What Mabel said, he believed without gainsaying;
+while Clara's clever dicta required winnowing to separate the probably
+spurious from the possibly true. If his tone, in addressing his wife,
+was seldom affectionate, it was never careless, as that which replied to
+his sister's raillery.
+
+"Generally," he said in his metallic, unmodulated voice. "The man who
+would cast away health, usefulness, and fortune in his chagrin at not
+winning the hand of a shallow-pated, volatile flirt, must be both silly
+and susceptible."
+
+"Rosa Tazewell may have been shallow of heart, but she was not of pate,"
+answered Mr. Aylett, with a cold sneer. "She was a fair plotter, and not
+fickle of purpose when she had her desires upon a much-coveted object.
+Her marriage proved that. She meant to captivate Chilton before she
+had known him a month--yes, and to marry him, as she finally did. Her
+intermediate conquests were but the practice that was to perfect her in
+her profession. Does anybody know, by the way, if he has ever taken a
+second wife to his bereaved bosom?"
+
+A brief silence, then Mrs. Aylett said, negligently, "I think not.
+Mrs. Trent, Rosa's sister, was expatiating to me a month since upon the
+beauty and accomplishments of his daughter, and she said nothing of
+a step-mother. Father and child live with a married sister of Mrs.
+Chilton, I believe."
+
+"I had not heard that Rosa left a child," remarked Mabel, interested. "I
+understood that two died before the mother."
+
+"Only one--and that the younger. Miss Florence is now twelve years old,
+Mrs. Trent says. I saw her at church once, when she was visiting her
+grandmother and aunts. She is really passable--but very unlike her
+mother."
+
+Mabel did not join in the desultory talk that engaged the others until
+supper-time. There was a broken string in her heart, that jangled
+painfully when touched by an incautious hand.
+
+"Twelve years old!" she was saying, inwardly. "My darling would have
+been thirteen, had she lived!"
+
+And then flitted before her fancy a girlish form, with pure, loving
+eyes, and a voice melodious as a mocking-bird's. Warm arms were about
+her neck, and a round, soft cheek laid against hers--as no human arms
+and face would ever caress her--her, the childless, whose had been the
+hopes, fears, pains--never the recompence of maternity.
+
+She had been to the graveyard that day--secretly, lest her husband
+should frown, Clara wonder, and Winston sneer at her love for and memory
+of that which had never existed, according to their rendering of the
+term. She had trimmed the wire-grass out of the little hollow, above
+which the mound had not been renewed since the day of her baby's burial,
+and, trusting to the infrequency of others' visits to the neglected
+enclosure, had laid a bunch of white rose-buds over the unmarked dust
+she accounted still a part of her heart, 'neath which it had lain so
+long. People said she had never been a mother; never had had a living
+child; had no hope of seeing it in heaven. God and she knew better.
+
+"Clara, I wish you to attend Mrs. Tazewell's funeral this afternoon,"
+said Mr. Aylett at breakfast the next day but one after this. "There
+were invidious remarks made upon your non-appearance at her daughter's,
+and I do not choose that my family shall furnish food for neighborhood
+scandal."
+
+"My dear Winston, you must recollect what an insufferable headache I had
+that day."
+
+"Don't have one to-day," ordered her husband laconically. "Mabel, do you
+care to go?"
+
+"By all means. I would not fail, even in seeming, in rendering respect
+to one I used to like so much, and whose kindness to me was unvarying.
+You have no objection, Herbert?"
+
+"None. I may accompany you--the day being fine, and the roads in
+tolerable order."
+
+The funeral was conducted with the disregard of what are, in other
+regions, established customs that distinguish such occasions in the
+rural districts of Virginia.
+
+Written notices had been sent out, far and near, the day before,
+announcing that the services would begin at two o'clock, but when the
+Aylett party arrived at a quarter of an hour before the time specified,
+there was no appearance of regular exercises of any kind. A dozen
+carriages besides theirs were clustered about the front gate, and a
+long line of saddle-horses tethered to the fence. Knots of gentlemen in
+riding costume dotted the lawn and porches, and within-doors ladies sat,
+or walked at their ease in the parlor and dining room, or gathered in
+silent tearfulness around the open coffin in the wide central hall.
+
+The bed-room of the deceased was a roomy apartment in a wing of the
+building, and to this Mabel was summoned before she could seat herself
+elsewhere.
+
+"Miss Mary's compliments and love, ma'am; and she says won't you please
+step in thar, and set with Mistis' friends and relations?" was the
+audible message delivered to her by Mrs. Trent's spry waiting-maid.
+
+Herbert looked dubious, and Mrs. Aylett enlarged her fine eyes in a
+manner that might mean either superciliousness or well-bred amazement.
+But Mabel was neither surprised nor doubtful as to the proper course
+for her to pursue. Time was when she was as much at home here as Rosa
+herself, and Mrs. Tazewell's partiality for her was shared by others of
+the family. That she had met none of them in ten or twelve years, did
+not at a season like the present dampen their affection. They would
+rather on this account seize upon the opportunity of honoring publicly
+their mother's old favorite.
+
+The chamber was less light than the hall she traversed to reach it.
+
+She recognized Mary Trent, the daughter next in age to Rosa, who fell
+upon her neck in a sobbing embrace, then the other sisters and their
+brother, Morton Tazewell, with his wife, and was formally presented to
+their children.
+
+Finally she turned inquiringly toward a gentleman who stood against the
+window opposite the door, with a little girl beside him.
+
+Confused beyond measure, as the hitherto unthought-of consequences of
+her impulsive action in sending for her friend rushed upon her mind,
+Mrs. Trent faltered out:
+
+"I forgot! You must excuse me, but I was so anxious to see you. My
+brother-in-law, Mr. Chilton. He arrived yesterday--not having heard of
+mother's death."
+
+And for the first time since they looked their passionate farewell into
+each other's eyes under the rose-arch of the portico at Ridgeley, on
+that rainy summer morning, the two who had been lovers again touched
+hands.
+
+"I hope you are quite well, Mr. Chilton," said Mabel's firm, gentle
+voice. "Is this your daughter?" kissing the serious-faced child on the
+forehead, and looking intently into her eyes in the hope of discovering
+a resemblance to her mother.
+
+Then she went back to a chair next to Mrs. Trent's, and began to talk
+softly of the event that had called them together, not glancing again
+at the window until the outer hall was stilled, that the clergyman might
+begin the funeral prayer.
+
+"The services will be concluded at the grave," was the announcement that
+succeeded the sermon; and there followed the shuffling of the bearers'
+feet, and their measured tramp across the floors and down the steps of
+the back porch.
+
+The daughters and daughter-in-law let fall their veils and pulled on
+their gloves, and Herbert Dorrance beckoned somewhat impatiently to his
+wife from the parlor door. While she was on her way to join him, she saw
+his complexion vary to a greenish sallow, his mouth work spasmodically,
+and his eyes sink in anger or dismay.
+
+Winston Aylett likewise noted and knew it, for the same look of abject
+terror he had observed upon the hard Scotch face when Mabel enumerated
+upon her fingers those she accused of having robbed her of her babe.
