“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.

“I heard a piece of news to-day,” he said, presently, in his most even tone; but Mabel’s start upon her seat was almost a leap, while her fingers moved faster and more irregularly.

“I suspect, from your unsettled demeanor this evening, that it reached you before it did me,” continued he.  “I can attribute your badly suppressed pertubation to no other cause.  Mrs. Sutton is such an indefatigable gossip, that this item could hardly have passed her by.  Has she told you that Rosa Tazewell is shortly to become Mrs. Chilton?”

“She has.”

He thought she was nerving herself to a simulation of hardihood, and the long-indulged habit of censorship was strong upon him.

“I had trusted, until to-day, Mabel, that you had conquered that disgraceful weakness,” he resumed, yet more pitilessly.

Domination was one of his besetting sins.  He never saw a helpless or cowering thing without feeling the inclination to set his foot upon it, and the least show of resistance in such, piqued him into despotism.

“I was aware that it was not dead when you married a man worth a thousand such scoundrels as that fellow in Philadelphia.  I believed that the sentiment was powerful in impelling you to that marriage, and that this irrevocable measure would be an antidote to the evil.  It was a wise course, and I commended you for pursuing it.  But I am too well read in your countenance and moods not to see that there is something far amiss with you.  You have been playing a part for twenty-four hours, and you have played it wretchedly.  Your nervous flutters and laugh, your sudden changes of complexion, and the incoherence of your language, would betray you to the least penetrating observer.  I caution you to be on your guard lest your husband should take just offence at all this.  The need of dissimulation is the evidence that something is radically wrong in your moral nature, and is derogatory to your lawful partner.  I am ashamed to remind you of the golden maxim of wedded life—­that without perfect and mutual confidence there can be no substantial happiness.  Does Dorrance know of your escapade at the Springs?”