At Last | Page 7

of vapid pleasures and
common-place people!"
"You are--every independent woman and man--is as free in this respect
as myself, Miss Rosa. None need be a slave to conventionality unless
he choose."
She made a gesture that was like twisting a chain apon her wrist.
"You know you are not sincere in saying that. I wondered, moreover,
when you were railing at the practicalities of city life, if you were
learning, like the rest of the men, to accommodate your talk to your
audience. Where is the use of your trying to disguise the truth that all
women are slaves? I used to envy you when I was in Philadelphia, last
winter, when you pleaded business engagements as an excuse for
declining invitations to dinner-parties and balls. Now, if a woman
defies popular decrees by 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