+
+The wife attributed it to displeasure at seeing Frederic Chilton among
+the mourners. Her whilom guardian, never charitable overmuch, inclined
+the more to the belief begotten within him by other incidents, to wit:
+that his brother-in-law's talk was more doughty than his deeds, and his
+real sentiment upon beholding the man he boasted of having flogged as
+a libertine and coward, was physical dread for his own safety. Watchful
+alike of the other party to the ancient quarrel, he was rewarded by the
+sight of Chilton's irrepressible start and frown, when Mabel put her
+hand within her husband's arm, and stood awaiting the formation of
+the procession. The discarded lover gazed steadfastly into Dorrance's
+countenance in passing to his place, in recognition that scouted
+assimilarity with salutation, but his eye did not waver or his color
+fade.
+
+"I would not be afraid to wager that this is but another version of the
+fable of the statue of the man rampant and the lion couchant," thought
+Mr. Aylett, following with his wife in the funeral train down
+the grass-grown alley leading through the garden to the family
+burying-ground. "It would be an entertaining study of human veracity
+if I could hear Chilton's story, and compare the two. He is either an
+audacious rascal, or there is something back of all that I have heard
+which will not bear the light."
+
+It was not remorse at the thought of the total alteration in his
+sister's life and feelings that had grown out of this imperfect or false
+evidence, but simple curiosity to inspect the lineaments and note the
+actions of the cool rascal whose audacity commanded his admiration, and
+note his bearing in the event of his coming into closer contact with his
+former foe, that prompted him to single him out for scrutiny among
+those whose relationship to the deceased secured them places nearest the
+grave.
+
+For a time the widower was gravely quiet, holding his child's hand and
+looking down steadfastly into the pit at his feet, perhaps remembering
+more vividly than anything else a certain sunny day in March, many years
+back, when another fissure yawned close by, where now a green mound--the
+ridged scar with which the earth had closed the wound in her breast--and
+a stately shaft of white marble were all that remained to the world of
+"Rosa, wife of Frederic Chilton." But, while the mould was being heaped
+upon the coffin, he raised his eyes, and let them rove aimlessly over
+the crowd, neither avoiding nor courting observation--the cursory regard
+of a man who had no strong interest in any person or group there. They
+changed singularly in resting upon the family from Ridgeley. A stare
+of stupefaction gave place to living fires of angry suspicion and
+amazement--lurid flame that testified its violence in the reddening of
+cheeks and brow, in the dilating nostril and quivering lips. Then he
+passed his hand downward over his features, evidently conscious of their
+distortion, and striving after a semblance of equanimity, and looked
+again in stern fixity, not at her from whom he had been parted in the
+early summer of his manhood, nor at his successful rival, nor yet at the
+guardian who had offered him gratuitous insult in addition to the
+injury of refusing to permit his ward's marriage with a disgraced
+adventurer--but at Mrs. Aylett, the chatelaine of Ridgeley, the wife
+whose serene purity had never been blemished by a doubting breath;
+chaste and polished matron; the admired copy for younger and less
+discreet, but not more beautiful women. He surveyed her boldly--if the
+imagination had not seemed preposterous--Mr. Aylett would have said
+scornfully, as he might study the face and figure of some abandoned
+wretch who had accosted him in the public thoroughfare as an
+acquaintance.
+
+A haughty and uncontrollable gesture from the husband succeeded in
+diverting the offender's notice to himself for one instant--not more.
+But in that flash he detected a shade of difference in the expression
+that irked him; a ray, that was inquiry, sharp and eager, tempered by
+compassion, yet still contemptuous.
+
+All this passed in less time than it has taken me to write a line
+descriptive of the pantomime. The mound was shaped, and the decorously
+mournful train turned from it to retrace their course to the house,
+Frederic Chilton imitating the example of those about him, but moving
+like a sleep-walker, his brows corrugated and eyes sightless to all
+surrounding objects. He had awakened when the Ridgeley carriage drove
+to the door. Mrs. Sutton detained Mabel in one of the upper chambers to
+concert plans for a visit to the homestead while the Dorrances should
+be there. Aunt and niece had not met since the arrival of the latter
+in Virginia, a fortnight before, the elder lady being in constant
+attendance upon Mrs. Tazewell.
+
+"This is very stupid! And I am getting hungry!" said Mrs. Aylett, aside
+to her lord, as she stood near a front window, tapping the floor with
+her feet, while vehicle after vehicle received its load and rolled off.
+"We shall be the last on the ground. Herbert! can't you intimate to
+Mabel that we are impatient to be gone?"
+
+"I don't know where she is!" growled the brother, for once
+non-complaisant to her behest, and not stirring from the chair in the
+corner into which he had dropped at his entrance.
+
+His head hung upon his breast, and he appeared to study the lining of
+his hat-crown, balancing the brim by his forefingers between his knees.
+Mrs. Aylett had lowered her veil in the burying-ground or on her way
+thither, but it was a flimsy mass of black lace--richly wrought, yet
+insufficient to hide the paleness of the upper part of her visage. Mr.
+Aylett watched and wondered, with but one definite idea in his brain
+beyond the resolve to ferret out the entire mystery in his stealthy,
+taciturn fashion. Herbert Dorrance had been, in some manner, compromised
+by his association with this Chilton, had reason to dread exposure from
+him, and his sister was the confidante of his guilty secret.
+
+"I shall know all about it in due season," thought the master of himself
+and his dependents.
+
+Not that he meant to extort or wheedle it from his consort's keeping,
+but he had implicit faith in his own detective talents.
+
+"Here she is at last!" he said, when Mabel came down the staircase,
+holding Aunt Rachel's hand, and talking low and earnestly, her noble
+face and even gliding step a refreshing contrast to Mrs. Aylett's
+nervousness and Herbert's dogged sullenness.
+
+"I am sorry I have kept you so long, but there will be less dust than if
+we had gone sooner. The other carriages will have had time to get out of
+our way," she said, pleasantly. "Winston," coming up to her brother, and
+speaking in an undertone, "will it be quite convenient for you to send
+for Aunt Rachel on next Friday?"
+
+"Entirely! The carriage shall be at your service at any hour or day you
+wish," with more cordiality than was common with him.
+
+However treacherous others might be in their reserve and
+half-confessions, here was one who had never deceived him or knowingly
+misled him to believe her better, or otherwise, than she was. Honesty
+and truth were stamped upon her face by a life-long practice of these
+homely virtues--not by meretricious arts. It was tardy justice, but he
+rendered it without grudging, if not heartily.
+
+A few words passed as to the hour at which the carriage was to call for
+Mrs. Sutton, and Mabel kissed her "Good-by," the others shaking hands
+with her, and with three or four of the Tazewell kinsmen who officiated
+as masters of ceremonies, and Mrs. Aylett made an impatient movement
+toward the front steps. Directly in her route, leaning against a pillar
+of the old-fashioned porch, was Frederic Chilton, no longer dreamy and
+perplexed, but on the alert with eye and ear--not losing one sound
+of her voice, or trick of feature. She inclined her head slightly and
+courteously, the notice due a friend of the house she, as guest, was
+about to leave. He did not bow, nor relax the rigor of his watch. Only,
+when she was seated in the carriage, he bent respectfully and mutely
+before Mabel, who followed her hostess, and paying as little attention
+to the two gentlemen as they did to him walked up to Mrs. Sutton, and
+said something inaudible to the bystanders. As they drove out of the
+yard, the Ridgeley quartette saw the pair saunter, side by side, to the
+extreme end of the portico, apparently to be out of hearing of the
+rest, but no one remarked aloud upon the renewed intimacy and then
+confidential attitude.
