At Last | Page 8

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 restod 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