"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