At Last | Page 3

Mrs. Sutton, and his only sister, Mabel, did the honors of his home in

his stead, and, if the truth must be admittbd, more acceptably to their
guests than he had ever succeeded in doing. For a week past, the house
had been tolerably well filled--ditto Mrs. Sutton's hands; ditto her great,
heart. Had she not three love affairs, in different but encouraging stages
of progression, under her roof and her patronage! And were not all
three, to her apprehension, matches worthy of Heaven's making, and
her co-operation? A devout Episcopalian, she was yet an unquestioning
believer in predestination and "special Providences"--and what but
Providence had brought together the dear creatures now basking in the
benignant beam of her smile, sailing smoothly toward the haven of
Wedlock before the prospering breezes of Circumstance (of her
manufacture)?
While putting sugar and cream into the cups intended for the happy
pairs, she reviewed the situation rapidly in her mind, and sketched the
day's manoeuvres.
First, there was the case of Tom Barksdale and Imogene Tabb--highly
satisfactory and creditable to all the parties concerned in it, but not
romantic. Tom, a sturdy young planter, who had studied law while at
the University, but never practised it, being already provided for by his
opulent father, had visited his relatives, the Tabbs, in August, and
straightway fallen in love with the one single daughter of his second
cousin--a pretty, amiable girl, who would inherit a neat fortune at her
parent's death, and whose pedigree became identical with that of the
Barksdales a couple of generations back, and was therefore
unimpeachable. The friends on both sides were enchanted; the lovers
fully persuaded that they were made for one another, an opinion
cordially endorsed by Mrs. Sutton, and they could confer with no
higher authority.
Next came Alfred Branch and Rosa Tazewell--incipient, but promising
at this juncture, inasmuch as Rosa had lately smiled more
encouragingly upon her timid wooer than she had deigned to do before
they were domesticated at Ridgeley. Mrs. Sutton did not approve of
unmaidenly forwardness. The woman who would unsought be won,
would have fared ill in her esteem. Her lectures upon the beauties and
advantages of a modest, yet alluring reserve, were cut up into familiar
and much-prized quotations among her disciples, and were acted upon
the more willingly for the prestige that surrounded her exploits as high

priestess of Hymen. But Rosa had been too coy to Alfred's evident
devotion--almost repellent at seasons. Had these rebuffs not alternated
with attacks of remorse, during which the exceeding gentleness of her
demeanor gradually pried the crushed hopes of her adorer out of the
slough, and cleansed their drooping plumes of mud, the courtship
would have fallen through, ere Mrs. Sutton could bring her skill to bear
upon it. Guided, and yet soothed by her velvet rein, Rosa really seemed
to become more steady. She was assuredly more thoughtful, and there
was no better sign of Cupid's advance upon the outworks of a girl's
heart than reverie. If her fits of musing were a shade too pensive, the
experienced eye of the observer descried no cause for discouragement
in this feature. Rosa was a spoiled, wayward child, freakish and
mischievous, to whom liberty was too dear to be resigned without a
sigh. By and by, she would wear her shackles as ornaments, like all
other sensible and loving women.
Thus preaching to Alfred, when he confided to her the fluctuations of
rapture and despair that were his lot in his intercourse with the
sometimes radiant and inviting, sometimes forbidding sprite, whose
wings he would fain bind with his embrace, and thus reassuring herself,
when perplexed by a flash of Rosa's native perverseness, Mrs. Sutton
was sanguine that all would come right in the end. What was to be
would be, and despite the rapids in their wooing, Alfred would find in
Rosa a faithful, affectionate little wife, while she could never hope to
secure a better, more indulgent, and, in most respects, more eligible,
partner than the Ayletts' well-to-do, well-looking neighbor.
But the couple who occupied the central foreground of our
match-maker's thoughts were her niece, Mabel Aylott, and her own
departed husband's namesake, Frederic Chilton. She dilated to herself
and to Mabel with especial gusto upon the "wonderful leading," the
inward whisper that had prompted her to propose a trip to the
Rockbridge Alum Springs early in July. Neither she nor Mabel was
ailing in the slightest degree, but she imagined they would be the
brighter for a glimpse of the mountains and the livelier scenes of that
pleasant Spa--and whom should they meet there but the son of "dear
Frederic's" old friend, Mr. Chilton, and of course they saw a great deal
of him--and the rest followed as Providence meant it should.
"The rest"