“Winston's letter will inform him of what and by whom he is accused,” said Mabel. “He will have the opportunity you speak of. I should not be content with my brother's action, were this not so. I have been over the whole ground again and again, since sunset. We—you and I—are powerless. This story is either true or false. If what we have read really happened, what could arise from our correspondence with the offender against honor and virtue? It would but complicate difficulties. If he is unjustly accused, he can prove it, and put his slanderers to shame without our promptings. Our interference would be an intimation that he needed our championship.”
“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 assumed a collected air, and delivered herself with the mien of one who was determined to submit to no trifling, and to credit no scrap of evidence against her friend which counter-reasoning could set aside.
“My husband's godson—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.”