flung out her slender hands with a
nervous gesture which had hostility in it. Truth was that she hated
Lot Gordon both on his own account and because he came instead of his
cousin Burr. She had expected Burr that night; she had taken his
cousin's hand on the doorlatch for his. He had not been to see her
for three weeks, and her heart was breaking as she sang. Any face
which had appeared to her instead of his in the doorway that night
would have been to her as the face of a bitter enemy or a black
providence, but Lot Gordon was in himself hateful to her. She knew,
too, by a curious revulsion of all her senses from unwelcome desire,
that he loved her, and the love of any man except Burr Gordon was to
her like a serpent.

She would not look at him, but somehow she knew that his eyes were
upon her, and that they were full of love and malice, and she knew
not which she dreaded more. She resolved that he should not have a
word with her that night if she could help it, and so she urged on
her father and her brothers with new tunes until they would have no
more, and went off to bed--all except the boy Richard. She whispered
in his ear, and he stayed behind with her while she mixed some bread
and set it for rising on the hearth.

Lot Gordon sat watching her. There was a hungry look in his hollow
blue eyes. Now and then he coughed painfully, and clapped his hand to
his chest with an impatient movement.

"Well, whether I ever get to heaven or not, I've heard music," he
said, when she passed him with the bread-bowl on her hip and her soft
arm curved around it. He reached out his slender hand and caught hold
of her dress-skirt; she jerked away with a haughty motion, and set
the bowl on the hearth. "You'd better rake down the fire now,
Richard," said she.

The boy jostled Lot roughly as he passed around him to get the
fire-shovel. Lot looked at the clock, and the hand was near twelve.
He arose slowly.

"I met Burr on his way down to Parson Fair's," he said.

Madelon covered up the bread closely with a linen towel. There was a
surging in her ears, as if misery itself had a veritable sound, and
her face was as white as the ashes on the hearth, but she kept it
turned away from Lot.

"Well," said he, in his husky drawl, "a rose isn't a rose to a bee,
she's only a honey-pot; and she's only one out of a shelfful to him;
she can't complain, it's what she was born to. If she finds any fault
it's got to be with creation, and what's