Rosa wrought out this chain of sequences, with many other links, stretching far past present exigences and possibilities, ere Mabel's figure disappeared behind the shoulder of the hill rising beyond the brook. Should Frederic Chilton receive that letter, in less than a week--in three days, perhaps, for he was a man prompt to resolve and to do--he would present himself at Ridgeley to speak in his own behalf--an event Rosa considered eminently undesirable. Certainly Mabel's pusillanimity merited no such reward. She had no right to question the rectitude that one she professed to love, nor her aunt the right to act as mediator. If Mabel Aylett, with her found sense and judgment, and her inherent strength of will, would not hold fast to her faith in her affianced husband, and defy her brother to sunder them, let her lose that which she prized so lightly. If the epistle, soaking slowly there in the wet, had been committed to Rosa's charge, she would have scorned to intercept it; would have deposited it safely and punctually in the post-office. As it was, if she left it alone, Frederic would never get it, and Mrs. Sutton remain unconscious of its fate--unless some other passer-by should perceive and rescue it from illegibility and dissolution; unless Mabel should espy it on their return-walk, or, coming back, the next moment, to seek her truant mate, catch sight of the snowy leaflet of peace in its snuggery under the sedge. A startled partridge flew over Rosa's head from the thither rising ground, and in the belief that he was the harbinger of the approach she dreaded, she dislodged the envelope from its covert, with a quick touch of her little wand, and it floated down the stream. Slowly--all too gradually at first--swinging lazily wound in the eddies, catching, now against a jutting stone, now entangled by a blade of grass--Rosa's heart in her throat as she watched it, lest Mabel's footsteps should be audible upon the rocky path, Mabel's hat appear above the spur of the hill. Then the channel caught it, whirled it over and over, faster and faster, and sucked it downward. Mrs. Sutton was at the tea-table with the girls that evening, when Johnson, the sable Mercury, showed himself at the door, to inform his superior that he had “got everything at de sto' she sent him fur to buy.” “You mailed the letters, Johnson?” said the mild mistress, rather anxiously. “All on dem, Mistis!” “The unconscionable liar!” thought Rosa, virtuously, “he ought to be flogged! But it is none of my business to contradict him.” She did not say now, “My hands are clean!” CHAPTER VI. -- CRAFT--OR DIPLOMACY!