Page 13 (1/2)

"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 intiuished

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 ain I could not--"

If she hoped to retain a seround

"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 ation

"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 adentleht never have

remembered the circumstance of their existence, had he not