ght a marvellous garland of red roses on Dorothy Fair's green
silk, and scarcely left herself time to sleep that she might complete
that and her stint of household linen. She had nothing to add to her
own wedding-garments.

Chapter XXI

The weeks went past, and the Sunday before the day set for her
wedding came again. She had seen Lot but three times in the interval.
He had sent for her, and she had gone obediently, and remained a
short time, pleading her work as an excuse to return home. Lot had
not sought to detain her; he had vexed her with no vain appeals, but
treated her with a sort of sad deference which would have perplexed
her had she cared enough for him to dwell upon it.

Lot was said to be in no better health. He did not stir abroad on
those warm spring days. Once he had put on his great-coat, and was
for setting foot on the springing grass in the sunny yard, but
Margaret Bean had remarked to him how she had heard, whilst
purchasing a bit of cheese in the store, a man say that he guessed
Lot Gordon wasn't much worse, only afraid of a wife that could use a
knife. Margaret Bean had shaken in her starched petticoats as she
said it, not knowing how the news might affect her master towards the
monger of it; but she was disposed to risk a little rather than have
a mistress over her.

Lot said nothing in response about the matter, but pulled off his
great-coat and sank into his chair with a fit of coughing, and
declared he felt not well enough to go out that day.

That last Sunday Madelon went to him without being summoned, in the
early evening after supper. On her last visit, the week before, he
had asked her, and she had promised to come.

The frogs were calling across the meadows as she went along; there
was a young moon shining with frequent silvery glances through the
budding trees, which tossed athwart it like foam, and the mists
curled along the horizon distances. Madelon, moving along, was as the
ghost of one who had belonged to the spring, as a part of its radiant
hope and stir of life and youth in days past, but was now done with
it forever. The spring sounds and sights, and all its sweet
influence, seemed to tear her heart anew with memories of the visions
of fair futures which she had forfeited. The loss of the sweet dreams
which the spring awakens in the human heart is not one of the least
losses of life. Though the spring be unfulfilled, it sweetens the
year.

Just before Madelon reac