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.