+
+"If it is anything very startling, the old gossip will never keep it to
+herself," Mr. Aylett congratulated himself, while his wife's complexion
+paled gradually to bloodlessness, and Herbert sat back in his corner,
+sulky and dumb. "And she is coming to us on Friday!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII. -- THUNDER IN THE AIR.
+
+
+THE only malady that put Herbert Dorrance in frequent and unpleasant
+remembrance of his mortality was a fierce headache, which had of
+late years supervened upon any imprudence in diet, and upon excessive
+agitation of mind or physical exertion. His invariable custom, when
+he awoke at morning with one of these, was to trace it to its supposed
+source, and after determining that it was nothing more than might have
+been expected from the circumstance, to commit himself to his wife's
+nursing for the day.
+
+She ought, therefore, to have been surprised when, while admitting that
+the pain in his head was intense, he yet, on the morrow succeeding Mrs.
+Tazewell's funeral, persisted in rising and dressing for breakfast.
+
+"It must have been the roast duck at dinner yesterday," he calmly and
+languidly explained the attack. "It was fat, and the stuffing reeked
+with butter, sage, and onion. An ostrich could not have digested it. I
+was tired, too, and should not have eaten heartily of even the plainest
+food."
+
+Mabel neither opposed nor sustained the theory. She had slept so ill
+herself as to know how restless he had been; had heard his hardly
+suppressed sighs and tossings to and fro, infallible indications with
+him of serious perturbation. Had his discomfort been bodily only, he
+would have felt no compunction in calling her to his aid, as he had
+done scores of times. Her sleepless hours had also been fraught with
+melancholy disquiet. Putting away from her--with firmness begotten by
+virtue born of will--and so much of this thoughtfulness as pertained to
+the bygone days with which Frederic Chilton was inseparable associated,
+she yet deliberated seriously upon the expediency of speaking out
+courageously to Herbert of the relation this man had once borne to
+her, the incidents of their recent meeting, and the effect she saw was
+produced upon her husband's mind by the sight of him.
+
+"If we would have this negative happiness continue, this matter ought
+to be settled at once and forever," she said, inwardly. "He must not
+suspect me of weak and wicked clinging to the phantoms of my youth; must
+believe that I do not harbor a regret or wish incompatible with my duty
+as his wife. I will avail myself of the first favorable moment to assure
+him of the folly of his fears and of his discomfort."
+
+Another consideration--the natural sequence of her conviction of his
+unhappiness--was a touching appeal to her woman's heart. If he had
+not loved her more fervently than his phlegmatic temperament and
+undemonstrative bearing would induce one to suppose, he would not dread
+the rekindling of her olden fancy for another. The image of him who,
+she had confessed, had taught her the depth and weight of her own
+affections, whom she had loved as she had never professed to care for
+him, would not have haunted his pillow to chase sleep, and torture him
+with forebodings.
+
+"I must make him comprehend that Mabel Aylett at twenty, wilful,
+romantic, and undisciplined, was a different being from the woman who
+has called him 'husband,' without a blush, for fourteen years!"
+
+It was these recollections that softened her kindly tones to tenderness;
+made the pressure of her hand upon his temples a caress, rather than a
+manual appliance for deadening pain; while she combated his intention of
+appearing at the breakfast-table.
+
+"Lie down upon the sofa!" she entreated. "Let me bring up a cup of
+strong coffee for you; then darken the room, and chafe your head until
+you fall asleep, since you turn a deaf ear to all proposals of mustard
+foot-baths and Dr. Van Orden's panacea pills."
+
+"No!" stubbornly. "Aylett and Clara would think it strange. They do not
+understand how a slight irregularity of diet or habit can produce such a
+result. They would attribute it to other causes. I may feel better when
+I have taken something nourishing."
+
+The dreaded critics received the tidings of his indisposition without
+cavil at its imputed origin, treated the whole subject with comparative
+indifference, which would have mortified him a week ago, but seemed now
+to assuage his unrest. The breakfast hour was a quiet one. Herbert
+could not attempt the form of eating, despite his expressed hope of the
+curative effects of nourishment, and sipped his black coffee at tedious
+intervals of pain, looking more ill after each. Mabel was silent, and
+regardful of his suffering, while Mrs. Aylett toyed with the tea-cup,
+broke her biscuit into small heaps of crumbs upon her plate, and under
+her visor of ennui and indolent musing, kept her eye upon her vis-a-vis,
+whose face was opaque ice; and his intonations, when he deigned to
+speak, meant nothing save that he was controller of his own meditations,
+and would not be meddled with.
+
+"You are not well enough to ride over to the Courthouse with me,
+Dorrance?" he said, interrogatively, his meal despatched. "It is
+court-day, you know?"
+
+"What do you say, Mabel?" was Herbert's clumsy reference to his nurse.
+"Don't you think I might venture?"
+
+"I would not, if I were in your place," she replied, cautiously
+dissuasive. "The day is raw, and there will be rain before evening.
+Dampness always aggravates neuralgia."
+
+"It is neuralgia, then, is it?" queried Winston, shortly, drawing on his
+boots.
+
+His sister looked up surprised.
+
+"What else should it be?"
+
+"Nothing--unless the symptoms indicate softening of the brain!" he
+rejoined, with his slight, dissonant laugh. "In either case, your
+decision is wise. He is better off in your custody than he would
+be abroad. I hope I shall find you convalescent when I return. Good
+morning!"
+
+His wife accompanied him to the outer door.
+
+"It is chilly!" she shivered, as this was opened. "Are you warmly clad,
+love?" feeling his overcoat. "And don't forget your umbrella."
+
+Her hand had not left his shoulder, and, in offering a parting kiss, she
+leaned her head there also.
+
+"I wish you would not go!" she said impulsively and sincerely.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I cannot say--except that I dread to be left alone all day. You may
+laugh at me, but I feel as if something terrible were hanging over
+me--or you. The spiritual oppression is like the physical presentiment
+sensitive temperaments suffer when a thunder-storm is brooding, but not
+ready to break. Yet I can refer my fears to no known cause."
+
+"That is folly." Mr. Aylett bit off the end of a cigar, and felt in his
+vest pocket for a match-safe. "You should be able always to assign a
+reason for the fear as well as the hope that is in you. You have no
+idea, you say, from what recent event your prognostication takes its
+hue?"
+
+She laughed, and straightened her fine neck.
+
+"From the same imprudence that has consigned poor Herbert to the house
+for the day, I suspect--a late and heavy dinner. I had the nightmare
+twice before morning. You will be home to supper?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Hesitating upon the monosyllable, he took hold of her elbows, so as to
+bring her directly before him, and searched her countenance until it was
+dyed with blushes.
+
+"Why do you color so furiously?" he asked in raillery that had a sad or
+sardonic accent. "I was about to ask if you would be inconsolable if I
+never came back. Perhaps your presentiment points to some such fatality.
