Only once in all those sixty years was she ever known to leave the house overnight, and that was once, three years after John Shadwell was married, when she went away for a few months, “to visit her aunt in Camden.” It was not long after she returned that John Shadwell, “whose poor wife could never have any children,” adopted a girl baby. His wife, it was said, made no protest so long as the child had a good nurse and did not worry her. She was “so miserable, always ailing. She would give anything in the world for the health some women had.” “You couldn’t blame her,” said the Town, “for feeling like that. They say she never has a moment’s good, wholesome sleep.” John Shadwell went to the Legislature, the youngest man in the state to hold such an office; and when the time for reelection came the fight was bitter, and into it some enemy thrust the name of Vergie Winters. So the story spread, and so the name of Vergie Winters went the way of most smalltown milliners. Millinery was a “fast” business and Vergie Winters was a “fast” woman. A committee called upon her and asked her to leave the Town. And John Shadwell did nothing. If he came to her defense, he was ruined at the very beginning of that precious career. So Vergie gave him up, but she did not leave the Town. In the little parlour with the hats in the window she received the committee, and in that calm, aloof way she told them that they could not force her to leave. They could not prove that she had broken any law. She was a free citizen. She even looked at them out of the depths of those dark, candid eyes, and lied. “John Shadwell,” she said, “is nothing to me. If he has come here once or twice, it is only because he is my lawyer.” She must protect John Shadwell. And so she sent them away baffled, even perhaps a little intimidated ... a committee of red-faced, self-righteous townsmen who had known, some of them at least, far worse women than Vergie Winters. But her trade dwindled. Women no longer came to her for hats, unless they were the shady ladies of the streets. And Vergie Winters never turned them away, perhaps because she needed desperately their trade, perhaps because it never occurred to her, in that terrible solitude to which she had dedicated her life, ever to judge them. They came and sometimes they stayed to talk. A few of them were run out of town, but new ones always took their places. They always went to Vergie Winters for their bonnets. “She is such a lady. She has such a fine air,” they said. And, “It’s so restful sitting there in her cool parlour.” But their trade did her no good. “It only goes to show,” said the Town.