Rosa laughed, with a saucy retort, and turned into her chamber.
Mabel entered her brother's, and without speaking, took the seat he
offered. She was to be sentenced, and she must reserve her forces to
sustain the pain without a groan.
"You saw Jenkyns--did you not?" began Mr. Aylett, with the manner of
one at peace with himself, and those of his fellow-men whose
existence he chose to acknowledge.
"I did. He made memoranda of your orders, and said all should be
done as you wished."
"I ordered the masons, this evening, to begin the hall-chimney
to-morrow. While the work is going on, you had better occupy some
other bed-room. I shall hurry it forward, day and night, or it will
not be done in season for us when we return from our bridal-tour.
The carpets must be down, and the paper dry by the fifteenth at
farthest. Clara bought your dresses, and offers to have them made,
if you will send her an accurate measurement. You are about her
height, although not so well-proportioned. Your figure is angular,
where hers is round. She is your senior by several years, yet one
might easily mistake her for a girl of twenty, her complexion is so
fresh. Her twenty-five years show themselves in nothing except her
ease of manner, maturity of thought, and elegance of diction."
He would have sneered at this strain in another as hyperbolical and
fatuous. The absurdity of it in his mouth consisted mainly in the
cool arrogance of the assumption that whatever belonged to him was
above adverse criticism, and would be maligned if it were referred
to without appending an encomium. Much of fervor might and did
mingle in his thoughts of her he was to wed, but none warmed his
enumeration of her perfections. He did nothing con amore, unless it
were exalting the dignity and glory of the Aylett name, and
maintaining his right to support their ancient honors.
Mabel did not respond to his gratuitous praise of the fair and
benevolent Clara. While he was talking, he seemed to recede a great
way from her; his tones to ring hollowly upon her hearing, his form
to grow indistinct. Was he playing with her suspense, or could it be
that he--a being with heart and nerves like hers, had no conception
of the rack on which she waa stretched--no suspicion that every one
of his deliberate sentences was a turn of the screw that redoubled
her torture? The Ayletts were a strong-willed race, and she
repressed all sign of suffering save intense pallor; made this less
palpable by screening her eyes from the lamp-light with a paper she
took from the table, and thereby throwing her features into deep
shadow.