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.