“You don't tell me!” repeated Gibbs. “And your aunt, Stephen's widow?”
“She is well; or was when I heard from her last.”
“Never married again, eh?” said Gibbs.
“No.”
“Remarkable! but I reckon it wa'n'. for any lack of opportunity, she was a most beautiful woman as I recall her.”
“She is still a very beautiful woman,” said Stephen, but for some reason he did not care to discuss Virginia with Gibbs. He had felt no such reluctance where his own mother was concerned.
“What about Jake Benson? I've sort of lost track of him, we used to exchange occasional letters, but I drifted about a good deal. I was living in Alabama when the war broke out, but I got back to St. Louis in a hurry then, my politics were of the wrong complexion for down South. But what about Jake Benson? I reckon he's gone on piling up the dollars; give him a start and you'll never stop a Yankee doing that.”
“Of course you are not aware that I married his cousin.”
“Didn't know he had any cousin left when I took my wife,” said the general.
“His uncle's daughter, you know,” explained Stephen.