After Fifteen Years

No one replied directly to this delicate and feeling observation,
and Mrs. Aylett presently diverted the conversation slightly by
saying,-"And Alfred Branch has gone to tender his services to the family!
There is something romantic in his constancy to a memory. From the
day of Rosa's death, he has embraced every chance of testifying his
respect for and wish to serve her friends. He is a sadder wreck than
was Mrs. Tazewell. You would hardly recognize him, Mabel. His hair
and beard are white as those of a man of sixty-five, and his face
bloated out of all comeliness."

"White heat!" interjected Mr. Aylett. "He can not last much longer."

"And all because a pretty girl said him 'Nay!'" pursued the wife.

Mr. Aylett and Mr. Dorrance made characteristic responses in a
breath.

"The greater blockhead he!" said one.

The other, "His was never a rightly balanced mind, I suspect. I
always thought him weak and impressionable."

"Are your adjectives synonymous?" asked Mrs. Aylett playfully.

"Generally!"

Her brother had been reading at a distant window, while the daylight
sufficed to show him the type of his book. He now laid it by, and
came forward into the redder circle of radiance cast by the burning
logs. He was in his forty-third year, saturnine of visage, coldly
monotonous in accent, a business machine that did its work in good,
substantial style, and undertook no "fancy jobs." He had amassed a
handsome fortune, built a handsome house, and married a handsome
woman, all of which appendages to his consequence he contemplated
with grim complacency. As regarded spiritual likeness, mutual
affection, and assimilation of feeling and opinion, he and his wife
had receded, the one from the other, in the fourteen years of their
wedded life. There had been no decided rupture. Both disliked
altercations, and where radical opposition of sentiment existed,
they avoided the unsafe ground by tacit consent. Mabel's uniform
policy was that of outward submission to the mandates of her chief.