"What was the date of this festival?" asked Winston's unwavering
voice.
"Let me see! We had been married seven years that fall. It must have
been in the winter of 18--."
"Twenty-three years ago!" said Winston, yet more quietly.
"Doubtless, your intimacy with this estimable and distinguished
family continued up to the time of your husband's death?"
"It did."
"And afterward?"
Mrs. Button's color waned, And her voice sank, as the inquisition
proceeded. "Dear Frederic's" death was not the subject she would
have chosen of her free will to discuss with this man of steel and
ice.
"I never visited them again. I could not--"
If she hoped to retain a semblance of composure, she must shift her
ground.
"I returned to my father's house, which was, as you know, more
remote from the borders of Maryland--"
"You kept up a correspondence, perhaps?" Winston interposed,
overlooking her agitation as irrelevant to the matter under
investigation.
"No! For many months I wrote no letters at all, and Mr. Chilton was
never a punctual correspondent. The best of friends are apt to be
dilatory in such respects, as they advance in life."
"I gather, then, from what you have ADMITTED"--there was no actual
stress upon the word, but it stood obnoxiously apart from the
remainder of the sentence, to Mrs. Sutton's auriculars--"from what
you have admitted, that for twenty years you have lost sight of this
gentleman and his relatives, and that you might never have
remembered the circumstance of their existence, had he not
introduced himself to you at the Springs this summer."
"You are mistaken, there!" corrected the widow, eagerly. "Rosa
Tazewell introduced him to Mabel at the first 'hop'
she--Mabel--attended there. He is very unassuming. He would never
have forced himself upon my notice. I was struck by his appearance
and resemblance to his father, and inquired of Mabel who he was. The
recognition followed as a matter of course."
"He was an acquaintance of Miss Tazewell--did you say?"
"Yes--she knew him very well when she was visiting in Philadelphia
last winter."
"And proffered the introduction to Mabel?" the faintest imaginable
glimmer of sarcastic amusement in his eyes, but none in his accent.
"He requested it, I believe."
"That is more probable. Excuse my frankness, aunt, when I say that
it would have been more in consonance with the laws controlling the
conduct of really thoroughbred people, had your paragon--I use the
term in no offensive sense--applied to me, instead of to you, for
permission to pay his addresses to my ward. I am willing to ascribe
this blunder, however, to ignorance of the code of polite society,
and not to intentional disrespect, since you represent the gentleman
as amiable and well-meaning. I am, furthermore, willing to examine
his certificates of character and means, with a view to determining
what are his recommendations to my sister's preference, over and
above ball-room graces and the fact that he is Mr. Sutton's
namesake, and whether it will be safe and advisable to grant my
consent to their marriage. Whatever is for Mabel's real welfare
shall be done, while I cannot but wish that her choice had fallen
upon some one nearer home The prosecution of inquiries as to the
reputation of one whose residence is so distant, is a difiicult and
delicate task."