"After all, it makes little difference!" she fell into the habit of

saying in the earlier years of matronhood, and he interpreted her

listless acquiescence in his decrees as faith in the soundness of

his judgment, the infallibility of his decisions. No woman of sense

and spirit ever becomes an exemplar in unquestioning obedience to a

mortal man, unless through apathy--fatal torpor of mind or heart.

Of this fact in moral history our respactable barrister was happily

ignorant. He was no better versed in the lore of the heart feminine

than when he accepted Mabel Aylett's esteem and friendly regard in

lieu of the shy, but ardent attachment a betrothed maiden should

have for the one she means to make her husband.

He respected her thoroughly, and loved her better than he did

anybody else. She was the one woman he recognized as his sister's

superior--supremacy due to the influence of single-minded integrity

and modest dignity. What Mabel said, he believed without gainsaying;

while Clara's clever dicta required winnowing to separate the

probably spurious from the possibly true. If his tone, in addressing

his wife, was seldom affectionate, it was never careless, as that

which replied to his sister's raillery.

"Generally," he said in his metallic, unmodulated voice. "The man

who would cast away health, usefulness, and fortune in his chagrin

at not winning the hand of a shallow-pated, volatile flirt, must be

both silly and susceptible."

"Rosa Tazewell may have been shallow of heart, but she was not of

pate," answered Mr. Aylett, with a cold sneer. "She was a fair

plotter, and not fickle of purpose when she had her desires upon a

much-coveted object. Her marriage proved that. She meant to

captivate Chilton before she had known him a month--yes, and to

marry him, as she finally did. Her intermediate conquests were but

the practice that was to perfect her in her profession. Does anybody

know, by the way, if he has ever taken a second wife to his bereaved

bosom?"

A brief silence, then Mrs. Aylett said, negligently, "I think not.

Mrs. Trent, Rosa's sister, was expatiating to me a month since upon

the beauty and accomplishments of his daughter, and she said nothing

of a step-mother. Father and child live with a married sister of

Mrs. Chilton, I believe."

"I had not heard that Rosa left a child," remarked Mabel,

interested. "I understood that two died before the mother."

"Only one--and that the younger. Miss Florence is now twelve years

old, Mrs. Trent says. I saw her at church once, when she was

visiting her grandmother and aunts. She is really passable--but very

unlike her mother."




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