ein
so tightly that his nails cut into the opposing palm. Above the
clatter of noisy conversation rose the fiddler's voice:--

"Swing yo' pa'dners; doan be shy,
Look yo' lady in de eye!
Th'ow yo' ahm aroun' huh wais';
Take yo' time--dey ain' no has'e!"

To the middle of the floor, in full view through an open window,
advanced the woman who all day long had been the burden of his
thoughts--not pale with grief and hollow-eyed with weeping, but flushed
with pleasure, around her waist the arm of a burly, grinning mulatto,
whose face was offensively familiar to Tryon.

With a muttered curse of concentrated bitterness, Tryon struck the mare
a sharp blow with the whip. The sensitive creature, spirited even in
her great weariness, resented the lash and started off with the bit in
her teeth. Perceiving that it would be difficult to turn in the narrow
roadway without running into the ditch at the left, Tryon gave the mare
rein and dashed down the street, scarcely missing, as the buggy crossed
the bridge, a man standing abstractedly by the old canal, who sprang
aside barely in time to avoid being run over.

Meantime Rena was passing through a trying ordeal. After the first few
bars, the fiddler plunged into a well-known air, in which Rena, keenly
susceptible to musical impressions, recognized the tune to which, as
Queen of Love and Beauty, she had opened the dance at her entrance into
the world of life and love, for it was there she had met George Tryon.
The combination of music and movement brought up the scene with great
distinctness. Tryon, peering angrily through the cedars, had not been
more conscious than she of the external contrast between her partners
on this and the former occasion. She perceived, too, as Tryon from the
outside had not, the difference between Wain's wordy flattery (only
saved by his cousin's warning from pointed and fulsome adulation), and
the tenderly graceful compliment, couched in the romantic terms of
chivalry, with which the knight of the handkerchief had charmed her
ear. It was only by an immense effort that she was able to keep her
emotions under control until the end of the dance, when she fled to her
chamber and burst into tears. It was not the cruel Tryon who had
blasted her love with his deadly look that she mourned, but the gallant
young knight who had worn her favor on his lance and crowned her Queen
of Love and Beauty.

Tryon's stay in Patesville w