+These little accidents have happened in better-regulated families than
+ours."
+
+"WINSTON!"
+
+She gasped and blanched in pain or terror.
+
+"What is the matter? Have I hurt you?" releasing his grasp.
+
+"Yes--HERE!" laying his hand upon her heart, the beautiful eyes
+terrified and pathetic as those of a wounded deer. "For the love of
+Heaven, never stab me again with such suggestions. When you die, I shall
+not care to live. When you cease to love me, I shall wish we had died
+together on our marriage-day--my husband!"
+
+He let her twine her arms about his neck, laid his cheek to her brow,
+clasped her tightly and kissed her impetuously, madly, again and yet
+again--disengaged himself, and ran down the steps. She was standing
+on the top one, still flushed and breathless from the violence of his
+embrace, when he looked back from the gate, her commanding figure framed
+by the embowering creepers, as Mabel's girlish shape had been when
+Frederic Chilton waved his farewell to her from the same spot.
+
+Did either of them think of it, or would either have reckoned it an
+ominous coincidence, if the remembrance of that long-ago parting had
+presented itself then and there?
+
+Herbert spent the day upon the lounge in the family sitting-room--a cosy
+retreat, between the parlor and the conservatory, which had been added
+to the lower floor in the reign of the present queen. Her brother's
+seizure was no trifling ailment. Alternations of stupor and racking
+spasms of pain defied, for several hours, his wife's application of
+the remedies she had found efficacious in former attacks. Her ultimate
+resort was chloroform, and by the liberal use of this, relaxation of the
+tense nerves and a sleep that resembled healing repose were induced by
+the middle of the afternoon. The weather continued to threaten rain,
+although none had fallen as yet, and the wind moaned lugubriously in
+the leafless branches of the great walnut before the end window of the
+narrow apartment. It was a grand tree, the patriarch of the grove
+that sheltered the house from the north winds. Mabel, relieved from
+watchfulness, and to some extent from anxiety, by her husband's profound
+slumber, lay back in her chair with a long-drawn sigh, and looked out at
+the naked limbs of the wrestling giant--the majestic sway and reel she
+used to note with childish awe--and thought of many things which had
+befallen her since then, until the steady rocking of the boughs and hum
+of the November breeze soothed her into languor--then drowsiness--then
+oblivion.
+
+She awoke in alarm at the sense of something hurtful or startling
+hovering near her.
+
+The fire had been trimmed before she slept, and now flamed up gayly; the
+window was dusky, as were the distant corners of the room, and Herbert
+was gazing steadfastly at her.
+
+"I fell asleep without knowing it. I am sorry! Have you wanted anything?
+How long have you been awake?"
+
+"Only a few minutes, my dearest!" with no change in the mesmeric
+intentness of his gaze. "I want nothing more than to have you always
+near me. You have been a good, faithful wife, Mabel, better and
+nobler--a thousandfold nobler than I deserved. I have thought it all
+over while you were sleeping so tranquilly in my sight. I wish my
+conscience were void of evil to all mankind as is yours. I awoke with an
+odd and awful impression upon my mind. The firelight flamed in a bright
+stream between your chair and me--and I must have dreamed it--or the
+chloroform had affected my head--I thought it was a river of light
+dividing us! You were a calm, white angel who had entered into
+rest--uncaring for and forgetful of me. I was lost, homeless, wandering
+forever and ever!"
+
+Had her prosaic spouse addressed her in a rhythmic improvisation, Mabel
+could not have been more astounded.
+
+"You are dreaming yet!" she said, kneeling by him and binding his
+temples with her cool, firm palms. "When we are divided, it will be by a
+dark--not a bright river."
+
+"Until death do us part!" Herbert repeated, thoughtfully. "I wish I
+could hear you say, once, that you do not regret that clause of your
+marriage vow. I was not your heart's choice, you know, Mabel, however
+decided may have been the approval of your friends and of your judgment.
+The thought oppresses me as it did not in the first years of our wedded
+life."
+
+"I am glad you have spoken of this," began the wife. "I would disabuse
+your mind--"
+
+"All in the dark!" exclaimed Mrs. Aylett, at the door. "And what a
+stifling odor of chloroform!"
+
+Mabel got up, and drew a heavy travelling-shawl that covered Herbert's
+lower limbs over his arms and chest.
+
+"I will open the window!" she said, deprecatingly.
+
+A sluice of cold air rushed in, beating the blaze this way and that,
+puffing ashes from the hearth into the room, and eliciting from Mrs.
+Aylett what would have been a peevish interjection in another woman.
+
+"My dear sister! the remedy is worse than the offence. Chloroform is
+preferable to creosote, or whatever abominable element is the principal
+ingredient of smoke and cold! The thermometer must be down to the
+freezing-point!"
+
+Mabel lowered the sash.
+
+"You have been sitting in a room without fire, I suspect. The
+temperature here is delightful. I am sorry we have exiled you from such
+comfortable quarters."
+
+"Don't speak of it! I cannot endure to sit here alone--or anywhere else.
+I have slept most of the afternoon. How the wind blows! I wish Winston
+were at home."
+
+"It is a dark afternoon. He seldom returns from court so early as this.
+It is not six yet."
+
+Mabel still essayed pacification of the other's ruffled mood.
+
+"You are better, I see," Mrs. Aylett said abruptly to her brother. "You
+were not subject to these spells formerly. People generally outlive
+constitutional headaches--so I have noticed. It is queer yours should
+occur so often and wax more violent each time. You should have medical
+advice before they ripen into a more serious disorder."
+
+Herbert shaded his eyes from the fire, and lay with out replying, until
+his wife believed he had relapsed into a doze.
+
+She was convinced of her mistake by his saying, slowly and distinctly,--
+
+"You do not enter into Clara's whole meaning, Mabel. We have been
+careful, all of us, never to tell you that our father was imbecile by
+the time he was fifty and died, in his sixtieth year, of the disease
+your brother named this morning--softening of the brain. I, of all his
+children, am most like him physically. If it be true that this danger
+menaces me, you should be informed of it, and know, furthermore, that it
+is incurable."
+
+Mabel also paused before answering.
+
+"I cannot assent to the hypothesis of your inherited malady, Herbert.
+These headaches may mean nothing. But let that be as it may, you should
+have told me of this before."
+
+"You see," broke in Mrs. Aylett's triumphant sarcasm. "The reward of
+your maiden attempt at conjugal confidence is reproof. What have I
+warned you from the beginning?"
+
+"Not reproof," corrected Mabel, in mild decision. "My knowledge of the
+secret he deemed it wise and kind to withhold would have gained for him
+my sympathy, and my more constant and intelligent care of his health. It
+is the hidden fear that grows and multiplies itself most rapidly. Before
+it is killed it must be dragged to the light."
+
+"That is YOUR hypothesis," was the bright retort. "We Dorrances have
+justly earned a reputation for discretion by the excellent preservation
+of our own secrets, and those committed to our keeping by our friends.
+My motto is, tell others nothing about yourself which they cannot learn
+without your confession. An autobiography is always either a bore or
+a blunder. Not that I would regulate the number and nature of your
+divulgations to your wife, Herbert. As to Winston's unlucky hit this
+morning, it was mere fortuity. I have never felt myself called upon to
+enlighten him in family secrets, and his is an incurious disposition.
