lips. The parson advanced, and she sprang
up and put her broad back against the door and rolled out defiance at
him from under her burring tongue.

But he continued to advance with unmoved front, as if she had been
the Satanas of his orthodoxy, which, indeed, she did not faintly
image. She moved aside with a savage sound in her throat, and he
threw the door wide open. There sat Dorothy Fair before them at her
dimity dressing-table, with all her slender body huddled forward and
resting seemingly upon her two bare white arms, which encompassed her
bowed head like sweet rings. Not a glimpse of Dorothy's face could be
seen under the wide flow of her fair curls, which parted only a
little over the curve of one pink shoulder. Dorothy wore her
wedding-gown of embroidered India muslin; but her satin slippers were
widely separated upon the floor, as if she had kicked them hither and
thither; and on the bed, in a great, careless, fluffy heap, lay her
wedding-veil, as if it had been tossed there.

Elvira Gordon, at a signal from Parson Fair, entered the room past
the sullen negress, who rolled her eyes and muttered low, and went
close to the girl at the dressing-table.

"Dorothy!" said Mrs. Gordon.

Dorothy made no sign that she heard.

"Dorothy, do you know it is an hour after the time set for your
wedding?"

Dorothy was so still that instinctively Mrs. Gordon bent close over
her and listened; but she heard quite plainly the soft pant of her
breath, and knew she had not fainted.

Mrs. Gordon straightened herself and looked at her. It was strange
how that delicate, girlish form under the soft flow of fair locks and
muslin draperies should express, in all its half-suggested curves,
such utter obstinacy that it might have been the passive
unresponsiveness of marble. Even that soft tumult of agitated breath
could not alter that impression. When Mrs. Gordon spoke again her
words seemed to echo back in her own ears, as if she had spoken in an
empty room.

"Dorothy Fair," said she, with a kind of solemn authority, "neither I
nor any other human being can look into your heart and see why you do
this; and you owe it to my son, who has your solemn promise, and to
your father, whose only child you are, to speak. If you are sick, say
so; if at the last minute you have a doubt as to your affection for
Burr, say so. My son will keep his promise to you with his life, but
he will not force himself upon you against your wishes. You nee