The pretence of social converse had been given up before the friends
cleared the first field beyond the orchard. Rosa's exquisite tact
witheld her from obtruding commonplaces upon the attention of a mind
torn by suspense--distracted between disappointment and outraged
pride, and Mabel had not besought her sympathy in her grievous
strait. They walked on swiftly, the one staring straight forward,
yet seeing nothing; the other, although thoughtful, losing not one
feature of the landscape--the light-gray sky, the encircling forest,
the yellow broom-straw clothing the hill-sides, the crooked fences,
lined with purple brush, golden-rod, black-bearded alder and sumach,
flaming with scarlet berry cones and motley leaves. It was her
principle and habit to seize upon whatever morsels of delight were
dropped in her way, and she had a taste for attractive bits of
scenery, as for melody. There was no reason why the evil estate of
her companion should debar her from quiet enjoyment of the autumn
day. She was sorry that Mabel was suffering. It was unpleasant to
see pain or grief. Smiles were prettier than glum looks. She hoped
she had enough humanity about her to enable her to recognize these
facts. But, in her soul, she despised the girl for her tacit
acquiescence in her brother's decree; contemned her yet more for her
partial credence of the rumor of her lover's unworthiness. It was as
well, taking these things into account, that Mabel was not
communicative with regard to the great change that had befallen her
since this hour yesterday, when she had exultingly proclaimed that
her trust was "founded upon a rock."
"Varium et mutabile semper faemina!" reflected Rosa, who knew that
much Latin--and attracted by the waving of the bright grasses
beneath the waves of the rivulet they were crossing, she stopped to
lean over the railing and poke them aside from the stones with a
chincapin switch she had picked up a little way back.
Mabel did not look around; apparently did not observe that she
walked on alone.
"I dare say she would not miss me for the next mile!" soliloquized
the idle lounger, snatching foam-flakes from their nestling-places
behind the rocks, and watching them as they danced down the stream.
Something, whiter and more regular in shape than they, lay upon the
margin of the brook, partly concealed by a clump of sedge. A letter,
with the address uppermost! Rosa's optics were keen. She easily made
out the direction upon the envelope from where she stood. It was
Frederic Chilton's name in Mrs. Sutton's quaint, old-fashioned
"back-hand" chirography. An hour before, as Rosa now recollected,
she had seen, from her window, a negro man take the path to the
village, arranging some papers in the crown of his tattered straw
hat. He had dropped this, the most important of all, probably in
stooping to drink from his hollowed palms at the spring-stream.
However this might be, there it lay--the warning to the calumniated
lover that his traducers were making clean (or foul) work with his
fair fame in the quarter where he wished to stand at his best;
perhaps citing him to appear and answer the damaging charges in
person before the same tribunal.