+He never asks idle questions. He has a marvellous faculty of striking
+home-blows in the dark, but that is no reason why one should betray his
+wound by crying out. Apropos to darkness, may I ring for a lamp, or will
+the light hurt your eyes?"
+
+"The fire-light is more trying," rejoined Mabel, pushing a screen before
+the sofa, and placing herself where she could, in its shadow, hold her
+husband's hand.
+
+It was cold and limp when she lifted it, but tightened upon hers with
+the instinctive grip of gratitude too profound to be uttered.
+
+She had never been so near loving him as at the instant in which he
+believed he had incurred her ever-lasting displeasure. Generosity
+and pity were fast undoing the petrifying influences of her early
+disappointment, their mutual reserve, and tacit misunderstandings. If
+half he feared were true, his need of her affection, her counsel and
+companionship were dire. Whatever wrong he had done her by keeping back
+the tale of hereditary infirmity, he had suffered more from the act than
+she could ever do. Who knew how much of what she, with others, mistook
+for constitutional phlegm and studied austerity, was the outward sign
+of the battle between dread of his inherited doom and the resolve of an
+iron will to defy natural laws and the sentence of destiny herself, and
+hold reason upon her rickety throne?
+
+Heaven's gentlest and kindest angels were busy with Mabel Dorrance's
+heart in that reverie, and, as they wrought, the cloud that had rested
+there for fifteen years broke into rainbow smiles that illumined her
+countenance into the similitude of the shining ones.
+
+"I bless Thee, Father, the All-wise and Ever-merciful, that she is
+safe!" was her voiceless thanksgiving.
+
+No more bitter tears over the lonely, sunken grave! no more hearkening,
+with aching, never-to-be-satisfied ears for the patter of the "little
+feet that never trod." The great sorrow of her life that had been
+good in His sight was at length a blessing in hers. Her "hereafter" of
+knowledge of His doings had come to her in this world.
+
+"Does it rain, Peter?" questioned Mrs. Aylett of the lad who brought in
+lights.
+
+"Yes, ma'am. It's beginnin' to storm powerful!" he said, respectfully
+communicative.
+
+"Your master has not come?"
+
+"No, ma'am."
+
+"See that the lantern over the great gate is lighted, and that some
+one is ready to take his horse. And, Peter," as he was going out, "tell
+Thomas not to bring in supper until Mr. Aylett returns."
+
+She moved to the window, bowed her hands on either side of her eyes to
+exclude the radiance within, and strained them into the black, black
+night.
+
+"He will have a dark and a disagreeable ride," she said, coming back to
+the fire.
+
+Her uneasiness was so palpable as to excite Mabel's compassion.
+
+"Every step of the road is familiar to him, and he is accustomed to
+night rides," she said, encouragingly. "Yes," absently. "But he will be
+very wet. Hear the rain!"
+
+It plashed against the north window, and tinkled upon the tin roof of
+the conservatory, and Mabel, though aware of her brother's habitual
+disregard of wind and weather, could not but sympathize with the wifely
+concern evinced by the sober physiognomy and unsettled demeanor of one
+generally so calm. She observed, now, that her sister-in-law was arrayed
+more richly than usual, and her attire was always handsome and tasteful.
+A deep purple silk, trimmed upon skirt and waist with velvet bands of
+darker purple, showed off her clear skin to fine advantage, and was
+saved from monotony of effect by a headdress of lace and buff ribbons.
+A stately and a comely matron, she was bedight for her lord's return;
+weighed as heavy each minute that detained him from her arms.
+
+She was still standing by the low mantel, her arm resting lightly upon
+it, the fire-blaze bringing out lustrous reflections in her drapery
+and hair, and tinging her pensive check with youthful carmine, when her
+husband entered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX. -- NEMESIS.
+
+
+IT was a peculiarity of Winston Aylett that he was never discomposed in
+seeming, however embarrassing or distressing might be his position. In
+his childhood he was one to whom, to use the common phrase, dirt would
+not stick. His face was clean and fair, his hands smooth, and his hair
+in order after rough and tumble experiences that sent his companions
+home begrimed, ragged, and unkempt frights. To-night, he had ridden
+a dozen miles in the teeth of the storm, and made no pause before
+appearing before his wife and sister, except to lay off his hat and
+overcoat in the hall. But had he expected to encounter a roomful of
+ladies, his costume could not have been more unexceptionable.
+
+His linen was pure and fresh, even to the narrow line of wristband
+edging his coat sleeve; his clearly cut patrician features were tranquil
+in every line and tint; his step was the light, yet deliberate stride of
+an athlete without passion or bravado. Conscious power, inexorable will,
+and thorough self-command were stamped upon him from crown to foot,
+and his salutation to the small family party accompanied a smile as
+mirthless and cold as were his eyes.
+
+Mrs. Aylett advanced a step, not more, and returned the bow that
+comprehended all present, with a pleased, not rapturous welcome.
+
+"We were beginning to fear lest you might be wet," she said, emulating
+his polite equanimity. Genuine tact is always chameleon-like in quality.
+"It rains quite fast, does it not?"
+
+"The storm is increasing, but I experienced no inconvenience from it,
+thank you."
+
+He sat down in his favorite arm-chair, and spread his fingers before the
+fire.
+
+"I am happy to see you so very much better"--to Herbert. "There were
+many kind inquiries for you at the court-house to-day. Dr. Ritchie
+wanted to know if you had ever taken nux vomica for these neuralgic
+turns. I invited him to come in with me and prescribe for you, but he
+said he must push on home, so we parted at the outer gate."
+
+So affable as almost to put others at their ease in his company,
+he chatted until supper was announced; regretted civilly Herbert's
+inability to go to the table, and gave his sister his arm into the
+dining-room, Mrs. Aylett following in their wake. If he did not eat
+heartily, he praised, in gentlemanly moderation, the viands selected by
+his consort for his delectation after his wet ride, and pleaded a late
+dinner as the reason of his present abstinence. Then they adjourned to
+the apartment where they had left Mr. Dorrance, and the host produced
+his cigar-case.
+
+"Mabel says that smoke never offends your olfactories, or affects your
+head unpleasantly, when you are suffering from this nervous affection,"
+he said to Herbert.
+
+"On the contrary, it often acts as a sedative," was the reply.
+
+Winston lighted a cigar with an allumette from a bronze taper-stand--a
+Christmas gift from his wife, which she kept supplied with fanciful
+spiles twisted and fringed into a variety of shapes; drew several long
+breaths to be certain that the fire had taken hold of the heart of the
+Havana, tossed the pretty paper into the embers, and resumed his seat in
+the chimney corner.
+
+"A sedative is a good thing for people who allow their nerves to get out
+of gear," he remarked, dryly and leisurely, puffing contentedly in the
+middle and at the end of the sentence. "But he who does this subverts
+the order of the ruler and the ruled. I supposed I had nerves once,
+but it is an age since they have dared molest me. I know that I had my
+impulses when I was younger."
+
+He stopped to fillip the ash forming upon the ignited end of his cigar,
+performing the operation with nicety, using the extreme tip of his
+middle-finger nail over the salver attached for the purpose to the
+bronze smoking-set.
