"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 a.s.sumed a collected air, and delivered herself with the mien of one who was determined to submit to no trifling, and to credit no sc.r.a.p of evidence against her friend which counter-reasoning could set aside.

"My husband's G.o.dson--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 gra.s.ses 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, s.n.a.t.c.hing 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 a.s.sailed. 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 rect.i.tude 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 pa.s.ser-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 gra.s.s--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!