At Last | Page 9

"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."
"If you will only talk to him for ten minutes he will remove your
scruples,--satisfy you that all is as it should be," asserted Mrs. Sutton,
more confidently to him than herself.
"I trust it will be as you say--but credulity is not my besetting sin. I am
ready to see the gentleman at any hour you and he may see fit to
appoint."
"I will send MR. CHILTON to you at once, then." Mrs, Sutton
collected the scattering remnants of hope and resolution, that she might
deal a parting shot.
"Winston is an AWFUL trial to my temper, although he never loses his
own," she was wont to soliloquize, in the lack of a confidante to whom
she could expatiate upon his eccentricities and general untowardness.
His marked avoidance of Frederic's name in this conference savored to

her of insulting meaning. She had rather he had coupled it with
opprobious epithets whenever he referred to him, than spoken of him as
"this" or "that gentleman." If he took this high and chilly tone, with
Mabel's wooer, there was no telling what might be the result of the
affair.
"Don't mind him if he is stiff and uncompromising for a while," she
enjoined upon Frederic, in apprising him of the seignior's readiness to
grant him audience, "It is only his way, and he is Mabel's brother."
"I will bear the latter hint in mind," rejoined the young man, with the
gay, affectionate smile he often bestowed upon her." I don't believe he
can awe me into resignation of my purpose, or provoke me into dislike
of the rest of the family."
Mabel was in her aunt's room, plying her with queries, hard to be
evaded, touching the tenor and