They watched Burr as he swung up the street to Parson Fair's in the
spring twilights, with admiration for his stalwart grace, and growing
approval for those inner qualities which outward beauty sometimes but
poorly indicates. They approved also of the temperate hours which he
observed in his courting, for no one within eye-shot, or ear-shot,
but knew when Parson Fair's front door closed behind him. Burr,
during the last weeks before his marriage, never stayed much later
than half-past nine or ten at his sweetheart's house, and, in truth,
was not sorely tempted to do so. Mistress Dorothy in those days
behaved in a manner which might well have aroused to rebellion a more
ardent or a less determinately faithful lover. She had the candles
lit early in the beautiful spring twilights, and then she sat and
stitched and stitched upon her wedding finery, bending her fair face,
half concealed by drooping curls, assiduously over it, having never a
hand at liberty for a lover's caress, or an eye for his smiles. Then,
too, when Burr took leave, she stood before him with such a strange
effect of terror and hauteur that he could do no more than touch her
lips as if she had been a timid child, and bid her good-night. Had
Burr Gordon, in those days, been less aware of his own unfaithfulness
and weariness, and less fiercely resolved not to yield to it, he
might well have perceived Dorothy's. As it was he confused her
coldness with his own, and attributed it to the change in his own
heart, and not to that in hers. And even had he suspected it he would
not have made the first motion for freedom, so desperate was his
adherence to falsity for the sake of truth.

Burr Gordon had at stake in this last more than any temporal good or
ill of love. He had at stake his whole belief in himself, and he was
also actuated by another motive which he scarcely admitted in his own
thoughts.

Convinced he was that Madelon Hautville, believing as she did that he
had forsaken her for honest love of another, would hold him in utter
scorn and contempt were she to discover him false to Dorothy as she
had been to her; and his very love of her love, strangely enough,
kept him true to her rival.

So he went to see Dorothy, and found no fault with her coldness. The
wedding preparations went on, and at last the day came.

Chapter XXIV

The wedding was to be at eight o'clock in the evening, and nearly all
the village was bidden to it--even many of the U