“There is a difference between learning to love and continuing to love,” said Mabel, sententiously.  “But we have had enough of useless talk, aunt.  In two days more Winston will be here.  Until then, let matters remain as they are.  You can tell Rosa as much or as little as you like of what has happened.  She must suspect that something has gone awry.  To-morrow, I will look up this Mr. Jenkyns, and deliver the messages with which I am charged—­likewise consult the mason about the ‘baronial’ fireplace,” smiling bitterly.

“You never saw another creature so altered as she is,” Mrs. Sutton bewailed to Rosa, in rehearsing the scene.  “If this thing should turn out to be true, she is ruined and heart-broken for life.  She will become a cold, cynical, unfeeling woman—­a feminine copy of her granite brother.”

“If!” reiterated Rosa, testily.  “There is not one syllable of truth in it from Alpha to Omega!  I know he is your nephew, and that it is one af the Medo-Persian laws of Ridgeley that the king can do no wrong; but I would sooner believe that Winston Aylett invented the slander throughout, than question Fred Chilton’s integrity.  There is foul play somewhere, as you will discover in time—­or out of it!”

To Mabel, Frederic’s spirited champion said never a word of the event that held their eyes waking until dawn—­each motionless as sleepless lest her bed fellow should discover her real state.

“I have had no share in causing the rupture.  I am not called upon to heal it,” meditated she.  “In this, the law of self-preservation is my surest guide.”

Her resolve to remain neutral was sharply and unexpectedly tested the next afternoon.

The two girls went out for a ramble about four o’clock, taking the beaten foot-path that led through cultivated fields, and between wooded hills, to a small post-town two miles distant.  The day was sunless, but not chilly, and when they had outwalked the hearing of the murmur of rural life that pervaded the barnyard and adjacent “quarters,” the silence was oppressive, except when broken by the whirr of a partridge, the melancholy caw of the crows, scared from their feast upon the scattered grains knocked from over-ripe ears of corn during the recent “fodder-pulling,” and, as they neared it, by the fretting of a rapid brook over its stony bottom.

The pretence of social converse had been given up before the friends cleared the first field beyond the orchard.  Rosa’s exquisite tact witheld her from obtruding commonplaces upon the attention of a mind torn by suspense—­distracted between disappointment and outraged pride, and Mabel had not besought her sympathy in her grievous strait.  They walked on swiftly, the one staring straight forward, yet seeing nothing; the other, although thoughtful, losing not one feature of the landscape—­the light-gray sky, the encircling forest, the yellow broom-straw clothing the hill-sides, the crooked fences,