Part 13 (1/2)

”You let us pa.s.s!” she said, sternly.

”Where are you going?” he demanded. He looked uneasily at Dorothy as he spoke. It was easy enough to see that she was a restraint upon him, and that fair, timid face in its blue hood held his indignation well in check.

”We are going to New Salem,” replied Madelon. ”Let us pa.s.s.”

”I want to know what you are going for,” said Eugene; and he tried to speak with fire, but he still looked furtively at Dorothy.

n.o.body had ever suspected how that lovely face of hers had been in his dreams, unless it had been for a time Dorothy herself. n.o.body had noticed in meeting, of a Sabbath day long since, when Dorothy had first returned from her Boston school, sundry glances which had pa.s.sed between a pair of soft blue eyes in the parson's pew and a pair of fiery black ones in the singing-seats.

Dorothy, half guiltily in those days, had arranged her curls and tied on her Sunday bonnets with a view to Eugene Hautville's eyes; and always, when she returned from meeting, had gone straight to her looking-gla.s.s, to be sure that she had looked fair in them. But n.o.body had ever known, and scarcely she herself.

She had come to think later that she had perhaps been mistaken, for never had Eugene made other advances to her than by those ardent glances; and Burr had come, and she had turned to him, and thought of Eugene Hautville only when he crossed her way, and then with a mixture of pique and shame. Never by any chance did her eyes meet his nowadays of a Sabbath day, and she listened coldly to his sweet tenor in the hymns. Now, suddenly, she looked straight up in his face and met his eyes, and a pink flush came into her white cheeks.

”Please to let us pa.s.s,” she said, in her gentle tone, which had yet a tincture of command in it. Any woman as fair as she, who has a right understanding of her looking-gla.s.s, has, however soft she may be, the instincts of a queen within her. She felt a proud resentment for her own old folly and for Eugene's old slighting of her, and indignation at his present att.i.tude as she looked up at him with sudden daring.

Eugene threw back his head haughtily. ”She wants to see Burr Gordon,”

he thought, and would have died rather than let her think he would stand in the way of it. He jerked the roan aside, and seemed as if he would have been flung into the way-side bushes with her curving plunge.

”Pa.s.s, if you wish,” he said, with a graceful bend in his saddle, and was past them, riding the other way towards the village.

Chapter IX

When they reached the county buildings, the court-house and the jail, in New Salem, the old race-horse was still not nearly spent, although he breathed somewhat hard. When Madelon sprang out to blanket and tie him he seemed to vibrate to her touch like electric steel, and showed that the old fire had not yet died out of his nerves and muscles.

Poor Dorothy Fair's knees were weak under her as she got out of the sleigh. Her pretty face was pitiful, her sweet mouth drooping at the corners like a troubled child's.

Madelon looked at her sharply when they stood before the jail door waiting for admittance. ”I have seen you wear a curl each side of your face outside your hood,” said she.

”I didn't think of it to-day,” Dorothy replied, with forlorn surprise.

Madelon went close to the other girl peremptorily, as if she had been her mother, pulled forward two soft curls from under her hood, and arranged them becomingly against the pale cheeks; and Dorothy submitted.

Alvin Mead opened the jail door, and his great face took on a forbidding scowl when he saw Madelon Hautville.

”Can't let ye in,” he said, gruffly. ”Ain't a visitin' day.” He would have shut the door in their faces had not Madelon made a quick spring against it.

”I don't want to come in!” she cried. ”I don't want to see him to-day. It's this lady who wants to see him.”

”Can't see n.o.body,” said Alvin Mead, filling up the door like a surly living wedge.

”You must let us see him,” persisted Madelon. ”She's Parson Fair's daughter. She is going to marry Burr Gordon--she must see him.”

Alvin Mead shook his head stubbornly. Then Dorothy spoke, thrusting her fair face forward, and looking up at him with terrified, innocent pleading, like a child, and yet speaking with a gentle lady's authority. ”I beg you to let me come in, only for a few moments,”

said she. ”I will not make you any trouble. I will come out directly when you bid me to.”

Alvin Mead looked at her a second, then at Madelon with rough inquiry. ”Who did ye say she was?” he growled.

”Parson Fair's daughter, the lady that's going to marry Burr Gordon.”