+
+"I obeyed one, above a dozen years ago. I learned only to-day that it
+was rash and unwise, and to how much evil it may lead."
+
+"Not a very active evil, if you have just discovered it to be such."
+
+The speaker was his sister. Herbert was motionless upon his couch. Mrs.
+Aylett, in the lounging-chair at the opposite side of the hearth from
+her husband, was cutting the leaves of a new magazine he had brought
+from the post-office, and did not seem to hear his remark.
+
+"You reason upon the assumption that ignorance is bliss," said Mr.
+Aylett. "Allow me to express the opinion that the adage embodying
+that idea is the refuge of cowards and fools. No matter how grievous a
+bankrupt a man may be financially in spirit, he is craven or a
+blockhead to shrink the investigation of his accounts. Which allusion
+to bankruptcy brings me to the recital of a choicely offensive bit of
+scandal I heard to-day. It is seldom that I give heed to the like, but
+the delicious rottenness revealed by this tale enforced my hearing, and
+fixed the details in my mind. I could not but think, as I rode home,
+of the accessories which would add effectiveness, to-night, to my
+second-hand narrative. I had the whole scene, which is now before me,
+in my mind's eye--the warm firelight and the shaded lamp brightening all
+within, while the rain pattered without; the interesting invalid over
+there gradually stirring into interest as the story progressed; you,
+Mabel, calmly and critically attentive; and my Lady Aylett, too proud to
+look the desire she really feels to handle the lovely carrion."
+
+"Your figures are not provocative of insatiable appetite," returned his
+wife, with inimitable sang-froid, staying her paper knife that she might
+examine an engraving.
+
+"Your appetite needs further excitants, then? So did mine until I began
+to suspect that the history might be authentic, and not a figment of
+the raconteur's imagination. The hero's name at first disposed me to set
+down the entire relation as a fiction. It is romantic enough to perfume
+a three-volume novel--Julius Lennox!"
+
+Mabel's instinctive thought was for her husband, but, in turning to
+him she could not but notice that Mrs. Aylett sat motionless, the
+paper-cutter between two leaves, and her left hand pressed hard upon the
+upper, but without attempting to sever them.
+
+Herbert twisted his head upon the pillow until he faced the back of the
+sofa, and a convulsion went through him, hardly quelled by the clasp of
+Mabel's hand upon his.
+
+"Julius Lennox!" reiterated Mr. Aylett, between the fragrant puffs, "A
+lieutenant in the navy--the good-looking, but, as the sequel proved,
+not over-steady, spouse of a lady who was the daughter of another naval
+officer of similar rank. The latter was compelled to leave the service
+on account of incipient idiocy, and retired, upon half-pay, to an
+unfashionable quarter of a certain great city, where his wife, a smart
+Yankee, opened a boarding-house for law and medical students, and
+contrived not only to keep the souls and bodies of her family together,
+but to marry off her two still single daughters--the one to a
+barrister, the other to a physician. The lovely Louise Lennox--a pretty
+alliteration, is it not?--remained meanwhile under the paternal roof,
+her husband's ship being absent most of the time, and the handsome
+Julius having unlimited privileges in the line condemned by "Black-eyed
+Susan" in her parting interview with her sailor lover--finding a
+mistress in every port. It is woman's nature and wisdom to seek
+consolation for such afflictions as the deprivation of the beloved one's
+society, and the almost certainty that he is basking his faithless self
+in the sunlight of another's eyes. Our heroine, being at once ardent and
+philosophical, put the lex talionis into force by falling in love
+with one of her mother's lodgers, a sprig of the legal profession.
+The favored youth--so says my edition of the romance--remained
+preternaturally unconscious of the sentiment he had inspired,
+attributing her manifestations of partiality to platonic regard, until
+she opened his modest eyes by proposing an elopement. He had completed
+his professional studies, taken out a license to practise law, was about
+to quit her and the city, and the no-longer-adored Julius was coming
+home--a wreck in health and purse--upon a six months' leave of absence.
+It must be owned the Lady Louise had some excuse for a measure that
+seemed to have amazed and horrified her cicisbeo. Recoiling from the
+proposition and herself with the virtuous indignation that is ever
+aroused in the manly bosom by similar advances, he packed up his trunk,
+double-locked it and his heart, paid his bill, and decamped from the
+dangerous precincts.
+
+"Ignoble conclusion to a tender affair; but not so devoid of tragicality
+as would seem. Infuriated at the desertion of this modern Joseph,
+Louise, the lorn, avenged the slight offered her charms by declaring
+to her youngest brother, the only one who resided in the same city
+with herself, that Joseph had made dishonorable proposals to her--a
+proceeding which demonstrates that the feminine character has withstood
+the proverbially changing effects of time from age to age. My narrative
+is but a later and a Gentile version of the Jewish novelette to which
+I have referred. The role of Potiphar was cast for the unsophisticated
+brother, who, being unable to immure the unimpressible Joseph in the
+Tombs, attempted the only means of redress that remained to him, to wit:
+Personal chastisement.
+
+"And here," continued the narrator, yet more slowly, "I find myself
+perplexed by the discrepancy between the statement I have had to-day and
+one of this section of the story furnished me several years since.
+In the latter the indignant fraternal relative flogged the would-be
+betrayer within a quarter of an inch of his life. The other account
+reverses the position of the parties, and makes Joseph the incorruptible
+also the invincible. However this may have been, the adventure seems to
+have quenched the loving Louise's brilliancy for a season. We hear no
+more of her until after her father's decease, when she re-enters the
+lists of Cupid in another State, as the blushing and still beautiful
+virgin-betrothed of a man of birth and means, who woos and weds her
+under her maiden cognomen--the entire family, including the valiant
+brother who figured as whippee or whipper, in the castigation
+exploit--being accomplices in the righteous fraud. I might, did I not
+fear being prolix, tell of sundry side-issues growing out of the main
+stalk of this plot, such as the ingenious manoeuvres by which the
+promising couple of conspirators averted, upon the eve of the sister's
+bridal, the threatened expose of their machinations to entrap the
+wealthy lover. Suffice it to say that the duped husband (by brevet)
+lived for a decade and a half in the placid enjoyment of the ignorance
+which my sagacious sister here is disposed to confound with rational
+bliss--nor is he quite sure, to this day, whether spouse No. 1 of the
+partner of his bosom still lives, or by clearance in what court of
+infamy or justice she managed to shuffle off her real name, and win a
+right to resume the title of spinster."
+
+He lighted a fresh cigar, and for the space of perhaps a minute, a dead
+and ominous silence prevailed. Mabel, pallid and faint at heart, could
+not take her eyes from his countenance, with its cruel smile, frozen,
+shallow eyes, and the deep white dints coming and going in his nostrils.
+
+He had judged without partiality. He would condemn without mercy. He
+would punish without remorse.
