uspect that she had taken
advantage of this lack of guardianship, and yet there was something
unwonted in her manner which led them to look at each other furtively
when they first noticed it. The perfect poise of decision at which
she had arrived affected their minds in some subtle fashion. Eugene,
when he returned late in the afternoon, noticed the change in her, in
spite of his own perturbation. He looked hard at her staid face,
fixed into a sort of unquestioning and dignified acquiescence with
misery, but he said nothing. Madelon, in this state, was not to be
questioned even by her father. He simply muttered to himself, as he
strode out of the room, that she was a woman.

Madelon's manner was the same as the days went on. There ceased to be
any question as to her sanity among her father and brothers. She no
longer paced overhead like a wild thing. She no longer made fierce
outbreaks of despairing appeal. They no longer kept watch over her
lest she commit some folly, and became easier in their minds about
her.

They made no objections when, three weeks later, she asked for the
sleigh and the roan to go to New Salem and make some purchases for
herself. She went early in the afternoon, and returned in good season
with her parcels. They did not dream that she had been in a strange
spirit of bitterness and shameful misery and feminine pride to
purchase her wedding-gown for her marriage with Lot Gordon.

Her frantic and unreasoning impulse of concealment was still strong.
It was almost as if the whole horror of it were not so plainly thrust
upon her if none but she knew it; then there was the agony of shame
which made her fain to turn her back and deafen her ears to her own
self, let alone all these others.

They rather wondered, the next morning, when they saw Madelon seated
at work upon some shining lengths of silk, at the magnificence of her
purchase in New Salem; but they knew that she had a little private
fund of her own, which they had never questioned her right to spend.

"Guess she's been saving her egg-and-butter money," Abner said, when
she went out for something.

His father nodded. "Glad she's got a new gown. Guess she'll show
folks she ain't quite done for on account of that fellow," he said.

When Madelon was seated at her work again, and he passed her to leave
the room, he laid a heavy, caressing hand on her black head. "Glad
ye've got ye a handsome gown," said he. "It's money well spent."

That da