ee that I am happy."

She turned to Haward, and he drew her hand within his arm. "Ay, child," he
said. "We are keeping others of the company from their duty to his
Excellency. Besides, the minuet invites. I do not think I have heard music
so sweet before to-night. Your Excellency's most obedient servant!
Gentlemen, allow us to pass." The crowd opened before them, and they found
themselves in the centre of the room. Two couples were walking a minuet;
when they were joined by this dazzling third, the ladies bridled, bit
their lips, and shot Parthian glances.

It was very fortunate, thought Audrey, that the Widow Constance had once,
long ago, taught her to dance, and that, when they were sent to gather
nuts or myrtle berries or fagots in the woods, she and Barbara were used
to taking hands beneath the trees and moving with the glancing sunbeams
and the nodding saplings and the swaying grapevine trailers. She that had
danced to the wind in the pine tops could move with ease to the music of
this night. And since it was so that with a sore and frightened and
breaking heart one could yet, in some strange way, become quite another
person,--any person that one chose to be,--these cruel folk should not
laugh at her again! They had not laughed since, before the Governor
yonder, she had suddenly made believe that she was a carefree, great lady.
Well, she would make believe to them still.

Her eyes were as brilliant as Haward's that shone with fever; a smile
stayed upon her lips; she moved with dignity through the stately dance,
scarce erring once, graceful and fine in all that she did. Haward,
enamored, his wits afire, went mechanically through the oft-trod measure,
and swore to himself that he held in his hand the pearl of price, the
nonpareil of earth. In this dance and under cover of the music they could
speak to each other unheard of those about them.

"'Queen of all the fairies,' did he call you?" he asked. "That was well
said. When we are at Fair View again, thou must show me where thou wonnest
with thy court, in what moonlit haunt, by what cool stream"--

"I would I were this night at Fair View glebe house," said Audrey. "I
would I were at home in the mountains."

Her voice, sunken with pain and longing, was for him alone. To the other
dancers, to the crowded room at large, she seemed a brazen girl, with
beauty to make a goddess, wit to mask as a great lady, effrontery to
match that of the gentleman who had brought her