“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 tÊte-À-tÊtes 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!”