+
+Herbert still faced the back of the lounge, but he had slipped his hand
+from the relaxing hold of hers, and pressed it over his eyes. She could
+not seek to possess herself of it again. Winston was not the only dupe
+of the nefarious fraud, the betrayal of which had overtaken the guilty
+pair thus late in their career of duplicity. Yet, however severely
+she had suffered in heart from their falsehood and her brother's
+intolerance, no stain would rest upon her name, while, terminate as the
+affair might, the disgraceful revelation would shipwreck her brother's
+happiness for life, if not bring upon the old homestead a storm of
+scandal that would leave no more trace of the honorable reputation
+heretofore borne by its owners than remained of the smiling plenty of
+the cities of the plain after the fiery wrath of the Lord had overthrown
+them.
+
+Mrs. Aylett resumed the suspended operation of cutting the leaves of
+her new monthly; fluttered them to be certain that none were overlooked;
+laid down the periodical; brushed the scattered bits of paper from
+her silken skirt, and retaining the paper-knife--a costly toy of
+mother-of-pearl and silver--changed her position so as to look her
+husband directly in the eye.
+
+"I believe I can give you the information you lack," she said, in
+curiously constrained accents, the concentration of some feeling to
+which she could or would not grant other vent. "Clara Louise Lennox
+obtained a divorce from her first husband on the grounds of drunkenness,
+failure to maintain her, infidelity, and personal ill-usage. He came
+home from sea, as you have said, the battered ruin of a MAN, fallen
+beyond hope of redemption. There was no law, written or moral, which
+obliged her, when once freed from it, to carry about with her and thrust
+upon the notice of others the loathsome body of death typified by his
+name and her matronly title. She commenced life anew at her father's
+death, contrary, let me say to the advice of all her friends, if I
+except the mother, who could refuse nothing to her favorite daughter.
+The scheme was boldly conceived. You have admitted that it was
+successfully carried out. In New York the family were not known beyond
+the circle with which they disdained to associate when the lodging-house
+business was abandoned. There were a thousand chances to one that in her
+new abode Miss Dorrance would be identified by some busybody with the
+divorced Mrs. Lennox. She risked her fortunes upon the one chance, and
+won. I do not expect you to believe that the impostor was moved by any
+other consideration in contracting her second marriage than the wish
+to seek the more exalted sphere of society and influence which Fate had
+hitherto denied her. You would sneer were I to hint, however remotely,
+at a regard for her high-born suitor the dashing, but dissipated officer
+had never awakened--"
+
+Mr. Aylett lifted his hand, smiling more evilly than before.
+
+"Excuse the interruption! but after your statement of the fact that
+such sentimental asseverations would be futile, you waste time in
+recapitulating the loves of the lady aforementioned, and we in hearing
+them. I think I express the opinion of the audience--fit, but few--when
+I say that we require no other evidence than that afforded by the story
+I have told of Mrs. Lennox's susceptibility and capacity for affection.
+We are willing to take for granted that the latter was illimitable."
+
+"As you like!" idly tapping the nails of her left hand with the knife.
+"Is there anything else pertaining to this history into which you would
+like to inquire?"
+
+It was a sight to curdle the blood about one's heart, this duel between
+husband and wife, with double-edged blades, wreathed with flowers. Mr.
+Aylett's attitude of lazy indifference was not exceeded by Clara's proud
+languor. He laughed a little at the last question.
+
+"I have speculated somewhat--having nothing else in particular to engage
+my mind on my way home--upon the point I named just now, and upon one
+other akin to it. All that the novel needs to round it off neatly is an
+encounter between the real and the quasi consorts. I cannot specify them
+by name, in consequence of the uncertainty I have mentioned. One was a
+bona-fide husband--the other a bogus article, let New York divorce laws
+decide what they will, provided always that the fallen Julius had not
+bidden farewell to this lower earth before his loyal Louise plighted her
+faith to her Southern gallant. Death is the Alexander of the universe.
+There is no retying the knots he has cut."
+
+From the pertinacity with which he returned to the question one could
+discern his actual anxiety to have it settled. Mabel understood that the
+only salve of possible application to his outraged pride and love was
+the discovery that Clara had been really a widow when he wedded her. The
+divorce and subsequent deception were sins of heinous dye against his
+ideas of respectability and unspotted honor, but he would never forgive
+the woman who had had two living husbands, freed from the former though
+she was by a legal fiction.
+
+No one saw this more clearly than did she whose fate trembled upon the
+next words she should utter. With all her hardihood, she hesitated to
+reply. Luxury, wealth, and station were on one side; degradation
+and poverty on the other. The solitary hope of reinstatement in the
+affection, if not the esteem, of him she loved truly as it was in her
+to love anything beside herself, was arrayed against the certainty of
+alienation and the tearful odds of ignominious banishment.
+
+Her answer, under the pressure of the warring emotions, was a semitone
+lower, and less distinctly enunciated than those that had gone before
+it.
+
+"The denouement you propose for your romance is impracticable. Julius
+Lennox died before the date of the second marriage."
+
+Herbert drew himself to a sitting posture by clutching the back of the
+lounge. His red eyes and tumbled hair made him look more like a mad than
+a sick man.
+
+"In the name of Heaven," he demanded hoarsely, "have we not had enough
+lies, every one of which has been a blunder, and a fatal one? I told
+you, years ago, that the scene of this evening was a mere question of
+time; that, without a miracle, an edifice founded upon iniquity and
+cemented by falsehood must crush you before you could lay the top-stone.
+You would not be warned--you held on your way without hesitation or
+compunction, and now you would add to sin fatuity. Do you suppose that
+after what your husband has learned of your untruthfulness he will
+accept your assertion on any subject without inquiry? And, how many in
+your own family and out of it--although these may not know you by the
+name you now bear--are cognizant of the fact that Julius Lennox was
+alive for almost fifteen months after you became Mrs. Aylett?"
+
+Mabel's arm was about his neck, her hand upon his mouth.
+
+"No more! no more! if you love me!" she whispered in an agony. "Should
+he guess all, he would murder her!"
+
+"You are prepared to certify that he is dead NOW, are you, Mr.
+Dorrance?" queried Winston, suspicious of this by-play.
+
+"I am!" sulkily.
+
+"It is a pity!" was the ambiguous rejoinder.
+
+Something clicked upon the hearth. It was the fragments of the toy
+stiletto, broken by an uncontrollable twitch of the small fingers that
+held it.
+
+Then Mrs. Aylett arose, pale as a ghost, but unquailing in eye or mien.
+
+"May I know your lordship's pleasure respecting your cast-off minion?"
+
+"In the morning, yes!" glancing up disdainfully. "Meantime, let me wish
+you 'good-night' and happy dreams."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX. -- INDIAN SUMMER.
+
+
+"NO, no! my dear!" said Mrs. Sutton, earnestly. "I am shocked and
+astonished that you should ever have labored under such a delusion.
+Frederic told me the story, and a dreadful one it was, the day old Mrs.
+Tazewell was buried. Wasn't it wonderful that he never knew whom Winston
+had married until he saw her leaning upon his arm in the graveyard? He
+recognized Mr. Dorrance in the house, but supposed him to be a visitor
+at Ridgeley and a relative of Mrs. Aylett, having heard that her maiden
+name was Dorrance. As to his being your husband, it did not at first
+occur to him, so bewildered was he by your meeting and the thoughts
+awakened by it. But at sight of HER the truth rushed over him, nearly
+depriving him of his wits. He soon got out of me all that I knew, and
+by putting this and that together, we made out the mystery. I was so
+grieved and indignant and horrified that I was for sending him forthwith
+to Winston, that he might clear himself of the shocking charges they had
+preferred against him, by exposing the motives of his accusers. But he
+was stubborn and independent. 'It can do no good now,' he said. 'Fifteen
+years ago this discovery would have been my temporal salvation. And
+Dorrance is Mabel's husband. I cannot touch him without wounding her.' I
+could not reconcile this mode of reasoning with my conscience. If wrong
+had been done, it ought to be righted. I did not sleep a wink all night.
