stress in her arms, and crooned over her, like a wild thing over
her young.

"There is no use in prolonging this, sir," Burr said to Parson Fair.

The elder man looked at him with a strange mixture of helpless
dignity and sympathy and wrath. "You know that I have no share in
this," he said, and he glanced almost piteously from Burr to his
mother. "I could never have believed that my daughter--"

"We will say no more about it, sir," responded Burr. "I hold neither
you nor your daughter in any blame." Then he offered his arm to his
mother, and the three went out and down-stairs, and the black woman
clapped to the chamber door with a great jar upon her mistress, whose
calm of obstinacy had broken into wailing hysterics which betokened
no less stanchness. Parson Fair, Burr Gordon, and his mother, at the
foot of the stairs among the curious wedding-guests, looked for a
second at one another.

The parson's fine state seemed to have deserted him. There were red
spots on his pale cheeks. His long hands twitched nervously. "I
will--inform them," he said, huskily, at length, but Burr moved
before him. "No, sir; I will do it," he said.

Then he strode into the great north parlor, where the more important
guests were assembled, and where he and Dorothy were to have been
married. He stood alone in the clear space between the windows, and
knew, as the eyes of the people met his, that they had heard
Dorothy's last wild cry, and knew why she would not marry him. He
stood for a second facing them all before he spoke, and in spite of
the shame of rejection which he felt heaped upon him by them all, and
a subtler shame arising from his own heart, in spite of the fact that
he could not offer any defense, or do aught but bend his back to the
full weight of his humiliation, he had a certain majesty of demeanor.
Revolt at humiliation alone precipitates the full measure of it, and
the strength which survives defeat, even of one's own convictions, is
of a good quality. Silence under wrongful accusation gives the
bearing of a hero.

There was a hush over the assembly so complete that it seemed as if
the very personalities of the listeners were drawn back from
self-consciousness to give free scope for sound. When Burr spoke,
everybody heard.

"The marriage between Dorothy Fair and myself is broken off," was all
he said. Then he went out of the room as proudly as if his bride had
been by his side, through the entry to the study. Parson F