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 difficult and delicate task.”