"She is very unhappy!" replied Mabel, sighing. "And so, I doubt not,

is Winston, although he will not own it, and affects to ignore the

fact of her failing health and spirits. It is one of these miserably

delicate family complications with which the nearest of kin cannot

meddle. They are very kind to me, and I think my visits have been a

comfort to Clara. The solitude of the great house is a terrible

trial to one so fond of company. For days together sometimes she

does not exchange a word with anybody except the servants. It is a

dreary, wretched evening of an ambitious life. I ventured to tell

Winston, last week, that this wonld probably be my last visit to

Ridgeley, since I was to be married next month.

"To Mr. Chilton, I suppose?" he said.

I answered, "Yes!"

"You must be almost forty," he next remarked. "You have worn

passably well, but you are no longer young."

"I am thirty-seven!" said I.

"Well!" he answered. "Yon are certainly old enough to know your own

business best."

"That was all that passed. But I was glad to remember, as I looked

at his whitening hair and bowed shoulder, that Frederic had not--as

I was foolish enough to suppose for a while--told him the story that

had blighted his life. Not that I could have blamed him had he done

this. He had endured so much obloquy, suffered so keenly and so

long, that almost any retaliatory measure would have been

pardonable."

Herbert Dorrance's widow was, as had been said, on a farewell visit

to her native State, and after spending a week at Ridgeley was

concluding a pleasanter sojourn of the same length at William

Sutton's. In another month her home in Philadelphia was to be the

refuge of her aunt's declining years--a prospect that delighted her

as much as it afflicted those among whom this most benevolent and

lovable of match-makers had dwelt during Mabel's first marriage.

The marriage it was now her constant purpose to forget--not a

difficult task in the happiness that diffused an Indian summer glow

over her maturity of years and heart. After Herbert's death she had

continued to reside in Albany, devoting herself--so soon as she

recovered from the fatigue of mind and body consequent upon her

severe and protracted duties as nurse--to the scarcely less painful

work of attending his mother, who had contracted the seeds of

consumption in the bleak sea-air of Boston. Grateful for an abode in

the house of one who performed a daughter's part to her when her own

children were content to commit her to the care of hirelings, the

old lady lingered six months, and died, blessing her benefactress

and engaging, in singleness of belief in the affection his wife had

borne him, "to tell Herbert how good she had been to his mother."




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