petticoats, yet he was
conscious of the hush of voices as he passed, and knew that they all
recognized him in the broad moonlight.

When he reached the lane which led across-lots to the old place, he
plunged into it by a sudden impulse. He went half-way down its leafy
tunnel; then he stopped and sat down on a great stone which had
fallen off the bordering wall.

Great spiritual as well as great physical catastrophes stun for a
while, and there is after both a coming to one's self and an
examining one's faculties, as well as one's bones, to see if they be
still in working order. Burr Gordon, sitting there on his stone of
meditation, in the moonlit dapple of the lane, came slowly to a full
realization of himself in his change of state, and strove to make
sure what power of action he had left under these new conditions.

His first thought was a cowardly one--that he would sell out, or
rather give up his estate to his cousin, take his mother, and turn
his back upon the village altogether. He knew what he had to expect.
He tasted well in advance the miserable and half ludicrous shame of a
man who has been openly jilted by a woman. He tasted, too, the
covertly whispered suspicion which had perhaps never quite departed,
and which now was surely raised to new life by Dorothy's loud cries
of accusation. He knew that he was utterly defenceless under both
shame and suspicion, being fettered fast by his own tardy but stern
sense of duty and loyalty. It seemed to him at first that he would be
crippled beyond cure in his whole life if he should stay where he
was; and then he felt the spring of the fighting instinct within him,
and said proudly to himself that he would turn his back upon nothing.
He would brave it all.

There was a light wind, and now and then the young trees in the lane
were driven into a soft tumult of whispering leaves. Burr did not
notice when into this voice of the wind and this noise as of a crowd
of softly scurrying ghosts there came a crisp rustle of muslin and a
quick footstep up the lane. He only looked up when Madelon Hautville
stopped before him and looked at him with incredulous alarm, as if
she could not believe the evidence of her own eyes.

Dressed like a bride herself was Madelon Hautville, in a sheer white
gown, which she had fashioned for herself out of an old crape shawl
which had belonged to her mother, and cunningly wrought with great
garlands of red flowers. She was going to Burr Gordon's