Yet he was not a fool. In the discussion of graver

matters--politics, law, and history--that arose in the smoking-room,

he was not to be put down by more fluent tongues; demolished

sophistry by solid reasoning, impregnable assertions, and an array

of facts that might be prolix, but was always formidable--in short,

sustained fully the character ascribed to him by his brother-in-law,

of a "thoroughly sensible fellow."

"No genius, I allow!" Mr. Aylett would add, in speaking of his

wife's bantling among his compatriots, "but a man whose industry and

sound practical knowledge of every branch of his profession will

make for him the fortune and name genius rarely wins."

With the younger ladies, his society was, it is superfluous to

observe, at the lowest premium civility and native kindliness of

disposition would permit them to declare by the nameless and

innumerable methods in which the dear creatures are proficient. To

Rosa Tazewell he could not be anything better than a target for the

arrows of her satire, or the whetstone, upon the unyielding surface

of which she sharpened them. But she showed her prudential foresight

in never laughing at him when out of his sight, and in Mabel's. At

long ago as the night of Mr. Aylett's wedding-party at Ridgeley, her

sharp eyes had seen, or she fancied they did, that the hum-drum

groomsman was mightily captivated by the daughter of the house, and

she had divined that Mrs. Aylett's clever ruses for throwing the two

together were the outworks of her design for uniting, by a double

bond, the houses of Dorrance and Aylett. She knew, furthermore, that

Herbert Dorrance had travelled with the Ridgeley family for three

weeks in October, and that he had now been domesticated at the

homestead for ten days. Mrs. Aylett's show of fondness for him was

laughable, considering what an uninteresting specimen of masculinity

he was; but the handsome dame was too worldly-wise, too sage a judge

of quid pro quo, to entice him to waste so much of the time he was

addicted to announcing was money to him, for the sake of a good so

intangible as sisterly sentimentality.

Unless there were some substantial and remunerative ulterior object

to be gained by his tarrying in the neighborhood, cunning Rosa

believed that "dear Bertie" would have been packed off to Buffalo,

or whatever outlandish place he lived in, so soon as the bridal

festivities were over, and not showed his straw-colored whiskers

again in Virginia in three years, at least, instead of running down

to the plantation every three months.

"If such an ingredient as the compound, double-distilled essence of

flatness is to be infused into the wassail-cup, it is he who will

supply it!" thought the spicy damsel, with a bewitching shrug of the

plump shoulder nearest him, while engaged in a lively play of words

with a gentleman on her other hand. "What can possess Mabel to

encourage him systematically in her decorous style, passes my powers

of divination. Maybe she means to use him as a poultice for her

bruised heart. In that case, insipidity would be no objection."




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