speration looked down at her, and saw her face worn
into sweet wistfulness by her illness, her dilated eyes and lips
parted and quivering into sobs, like a baby's.

"I am not angry, but I encourage no woman to be false to her
betrothal vows," he said, and strove to make his voice hard; but
Dorothy bent her head, and the sobs came, and he took her in his
arms.

"Are you angry with me?" Dorothy sobbed, piteously, against his
breast.

"No, not with you, but myself," said Eugene. "It is all with myself.
I will take the blame of it all, sweet," and he smoothed her hair and
kissed her and held her close and tried to comfort her; and it seemed
to him that he could indeed take all the blame of her inconstancy and
distrust, and could even bear his self-reproach for her sake, so much
he loved her.

"I would not have married Burr--even if--he had told me--he was
innocent," Dorothy said, after a while. She was hushing her sobs, and
her very soul was smiling within her for joy as Eugene's fond
whispers reached her ears.

"Why?" said Eugene.

"Because--you came first--when you looked at me in the
meeting-house," Dorothy whispered back. Then she suddenly lifted her
face a little, and looked up at him, with one soft flushed cheek
crushed against his breast, and Eugene bent his face down to hers.
They stood so, and for a minute had, indeed, the whole world to their
two selves, for love as well as death has the power of annihilation;
and then there was a stir in the lane, a crisp rustle of petticoats
and a hiss of whispering voices; and they started and fell apart.
There in the lane before them, their eyes as keen as foxes, with the
scent of curiosity and gossip, their cheeks red with the shame of it,
and their lips forming into apologetic and terrified smiles, stood
Margaret Bean and two others--the tavern-keeper's wife and the wife
of the man who kept the village store.

For a second the three women fairly cowered beneath Eugene
Hautville's eyes, and Margaret Bean began to stammer as if her old
tongue were palsied. Then Eugene collected himself, made them one of
his courtly bows, turned to Dorothy with another, offered her his
arm, and walked away with her out of the lane, before the eyes of the
prying gossips.

Chapter XXVII

It was four o'clock that summer afternoon when the three
women--Margaret Bean, the tavern-keeper's wife, and the storekeeper's
wife--who had followed Dorothy and Eugene into the lane to pry