Mabel sat down again, totally confounded, and struggling hard with her tears. The thought of her brother's marriage was not in itself disagreeable. She had often lamented his insensibility to the attractions of such women as she fancied would add to his happiness, and grace the high place to which his wife would be exalted. She never liked to hear him called invulnerable; repelled the hypothesis of his incurable bachelorhood as derogatory to his heart and head. This unlooked-for intelligence, had it reached her in a different way, would have delighted as much as it astonished her. The fear lest her consent to wed Frederic and leave Ridgeley might be the occasion of discomfort and sadness to her forsaken brother had shadowed all her visions of future bliss. She ought to have hailed with unmixed satisfaction the certainty that he would not miss her sisterly ministrations, or feel the need of her companionship in that of one nearer and dearer than was his child-ward. She had striven not to resent even in her own mind, his cavalier treatment of her lover; had hearkened respectfully and without demur to his unsympathizing calculations of what was possible and what feasible in the project of her union with the man of her choice. For how could he know anything of the palpitations, the anxieties, the raptures of love, when he was a stranger to the touch of a kindred emotion? He meant well; he had her welfare in view; unfortunate as was his style of discussing the means for insuring this--for he loved her dearly, dearly! She must never question this, although he had dealt the comfortable persuasion a cruel blow; wounded her in a vital part by withholding from her the circumstance of his attachment and betrothal until the near approach of the wedding day rendered continued secrecy inexpedient. No softening memory of his affianced had inclined him to listen with kindly warmth to her timid avowals, or Frederic's manly protestations of their mutual attachment. He recognized no analogy in the two cases; stood aloof from them in the flush of his successful love, as if he had never known the pregnant meaning of the word. Smarting under the sense of injury to pride and affection, her language, when she could trust her voice, was a protest that, in Winston's judgment, ill beseemed her age and station. “Why did you not tell me of this earlier, brother? It was unjust and unkind to keep me in the dark until now.” “You forget yourself, Mabel. I am not under obligation to account to you for my actions.” He said it composedly, as if stating a truth wholly disconnected with feeling on his part or on hers.