ended another letter. "Here's another," said she, shortly, to
Madelon. She tucked the hand which had held the letter under her
shawl and hugged herself with a shiver, ostentatiously. "I'm most
froze, traipsin' back and forth, I know that much," she muttered.

Eugene stood aside with a flourish and a graceful, beckoning wave of
his hand. "Won't you come in and warm yourself?" he said, and he
smiled in her face as if she and no other were the love of his heart.

But Margaret Bean had a shrewd understanding which no grace of
flattery could dazzle, and felt truly that nowadays her principal
claim to masculine admiration lay in her fine starching specialty of
housewifery; and of that she gave no show, bundled up against the
cold in her shapeless wools. So she put aside the young man's smiling
courtesy scornfully, as not belonging to her, and spoke in a voice as
sharp as an edge of her own well-stiffened linens. "No, sir," said
Margaret Bean; "I've got bread in the oven and I can't stop, and I
ain't coming in for two or three minutes and set with my things on,
and get all chilled through when I go out. I'll stand here while your
sister reads that letter. He said the answer would be just 'yes' or
'no,' and I shouldn't have to wait long. 'She ain't one to teeter
long on a decision,' says he; 'she finds her footin' one side or the
other.' He talks queer, queerer'n ever sence he was hurt. I pity
anybody that gets him."

"Tell him 'yes,'" said Madelon, abruptly; and then she wheeled about
and went into the house.

"Well," said Margaret Bean, harshly. The door closed before her;
Eugene had forgotten his courtesy, and followed his sister into the
house without a good-day to the guest.

Margaret Bean stood for a minute looking at the house, with its yawn
of blank windows in her face; then she went out of the yard, bearing
her message to Lot Gordon.

Eugene Hautville was startled at the look on Madelon's face when she
went into the house. "Madelon, what is it?" he said, softly. But she
did not answer him a word; she ran across the room and thrust Lot
Gordon's letter into the fire. Eugene followed her and turned her
about gently, and looked keenly in her white face.

"What was in that latter?" said he.

Madelon shook her head dumbly.

"Madelon?"

"Wait. You will know soon. I can't tell you," she gasped out then.

"Was it from Lot Gordon?"

She nodded.

"What is he writing to you about? You are my sister, and I have a