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.

Firstly, he disliked whatever smacked of scenic effect, and women
were apt to get up scenes--hysterics, attitudes, and the like--upon
trivial provocation, He wanted to get the thing over quietly and
soon.

Secondly, he was not very sure that he should find in Mabel the
docile puppet she had appeared to him for so many years of tutelage.
She had matured marvelously of late. Her very manner of meeting him
that afternoon impressed him by its self-possession and freedom from
the emotion that used to gush from eyes and lips, in happy tears,
and broken, delighted greeting at his approach. For aught he knew to
the contrary, she might have accepted his fiat as just, if not
merciful, and not a dream of rebellion been fostered thereby. The
grave tranquillity of her demeanor might arise from the chastening
influences of the mortification she had sustained, and a
consciousness of ill-desert that bred humility. He would fain have
believed all this, but until he broached the subject to her, his
incertitude could not be removed, and in a step so momentous as that
which he meditated, it behooved him to try well the solidity of the
ground beneath him.

Lastly, our blood-prince of the kingdom of Ridgeley was, whether he
confessed it or not, acting under orders.