“I couldn't help seeing that something was wrong, for Mabel, who, up to the receipt of her brother's letter and one from you that came by the same mail, had been very cheerful and talkative, suddenly grew more serious and reserved than was her habit at any time; but she told me nothing whatever, never mentioned your name again in my hearing. Mrs. Sutton did hint to me her fear that Mr. Aylett had heard something prejudicial to your character, which had greatly displeased him and shocked Mabel, but even she was unaccountably reticent. Intense as was my anxiety to learn the particulars of the story, and upon what evidence they were induced to believe it, I dared not press my inquiry into what it was plain they intended to guard as a family secret.”
His reply was just what she had foreseen and guarded against.
“It would have been a kind and worthy deed, had you written to warn me of my danger, and advised me to make my defence in person. As it was, I was thrown off roughly and pitilessly—my demand upon the brother for the particulars of the accusation against me—my appeal to the sister—loving and earnest as words could make it—for permission to visit her and learn from her own lips that she trusted or disowned me, were alike disregarded. Mr. Aylett's response was a second letter, more coldly insulting than the first—hers, the return of my last, after she had opened and read it, then the surrender of my gifts, letters, notes, everything that could remind her that we had ever met and loved. Mrs. Sutton, too, my father's old and firm friend, deserted me in my extremity. And she must have been acquainted with the character and extent of the charges preferred against me. I had hoped better things from her, if only because I bear her dead husband's name. Did she never speak in your hearing of writing to me?”
“She did—but said, in the next breath, that it would be useless, since the minds of the others were fully made up. I knew she thought Winston arbitrary, and Mabel credulous; but she was afraid to interfere. As for myself, what could I have told you that you had not already heard? I could only hope that the cloud was not heavy, and would soon blow over. From the hour in which it cast the first shadow upon her, Mabel was estranged from me—the decline of our intimacy commenced. The Ayletts take pride in keeping their own counsel. Winston, who never liked me, and whom I detested, was as confidential with me in this affair as my old playfellow and school-mate. Believe me when I declare that if my intercession could have availed aught with her, I would have run the risk of her displeasure and Winston's anathemas by offering it.”
“I do believe you! Nor need you expatiate to me upon the obduracy of the Aylett pride. Surely, no one living has more reason than I to comprehend how unreasoning and implacable I find it is. I looked for injustice at Winston Aylett's hands. I read him truly in our only private interview. Insolent, vain, despotic—wedded to his dogmas, and intolerant of others' opinion, he disliked me because I refused to play the obedient vassal to his will and requirements; stood upright as one man should in the presence of a brother-mortal, instead of cringing at his lordship's footstool. But he was powerless to do more than annoy me without his sister's co-operation.”
“She stood in great, almost slavish, awe of him,” urged Rosa, in extenuation of Mabel's infidelity.
“Aye!” savagely. “And love was not strong enough to cast out fear! She was justifiable if she hesitated to entrust herself and her happiness to the keeping of one she had known but two months. It was prudent—not false—in her to weigh, to the finest grain, the evidence furnished by her brother to prove my unfitness to be her husband. But having done all this, she should have remembered that I had rights also. It was infamous, cowardly, cruel beyond degree, to cast her vote against me without giving me a chance of self-exculpation. Her hand—not his—struck the dagger into my back!”
Again Rosa's fingers involuntarily (?) stole into his, to recall him to a knowledge of where he was, and there were fresh tears, ready to fall from her gazelle eyes, when his agitation began to subside.
“My poor child!” he said, penitently. “I am behaving like a madman, you like a pitying angel! We will have no more scenes, and you must oblige me by forgetting this one, as fast as may be. From to-night Mabel Aylett is to me as if she had never been. To nobody except yourself have I betrayed the secret of my hurt. After this, when you think of it, believe that it is a hurt no longer.”
Rosa “had out” her fit of crying when he went away, betaking herself to her chamber and locking the door that her aunt might not surprise her while the traces of tears disfigured her cheeks. But she was anything but broken-hearted, and only slightly sore in spirit in the retrospect of what had ensued upon her communication to the discarded lover. He had, indeed, given more evidence of his unconquered passion for Mabel than she had expected. His undisguised pleasure in renewed companionship with herself; his excellent spirits during the greater part of the evening; his unembarrassed reply to her aunt's malapropos observation, and fluent chat upon other themes, had misled her into the hope that the ungenerous and uncivil conduct of the Ayletts had disgusted and alienated him from sister, no less than from brother. It was a disappointment to discover that it cost him a terrible effort to pronounce Mabel's name, while the abrupt intelligence of her marriage had distracted him to incoherent ravings, which had nearly amounted to curses upon the authors of his pain.