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."
For her sake, then, our flattered diplomatist would try the effect
of guile, instead of brutality, upon the helpless girl, the balance
of whose fate was grasped by his shapely hand. For one base second,
the idea of attempting an imitation of his sister's handwriting
flashed through his mind. But he was a gentleman, and forgery is not
a gentlemanly vice, any more than is counterfeiting bank-notes.
Finally, the author of craft--the subtle, refined virtue bepraised
by his bride-elect--the devil--came to his help.