"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 G.o.ds, 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 n.o.body 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 G.o.d 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 dest.i.tution 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 subst.i.tuted 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 appet.i.te, 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 appet.i.te 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," "m.u.f.fins," 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 pa.s.sion mightier far than curiosity or compa.s.sion 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."