He never knew that Mrs. Sutton had bolstered the Aylett will and stoicism into stanchness at this closing scene.  In a fit of despondency, she had that morning imparted to Mabel the fact that she had written to Frederic, ten days before, and had no answer, although she had besought an immediate one.

“I have expected him confidently every day for a week,” she lamented.  “I didn’t suppose he would stay at Ridgeley, after what has happened; but there’s the hotel in the village, and, as I told him, he could accomplish more by an hour’s talk with you than by fifty letters.  It is very mysterious—­his continued silence!  He always appeared so frank and reasonable.  Nothing else like it has ever occurred in my experience—­and I have had a great deal, my dear!”

“I am sorry you wrote, aunt,” replied Mabel, sorrowfully dignified.  “Sorry you have subjected yourself to unnecessary mortification.  I am past feeling it for myself.  We cannot longer doubt that Mr. Chilton desires to hold no further communication with any of us.”

Within the hour she made up the pacquet and carried it to her brother.

CHAPTER VII.

Wassail.

Almost sixteen months had passed since the dewless September morning, when Mabel had gathered roses in the garden walks, and her brother’s return had shaken the dew with the bloom from her young heart.  It was the evening of Christmas-day, and the tide of wassail, the blaze of yule, were high at Ridgeley.  Without, the fall of snow that had commenced at sundown, was waxing heavier and the wind fiercer.  In-doors, fires roared and crackled upon every hearth; there was a stir of busy or merry life in every room.  About the spacious fire-place in the “baronial” hall was a wide semicircle of young people, and before that in the parlor, a cluster of elders, whose graver talk was enlivened, from time to time, by the peals of laughter that tossed into jubilant surf the stream of the juniors’ converse.

Nearest the mantel, on the left wing of the line, sat the three months’ bride, Imogene Barksdale, placid, dove-eyed, and smiling as of yore, very comely with her expression of satisfied prettiness nobody called vanity, and bedecked in her “second day’s dress” of azure silk and her bridal ornaments.  Her husband hovered on the outside of the ring, now pulling the floating curls of a girl-cousin (every third girl in the country was his cousin, once, twice, or thrice-removed, and none resented the liberties he, as a married man, was pleased to take), anon whispering in the ear of a bashful maiden interrogatories as to har latest admirer or rumored engagement; oftenest leaning upon the back of his wife’s chair, a listener to what was going on, his hand lightly touching her lace-veiled shoulders, until her head gradually inclined against his arm.  They were a loving couple, and not shy of testifying their consent to the world.