“Your obedient servant,
“FREDERIC S. CHILTON.”
The cool contempt of the reply to his imperative dismissal of whatever claims the presumptuous adventurer his aunt had encouraged believed he had upon Mabel's notice or affection, was likely to irk Winston Aylett as more intemperate language could not. It did more. It baffled him, for a time. He could, and he meant, to withhold the lover's letter from his sister's eyes. He could—and upon this also he was determined—command her, in the masterful manner that heretofore had never failed to work submission, never to meet, speak, or write again to the man he almost hated; will her to forget her childish fancy for his handsome face and glozing arts, and in the fulness of time, to bestow her in marriage upon a partner of his own providing. He had no misgivings as to his ability to accomplish all this, if the blackguard aforesaid could be kept out of her way until that remedial agent, Time, and lawful authority had a chance to do their work.
But he was openly defied to prevent communication between the betrothed pair, unless his injunction had Mabel's endorsement; and, upon alighting from the stage at the village, on his return to Ridgeley, he had taken from the post-office, along with the impertinent missive addressed to himself, one for Mabel, superscribed by the same hand. From the first, he had no intention of transferring it to the keeping of the proper owner, It was forwarded in direct disobedience to his commands, and the writer should be made to understand the futility of opposition to these. For several hours, his only purpose respecting it was to enclose it, unopened, in an envelope directed by himself, and send it back to the audacious author, by the next mail. He was balked in this project by no fastidious scruples as to his right thus to dispose of his ward's property. Nature, or what he assumed was natural affection, concurred with duty in urging him to hinder an alliance by which Mabel's happiness would be imperilled and her relatives scandalized. But when, in the solitude of his study, he vouchsafed a second reading to Frederic's letter, preparatory to the response he designed should annihilate his hopes and chastise his impudence, a doubt of the efficacy of his schemes attacked him for the first time. “Under her own hand and seal,” were terms the explicitness of which commended them to his grave consideration. His next thought was to oblige Mabel to indite a formal renunciation of her unworthy suitor. There were several objections to this measure.
Firstly, he disliked whatever smacked of scenic effect, and women were apt to get up scenes—hysterics, attitudes, and the like—upon trivial provocation, He wanted to get the thing over quietly and soon.
Secondly, he was not very sure that he should find in Mabel the docile puppet she had appeared to him for so many years of tutelage. She had matured marvelously of late. Her very manner of meeting him that afternoon impressed him by its self-possession and freedom from the emotion that used to gush from eyes and lips, in happy tears, and broken, delighted greeting at his approach. For aught he knew to the contrary, she might have accepted his fiat as just, if not merciful, and not a dream of rebellion been fostered thereby. The grave tranquillity of her demeanor might arise from the chastening influences of the mortification she had sustained, and a consciousness of ill-desert that bred humility. He would fain have believed all this, but until he broached the subject to her, his incertitude could not be removed, and in a step so momentous as that which he meditated, it behooved him to try well the solidity of the ground beneath him.
Lastly, our blood-prince of the kingdom of Ridgeley was, whether he confessed it or not, acting under orders.
“Be very tolerant with that poor little deceived sister of yours!” his fiancee had implored, her diamond eyes bedimmed by quick-springing damps of commiseration. “Recollect that the consciousness of wasted love is always harder to bear than what is commonly known as bereavement. If you find her refractory, be patient and persuasive, instead of dictatorial. Craft often effects what overt violence would attempt in vain.”
“Craft!” The word struck unpleasantly upon the Virginia lordling's ear, and he echoed it with a suspicion of a frown upon his brow. “I am not an adept in chicanery!”
“But you are a born diplomatist!” seductively. “And because I am of the same credulous sex as our mistaken little darling, you will not proceed to open warfare with her, even should she be both to resign her lover? It is the glory of the strong to show charity to the weak and erring.”