g his grasp on her hands and speaking
as though he had the right.

She stepped quickly back from him. She felt a shock, a delicate
wound, and she said with a proud tear: "I did not think you would
so misjudge me in all that I have been trying to do."

She went quickly in.

VII

It was a morning in the middle of October when Dent and Pansy were
married.

The night before had been cool and clear after a rain and a
long-speared frost had fallen. Even before the sun lifted itself
above the white land, a full red rose of the sky behind the rotting
barn, those early abroad foresaw what the day would be. Nature had
taken personal interest in this union of her two children, who
worshipped her in their work and guarded her laws in their
characters, and had arranged that she herself should be present in
bridal livery.

The two prim little evergreens which grew one on each side of the
door-step waited at respectful attention like heavily powdered
festal lackeys. The scraggy aged cedars of the yard stood about in
green velvet and brocade incrusted with gems. The doorsteps
themselves were softly piled with the white flowers of the frost,
and the bricks of the pavement strewn with multitudinous shells and
stars of dew and air. Every poor stub of grass, so economically
cropped by the geese, wore something to make it shine. In the back
yard a clothes-line stretched between a damson and a peach tree,
and on it hung forgotten some of Pansy's father's underclothes; but
Nature did what she could to make the toiler's raiment look like
diamonded banners, flung bravely to the breeze in honor of his new
son-in-law. Everything--the duck troughs, the roof of the stable,
the cart shafts, the dry-goods box used as a kennel--had ugliness
hidden away under that prodigal revelling ermine of decoration.
The sun itself had not long risen before Nature even drew over that
a bridal veil of silver mist, so that the whole earth was left
wrapped in whiteness that became holiness.

Pansy had said that she desired a quiet wedding, so that she
herself had shut up the ducks that they might not get to Mrs.
Meredith. And then she had made the rounds and fed everything; and
now a certain lethargy and stupor of food quieted all creatures and
gave to the valley the dignity of a vocal solitude.

The botanist bride was not in the least abashed during the
ceremony. Nor proud: Mrs. Meredith more gratefully noticed this.
And she watched close