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.”