"Your letter notifies me, in general terms, that the answers
returned to your inquiries as to my antecedents and present
reputation are the reverse of satisfactory. You feel constrained,
you add, in view of the information thus obtained, to interdict my
further intercourse with your sister or any other member of your
family. Since I cannot battle with shadows, or refute insinuations
the drift of which I do not in the least comprehend, may I trouble
you to put the allegations to which you refer into a definite and
tangible shape? Let me know who are my accusers, and what are the
iniquities with which they charge me. The worst criminal against
human and divine laws has the right to demand thus much before he is
convicted and sentenced.
"As to your prohibition of my continued correspondence with Miss
Aylett, I shall consider her my promised wife, and write to her
regularly as such, until you have made good your indictment against
me, or until I receive the assurance under her own hand and seal
that my conduct in thus addressing her is obnoxious to herself.
"I have the honor, sir, of signing myself "Your obedient servant, "FREDERIC S. CHILTON."
The cool contempt of the reply to his imperative dismissal of
whatever claims the presumptuous adventurer his aunt had encouraged
believed he had upon Mabel's notice or affection, was likely to irk
Winston Aylett as more intemperate language could not. It did more.
It baffled him, for a time. He could, and he meant, to withhold the
lover's letter from his sister's eyes. He could--and upon this also
he was determined--command her, in the masterful manner that
heretofore had never failed to work submission, never to meet,
speak, or write again to the man he almost hated; will her to forget
her childish fancy for his handsome face and glozing arts, and in
the fulness of time, to bestow her in marriage upon a partner of his
own providing. He had no misgivings as to his ability to accomplish
all this, if the blackguard aforesaid could be kept out of her way
until that remedial agent, Time, and lawful authority had a chance
to do their work.
But he was openly defied to prevent communication between the
betrothed pair, unless his injunction had Mabel's endorsement; and,
upon alighting from the stage at the village, on his return to
Ridgeley, he had taken from the post-office, along with the
impertinent missive addressed to himself, one for Mabel,
superscribed by the same hand. From the first, he had no intention
of transferring it to the keeping of the proper owner, It was
forwarded in direct disobedience to his commands, and the writer
should be made to understand the futility of opposition to these.
For several hours, his only purpose respecting it was to enclose it,
unopened, in an envelope directed by himself, and send it back to
the audacious author, by the next mail. He was balked in this
project by no fastidious scruples as to his right thus to dispose of
his ward's property. Nature, or what he assumed was natural
affection, concurred with duty in urging him to hinder an alliance
by which Mabel's happiness would be imperilled and her relatives
scandalized. But when, in the solitude of his study, he vouchsafed a
second reading to Frederic's letter, preparatory to the response he
designed should annihilate his hopes and chastise his impudence, a
doubt of the efficacy of his schemes attacked him for the first
time. "Under her own hand and seal," were terms the explicitness of
which commended them to his grave consideration. His next thought
was to oblige Mabel to indite a formal renunciation of her unworthy
suitor. There were several objections to this measure.