"This brings me to another subject to which I desire to call your
immediate attention. I wish her to select a couple of dresses
suitable for your wear on the night of our reception-party, and at
others which will, undoubtedly, be given in our honor. She objects
to doing this unless I obtain from you a written request that she
should thus aid me. She fears you may consider her action 'premature
and officious.' Write to her at once, requesting her to do this
sisterly favor for you, setting forth your distance from the city,
the meagre assortment of the goods to be had in the Richmond stores,
etc., and giving her carte blanche as to cost and style. It will be
an inestimable advantage to your appearance on the occasions named
should she oblige you in this particular. I earnestly desire that
you should look your best at your introduction to her."
"'Maroon and green!' a 'baronial' hall, and new party-dresses for
insignificant me!" Mabel stopped to say aloud in great amusement.
"What would my sage brother have said to such paltry memoranda six
months ago? He is an apt scholar, or he has an able teacher. Ah,
well! love is a marvellous transmogrifier!"
With this apothegm from the storehouse of her lately acquired
wisdom, she passed to the next paragraph.
"Now for another matter about which I meant to write to you
yesterday, but I was prevented by our expedition to Lowell. The
evenings I of course devote to Clara. I have not been so engrossed
by my own very important concerns as to neglect yours. I stopped a
day in Philadelphia, illy as I could afford the time, to make such
investigations as I could, without exciting invidious suspicion,
into the character of the person whom I found domesticated at
Ridgeley on my return from my summer tour. The information I picked
up in that cautious city was so meagre and tantalizing as to provoke
me into the belief that he had selected his references with an eye
to the slenderness of their knowledge of his personal history.
Accident, however, has since placed within my reach a means of
learning all that I wish to know. Without wearying you with
explanations, which, indeed, I have no time to write--being engaged
to drive out with Clara in an hour from this time--I will transcribe
a portion of a letter received by me, two days since, from a
gentleman of unexceptional standing, and upon whose word you may
safely depend.
"He says: 'In reply to your queries as to my acquaintanceship with
one Frederic Chilton, now a practising lawyer in the city of
Philadelphia, I would, if conscience permitted, repay your frankness
by evasion of a disagreeable truth. But in the circumstances which
induced your appeal, I have no option. Hesitation or concealment
would be unkind and dishonorable. I knew the man you speak of
well--I may say intimately, while we were fellow-students in the----
law school, in 18--. He was then--what I have but too much reason
for believing him at this day--a plausible, unprincipled man of
pleasure. Our intercourse, which commenced at the card-table,
terminated with a severe horsewhipping I administered to him in
punishment of an offence offered a married lady--a relative of my
own. Taking advantage of the protracted absence of her husband, who
was a naval officer, he offered her many attentions, received by
herself as tokens of innocent and friendly regard, until he forgot
himself so far as to make her open and insulting proposals, even
urging her to consent to an elopement, and threatening, in the event
of her refusal, to ruin her by infamous calumnies. Her father was
infirm; her husband in a foreign land. His base persecution would
have met with no chastisement, had not I espoused the terrified
woman's cause. These are the bare facts of the case. He merited a
flogging--as you, a chivalric Virginian, will admit. I--a Northern
man, with cooler blood, but I hope, as true a sense of honor and
right as your own--inflicted this, as I am prepared to testify
before any number of witnesses.'"