"After all, it makes little difference!" she fell into the habit of
saying in the earlier years of matronhood, and he interpreted her
listless acquiescence in his decrees as faith in the soundness of
his judgment, the infallibility of his decisions. No woman of sense
and spirit ever becomes an exemplar in unquestioning obedience to a
mortal man, unless through apathy--fatal torpor of mind or heart.
Of this fact in moral history our respactable barrister was happily
ignorant. He was no better versed in the lore of the heart feminine
than when he accepted Mabel Aylett's esteem and friendly regard in
lieu of the shy, but ardent attachment a betrothed maiden should
have for the one she means to make her husband.
He respected her thoroughly, and loved her better than he did
anybody else. She was the one woman he recognized as his sister's
superior--supremacy due to the influence of single-minded integrity
and modest dignity. What Mabel said, he believed without gainsaying;
while Clara's clever dicta required winnowing to separate the
probably spurious from the possibly true. If his tone, in addressing
his wife, was seldom affectionate, it was never careless, as that
which replied to his sister's raillery.
"Generally," he said in his metallic, unmodulated voice. "The man
who would cast away health, usefulness, and fortune in his chagrin
at not winning the hand of a shallow-pated, volatile flirt, must be
both silly and susceptible."
"Rosa Tazewell may have been shallow of heart, but she was not of
pate," answered Mr. Aylett, with a cold sneer. "She was a fair
plotter, and not fickle of purpose when she had her desires upon a
much-coveted object. Her marriage proved that. She meant to
captivate Chilton before she had known him a month--yes, and to
marry him, as she finally did. Her intermediate conquests were but
the practice that was to perfect her in her profession. Does anybody
know, by the way, if he has ever taken a second wife to his bereaved
bosom?"
A brief silence, then Mrs. Aylett said, negligently, "I think not.
Mrs. Trent, Rosa's sister, was expatiating to me a month since upon
the beauty and accomplishments of his daughter, and she said nothing
of a step-mother. Father and child live with a married sister of
Mrs. Chilton, I believe."
"I had not heard that Rosa left a child," remarked Mabel,
interested. "I understood that two died before the mother."
"Only one--and that the younger. Miss Florence is now twelve years
old, Mrs. Trent says. I saw her at church once, when she was
visiting her grandmother and aunts. She is really passable--but very
unlike her mother."