At Last | Page 7

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