“Fred would never get over the first impression of your brother’s chilling reserve,” said the self-appointed envoy to Mabel, when she insisted that her affianced would plead his cause more eloquently than a third person could.  “For, you, must confess, my love, that Winston, although in most respects a model to other young men, is unapproachable by strangers.”

As she said “your accounts and so forth,” she looked at the table from which Mr. Aylett had arisen to set a chair for her.  There was a pile of account-books at the side against the wall, but they were shut, and over heaped by pamphlets and newspapers; while before the owner’s seat lay an open portfolio, an unfinished letter within it.  Winston wiped his pen with deliberation, closed the portfolio, snapped to the spring-top of his inkstand, and finally wheeled his office chair away from the desk to face his visitor.

“Is it upon business that you wish to speak to me?”

He always disdained circumlocution, prided himself upon the directness and simplicity of his address.  This acted now as a dissuasive to the sentimental address Mrs. Sutton had meditated as a means of winning the flinty walls behind which his social affections and sympathies were supposed to be intrenched.  Had her mission been in behalf of any other cause, she would have drawn off her forces upon some pretext, and effected an ignominious retreat.  Nerved by the thought of Mabel’s bashfulness and solicitude, and Frederic’s strangerhood, she stood to her guns.

Winston heard her story, from the not very coherent preamble, to the warm and unqualified endorsement of Frederic Chilton’s credentials, and her moved mention of the mutual attachment of the youthful pair, and never changed his attitude, or manifested any inclination to stay the narration by question or comment.  When she ceased speaking, his physiognomy denoted no emotion whatever.  Yet, Mabel was his nearest living relative.  She had been bequeathed to his care, when only ten years old, by the will of their dying father, and grown up under his eye as his child, rather than a sister.  And he was hearing, for the first time, of her desire to quit the home they had shared together from her birth, for the protection and companionship of another.  Mrs. Sutton thought herself pretty well versed in “Winston’s ways,” but she had expected to detect a shade of softness in the cold, never-bright eyes and anticipated another rejoinder than the sentence that stands at the head of this chapter.

“And so you know nothing of this gentleman beyond what he has told you of his character and antecedents?” he said—­the slender white fingers, his aunt fancied, looked cruel even in their idleness, lightly linked together while his elbows restod upon the arms of his chair.