"Your letter notifies me, in general terms, that the answers

returned to your inquiries as to my antecedents and present

reputation are the reverse of satisfactory. You feel constrained,

you add, in view of the information thus obtained, to interdict my

further intercourse with your sister or any other member of your

family. Since I cannot battle with shadows, or refute insinuations

the drift of which I do not in the least comprehend, may I trouble

you to put the allegations to which you refer into a definite and

tangible shape? Let me know who are my accusers, and what are the

iniquities with which they charge me. The worst criminal against

human and divine laws has the right to demand thus much before he is

convicted and sentenced.

"As to your prohibition of my continued correspondence with Miss

Aylett, I shall consider her my promised wife, and write to her

regularly as such, until you have made good your indictment against

me, or until I receive the assurance under her own hand and seal

that my conduct in thus addressing her is obnoxious to herself.

"I have the honor, sir, of signing myself "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.




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