through her,
and she sank with her face in her hands. Chad stood silent, trembling.
Voices murmured about them, but like the music in the house, they
seemed strangely far away. The stirring of the wind made the sudden
damp on his forehead icy-cold. Margaret's hands slowly left her face,
which had changed as by a miracle. Every trace of coquetry was gone. It
was the face of a woman who knew her own heart, and had the sweet
frankness to speak it, that was lifted now to Chad.

"I'm so glad you are what you are, Chad; but had you been
otherwise--that would have made no difference to me. You believe that,
don't you, Chad? They might not have let me marry you, but I should
have cared, just the same. They may not now, but that, too, will make
no difference." She turned her eyes from his for an instant, as though
she were looking far backward. "Ever since that day," she said, slowly,
"when I heard you say, 'Tell the little gurl I didn't mean nothin'
callin' her a little gal'"--there was a low, delicious gurgle in the
throat as she tried to imitate his odd speech, and then her eyes
suddenly filled with tears, but she brushed them away, smiling
brightly. "Ever since then, Chad--" she stopped--a shadow fell across
the door of the little summer house.

"Here I am, Mr. Hunt," she said, lightly; "is this your dance?" She
rose and was gone. "Thank you, Mr. Buford," she called back, sweetly.

For a moment Chad stood where he was, quite dazed--so quickly, so
unexpectedly had the crisis come. The blood had rushed to his face and
flooded him with triumphant happiness. A terrible doubt chilled him as
quickly. Had he heard aright?--could he have misunderstood her? Had the
dream of years really come true? What was it she had said? He stumbled
around in the half darkness, wondering. Was this another phase of her
unceasing coquetry? How quickly her tone had changed when Richard
Hunt's shadow came. At that moment, he neither could nor would have
changed a hair had some genie dropped them both in the midst of the
crowded ball-room. He turned swiftly toward the dancers. He must see,
know--now!

The dance was a quadrille and the figure was "Grand right and left."
Margaret had met Richard Hunt opposite, half-way, when Chad reached the
door and was curtseying to him with a radiant smile. Again the boy's
doubts beat him fiercely; and then Margaret turned her head, as though
she knew he must be standing there. Her face grew so suddenly serious
a