here. The age was free,
and in that London which was dear to the hearts of the Virginians ladies
of damaged reputation were not so unusual a feature of fashionable
entertainments as to receive any especial notice. But Williamsburgh was
not London, and the dancer yonder, who held her rose-crowned head so high,
was no lady of fashion. They knew her now for that dweller at Fair View
gates of whom, during the summer just past, there had been whispering
enough. Evidently, it was not for naught that Mr. Marmaduke Haward had
refused invitations, given no entertainments, shut himself up at Fair
View, slighting old friends and evincing no desire to make new ones. Why,
the girl was a servant,--nothing more nor less; she belonged to Gideon
Darden, the drunken minister; she was to have married Jean Hugon, the
half-breed trader. Look how the Governor, enlightened at last, glowered at
her; and how red was Colonel Spotswood's face; and how Mistress Evelyn
Byrd, sitting in the midst of a little court of her own, made witty talk,
smiled upon her circle of adorers, and never glanced toward the centre of
the room, and the dancers there!

"You are so sweet and gay to-night," said Haward to Audrey. "Take your
pleasure, child, for it is a sad world, and the blight will fall. I love
to see you happy."

"Happy!" she answered. "I am not happy!"

"You are above them all in beauty," he went on. "There is not one here
that's fit to tie your shoe."

"Oh me!" cried Audrey. "There is the lady that you love, and that loves
you. Why did she look at me so, in the hall yonder? And yesterday, when
she came to Mistress Stagg's, I might not touch her or speak to her! You
told me that she was kind and good and pitiful. I dreamed that she might
let me serve her when she came to Fair View."

"She will never come to Fair View," he said, "nor shall I go again to
Westover. I am for my own house now, you brown enchantress, and my own
garden, and the boat upon the river. Do you remember how sweet were our
days in June? We will live them over again, and there shall come for us,
besides, a fuller summer"--

"It is winter now," said Audrey, with a sobbing breath, "and cold and
dark! I do not know myself, and you are strange. I beg you to let me go
away. I wish to wash off this paint, to put on my own gown. I am no lady;
you do wrong to keep me here. See, all the company are frowning at me! The
minister will hear what I have done and be angry, and Mistress Debora