“I have had uncomfortable suspicions about certain passages in her intercourse with us, since I heard this news,” continued Mrs. Sutton, edging her chair toward her niece, and dropping her voice.  “I am afraid I can date the beginning of her cruelty to Alfred back to that September she spent here—­to the latter part of it, I mean.  Little scenes come to my memory that caused me trifling uneasiness then.  I shall never forget, for instance, how she eyed you, the morning Winston came home so unexpectedly.”

And she described the incident recorded in the latter part of our opening chapter.

“Can it be,” she pursued, “that she had even then designs upon the man she is about to marry?  She knew all the circumstances of the trouble that ensued, and if disposed to be meddlesome, she had the means at her command.”

“I told her nothing,” said Mabel briefly.

“But she pumped me pretty effectually,” confessed the aunt shamefacedly.  “I thought there could be no harm in giving her a synopsis of the case—­she being your intimate friend.”

Another gleam of pensive amusement crossed Mabel’s face.  She knew too well the nature of her aunt’s “synopsis” to doubt that Rosa was conversant with every phase of the affair, concerning which her own lips had been so sternly sealed.

“You have nothing with which to reproach yourself,” she said, tranquilly.  “She marries with her eyes open.”

“You don’t imagine for one instant that she would be annoyed by any such scruples as beset you!” cried Mrs. Sutton scoffingly.  “Why, the woman would sooner go to the altar with a handsome, dashing libertine, who had broken hearts by the dozen, than marry a quiet, honest Christian, who had never breathed of love to any ears except hers.  The aim of her life is to create or experience a sensation.  I don’t quite see how she could have made trouble in that sad affair, but I should like to be positive that she did not.”

“You may safely acquit her of that sin,” rejoined Mabel.  “There was neither need nor room for her interference.  Whatever may have been her inclination, she was shrewd enough to perceive that the natural course of events was bringing about the desired end—­if it were a desirable one to her—­without her help or hindrance.  But, aunt! doesn’t it strike you that this is a very profitless talk, and very uncharitable?  It is a sorry task, this volunteering our assistance to the dead past to bury its dead.  And I, for one, have too much bound up in the future to offer my service in the painful work.  Look! is not this pretty?”

She was embroidering a white merino cloak for an infant, in a pattern so rich and elaborate, that Mrs. Sutton groaned in commingled admiration and sympathy as she inspected it.

“You are throwing time and strength away upon this work!” she expostulated.  “I don’t know another lady in your circumstances who would not take her friends’ advice, and put out all the sewing you need to have done.  But your eyes and fingers have labored incessantly for six months upon the finest work you could devise, and you begin to look like a shadow.  I don’t wonder Mr. Dorrance seems uneasy sometimes.  He complained this morning that you did not take enough exercise in the open air.”