"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."




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