+I wept over my noble, generous, slandered boy, and over you, my
+darling! but my chief thought was anger at the shameless depravity, the
+cold-blooded cruelty of the brazen-faced adventuress who sat in your
+angel mother's place. For aught Frederic or I knew, her real husband
+was still alive. He had never heard of the divorce, you see, and the
+circumstance of her marrying Winston under her maiden name looked black.
+
+"Well! I pondered upon the horrible affair until I could hold my peace
+no longer. Frederic and Florence went home with Mary Trent next morning,
+and knowing that Winston must pass the upper gate on his way to court,
+I put on my bonnet soon after breakfast, and strolled in that direction.
+By and by he rode up, stopped his horse, and began to talk so sociably
+that before I quite knew what I was doing, I was in the middle of my
+story. I wonder now how I did it, but I was excited, and he listened so
+patiently, questioned so quietly, that I did not realize, for several
+hours afterward, what a blaze I must have kindled in his heart and home,
+whether he believed me or not. The next thing I heard was not, as I
+expected, that he and his wife had quarrelled, or that he was going to
+challenge Frederic for having belied him, but that poor Dorrance was
+very ill with some affection of the brain. It was not until a year
+later--just after his death--that people began to talk about the strange
+carryings-on at Ridgeley; how Mr. and Mrs. Aylett occupied separate
+apartments, and never sat, or walked, or rode together, or spoke to one
+another, even at table, unless there were visitors present. Nobody could
+imagine what caused the estrangement, and for the sake of the family
+honor I guarded my tongue. She must be a wretched woman, if all of this
+be true. She is breaking fast under it, in spite of her pride and skill
+in concealment. I ought not to pity her when I remember how wicked she
+has been; but there is a look in her eye when she is not laughing or
+talking that gives me the heart-ache."
+
+"She is very unhappy!" replied Mabel, sighing. "And so, I doubt not, is
+Winston, although he will not own it, and affects to ignore the fact of
+her failing health and spirits. It is one of these miserably delicate
+family complications with which the nearest of kin cannot meddle. They
+are very kind to me, and I think my visits have been a comfort to Clara.
+The solitude of the great house is a terrible trial to one so fond of
+company. For days together sometimes she does not exchange a word with
+anybody except the servants. It is a dreary, wretched evening of an
+ambitious life. I ventured to tell Winston, last week, that this would
+probably be my last visit to Ridgeley, since I was to be married next
+month.
+
+"To Mr. Chilton, I suppose?" he said.
+
+I answered, "Yes!"
+
+"You must be almost forty," he next remarked. "You have worn passably
+well, but you are no longer young."
+
+"I am thirty-seven!" said I. -- "Well!" he answered. "You are certainly old enough to know your own
+business best."
+
+"That was all that passed. But I was glad to remember, as I looked at
+his whitening hair and bowed shoulder, that Frederic had not--as I
+was foolish enough to suppose for a while--told him the story that had
+blighted his life. Not that I could have blamed him had he done this. He
+had endured so much obloquy, suffered so keenly and so long, that almost
+any retaliatory measure would have been pardonable."
+
+Herbert Dorrance's widow was, as had been said, on a farewell visit to
+her native State, and after spending a week at Ridgeley was concluding
+a pleasanter sojourn of the same length at William Sutton's. In another
+month her home in Philadelphia was to be the refuge of her aunt's
+declining years--a prospect that delighted her as much as it afflicted
+those among whom this most benevolent and lovable of match-makers had
+dwelt during Mabel's first marriage.
+
+The marriage it was now her constant purpose to forget--not a difficult
+task in the happiness that diffused an Indian summer glow over her
+maturity of years and heart. After Herbert's death she had continued to
+reside in Albany, devoting herself--so soon as she recovered from the
+fatigue of mind and body consequent upon her severe and protracted
+duties as nurse--to the scarcely less painful work of attending his
+mother, who had contracted the seeds of consumption in the bleak sea-air
+of Boston. Grateful for an abode in the house of one who performed a
+daughter's part to her when her own children were content to commit her
+to the care of hirelings, the old lady lingered six months, and died,
+blessing her benefactress and engaging, in singleness of belief in the
+affection his wife had borne him, "to tell Herbert how good she had been
+to his mother."
+
+None of the Dorrances could wag a tongue against their sister-in-law,
+when, at the expiration of her year of widowhood, she wrote to them,
+to announce her "re-engagement" to Frederic Chilton. She had been a
+faithful wife to their brother in sickness and imbecility; a ministering
+angel to their parent, and there was now no tie to bind her to their
+interest. They had a way of taking care of themselves, and it was not
+surprising if she had learned it.
+
+They behaved charmingly--this pair of elderly lovers--said the young
+Suttons when Mr. Chilton arrived to escort his affianced back to Albany
+on the day succeeding the conversation from which I have taken the
+foregoing extracts, while Aunt Rachel's deaf old face was one beam of
+gratification.
+
+"All my matches turn out well in the long run!" she boasted, with modest
+exultation. "I don't undertake the management of them, unless I am very
+sure that they are already projected in Heaven. And when they are, my
+loves, a legion of evil spirits or, what is just as bad, of wicked men
+and women, cannot hinder everything from coming right at last."
+
+While she was relating, in the same sanguinely pious spirit, the tales
+that most entrance young girls, and at which their seniors smile
+in cynicism, or in tender recollection, as their own lives have
+contradicted or verified her theory of love's teachings and love's
+omnipotence, Frederic and Mabel, forgetting time and care, separation
+and sorrow, in the calm delight of reunion, were strolling upon the
+piazza in the starlight of a perfect June evening.
+
+They stopped talking by tacit consent, by and by, to listen to Amy
+Sutton, a girl of eighteen, the vocalist of the flock, who was testing
+her voice and proficiency in reading music at sight by trying one after
+another of a volume of old songs which belonged to her mother.
+
+This was the verse that enchained the promenaders' attention:
+
+    "But still thy name, thy blessed name,
+       My lonely bosom fills;
+     Like an echo that hath lost itself
+       Among the distant hills.
+     That still, with melancholy note,
+       Keeps faintly lingering on,
+     When the joyous sound that woke it first
+       Is gone--forever gone!"
+
+"It is seventeen years since we heard it together, dearest!" said
+Frederic, bending to kiss the tear-laden eyes. "And I can say to you
+now, what I did not, while poor Rosa lived, own to myself--that, try to
+hush it though I did, in all that time the lost echo was never still."
+
+Her answer was prompt, and the sweeter for the blent sigh and smile
+which were her tribute to the Past, and greeting to the Future:
+
+"An echo no longer, but a continuous strain of of heart music!"
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of At Last, by Marion Harland
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