Mabel, like most other girls, had a dainty and fantastic taste in

the matter of letter-paper and envelopes. She used none but French

stationery, stamped with her monogram--a curious device, wrought in

two colors--and at the top of each sheet stood out in bas-relief

the Aylett crest. With these harmless whimsies Frederic was, without

doubt, familiar. If his letter were returned to him, wrapped in a

blank page, taken from her papetiere and within one of her

envelopes, it would not signify so much whose handwriting was upon

the exterior. Papetiere and writing-desk were in Mabel's bed-room,

but she was in the parlor, practising an instrumental duet with

Rosa--a favorite with Miss Dorrance. Winston had brought it south

with him, and asked his sister to learn it forthwith, in just the

accent he used to employ when prescribing what studies she should

pursue at school. There was nothing in his errand that he should be

ashamed of, he reminded himself with impatient severity, as he

traversed the upper hall on tip-toe to the western chamber. He had,

on sundry previous occasions, sought, in the receptacles he was

about to ransack, for sealing-wax, pencils, and the like trifles.

Mabel was too wise a woman not to keep her secrets under lock and

key, and if there were private documents left in his way, he was too

honorable to pry into them.

Shutting the door cautiously, that the snap and blaze might not

betray him, he struck a wax match, warranted to burn a

minute-and-a-half, and raised the lid of the desk. His unseen but

wily coadjutor had guided him cunningly. In fingering a heap of

envelopes in order to find one large enough for his purpose, he

brought to light one addressed to "Mr. Frederic Chilton, Box 910,

Philadelphia, Penn."

Upon the reverse was a small blot that had condemned it in Mabel's

sight, as unfit to be sent to her most valued correspondent, and

which she had not observed before writing the direction. Selecting

another, she had thrown this back carelessly into the desk, meaning

to burn it when it should be convenient, and forgotten all about it.

The livid dints were deep and restless in Winston's nostrils, as

seen by the light of the tiny taper he raised to extinguish, when

his prize was secured. The devil supplied him with another crafty

hint, as he was in the act of folding one edge of Frederic's letter

that it might fit into the new cover. Why not strip off the letter

entirely, that it might seem to have been opened, read, and then

flung back upon the writer's hands with contumely? Half-way measures

were unsafe and foolish. Stratagem, to be efficient, should be not

only deft, but thorough; else it was bungling, not diplomacy. His

hand did not shake in divesting the closely-written sheet of its

wrapping, but in one respect his behavior was in consonance with the

gentlemanly instincts he vaunted as a proof of pure old blood. He

averted his eyes lest he should see a line the lover had penned to

his mistress. The letter slipped smoothly into the quarters prepared

for it--smoothly as Satan's mark usually goes on until his tool has

made his damnation sure.




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