rs to take
their places. Oncle Jazon attacked his fiddle again with startling
energy. Those who were not to dance formed a compact double line around
the wall, the shorter ones in front, the taller in the rear. And what a
scene it was! but no person present regarded it as in any way strange
or especially picturesque, save as to the gown of Alice, which was now
floating and whirling in time to Oncle Jazon's mad music. The people
outside the house cheerfully awaited their turn to go in while an equal
number went forth to chat and sing around the fires.

Beverley was in a young man's seventh heaven. The angels formed a choir
circling around his heart, and their song brimmed his universe from
horizon to horizon.

When he called at Roussillon place, and Alice appeared so beautifully
and becomingly robed, it was another memorable surprise. She flashed a
new and subtly stimulating light upon him. The old gown, rich in
subdued splendor of lace and brocade, was ornamented at the throat with
a heavy band of pearls, just above which could be seen a trace of the
gold chain that supported her portrait locket. There, too, with a not
unbecoming gleam of barbaric colors, shone the string of porcupine
beads to which the Indian charmstone hidden in her bosom was attached.
It all harmonized with the time, the place, the atmosphere. Anywhere
else it would have been preposterous as a decorative presentment, but
here, in this little nook where the coureurs de bois, the half-breeds,
the traders and the missionaries had founded a centre of assembly, it
was the best possible expression in the life so formed at hap-hazard,
and so controlled by the coarsest and narrowest influences. To Fitzhugh
Beverley, of Beverley Hall, the picture conveyed immediately a sweet
and pervading influence.

Alice looked superbly tall, stately and self-possessed in her
transforming costume, a woman of full stature, her countenance gravely
demure yet reserving near the surface the playful dimples and
mischievous smiles so characteristic of her more usual manner. A sudden
mood of the varium et mutabile semper femina had led her to wear the
dress, and the mood still illuminated her.

Beverley stood before her frankly looking and admiring. The underglow
in her cheeks deepened and spread over her perfect throat; her eyes met
his a second, then shyly avoided him. He hardly could have been sure
which was master, her serenity or her girlish delight in being
attractively