Mabel was still turning the vexed question of right and expediency
over in her fast-heating brain, the next evening, as she sat in the
parlor, and feigned to hearken to the diligent duett-practising
going on at the piano, her husband and Mrs. Aylett being the
performers.
Mrs. Sutton had gone home that afternoon, engaging to return for a
longer sojourn in the course of a month. Mr. Aylett read his
newspaper at one side of the centre table, and his sister employed
her fingers and eyes at the other with a trifle of fancy-work---an
antimacassar she was crocheting for her hostess. Her industrious or
fidgetty habits were chronic and inveterate, and people, in
remarking upon them, did not reflect that this species of
restlessness is in itself a disease, seldom analyzed, more seldom
cured. There are few students or physicians of human nature, in this
world of superficial observers, who go deep enough into the springs
of man's action to distinguish the external symptoms of heart-cancer
from ossification, or to learn ihe difference between satiety and
atrophy. A night of nervous sleeplessness, a day of irresolution and
dread, had aggravated almost beyond her control the restlessness
which in Mabel was the unerring indication of unhealthiness of mind
and body. To sit still was impracticable; to talk connectedly and
easily would soon be as difficult. She was glad to see Aunt Rachel
go--immeasurably relieved when a musical evening was proposed by the
brother and sister, seconding the motion with alacrity that called
forth a pleased smile from the one, and a look of surprised
inquisitiveness from the other.
"You have grown more fond of instrumental music," said Mrs. Aylett,
half interrogatively. "You used always to prefer vocal."
"Try me and see what an appreciative listener I am," rejoined Mabel,
with a sickly smile, and the concert commenced.
Overmuch thought upon the revelation of the preceding day had
begotten in her, fears of the imminence of the dangers to Winston's
peace of mind--a persuasion that the birds of the air and the
restless air itself might bear to him the news she still withheld.
Mammy had averred, upon her cross-examination, that "not a living
soul had ever seen the wallet" since it fell from the dying man's
pocket--an affirmation Mabel could not decide whether to believe or
discredit. If she could but be certain that the secret was all hers!
She trembled guiltily when her brother folded his last paper, and
sauntered around to the back of her chair, leaning upon it, while he
affected to be interested in her work, and the too-ready scarlet
blood pulsed now hotly in her cheeks with each moment of his mute
observation.