courting Dorothy Fair steadily, although they had not been seen out
together.

Burr had been to the Hautville house twice since his return from New
Salem, but had not been admitted. Once when he called Madelon had
been alone in the house, and caught a glimpse of her old lover coming
into the yard. She had sprung up, letting her needle-work slide to
the floor, and fled with her face as white as death and her heart
beating hard into the freezing best room, and stood back in a corner
out of range of the windows, and listened to the taps of the knocker
and finally to Burr's retreating steps. Then she crept across to a
window and peered around the curtain, and watched him out of sight as
if her soul would follow him; then she stole out the door and looked
up and down to see if anybody was in sight; and then she flung
herself down upon her knees and kissed her lover's cold footprint in
the snow.

The second time Burr came was on an evening, when her father and all
her brothers except Richard were at the singing-school. She knew
Burr's step when he drew near the door, and bade Richard shortly to
answer the knock, and say she was busy and could see nobody, which he
did with all the emphasis which his fiery young blood could put into
words of dismissal. The boy, of all the others, alone knew a reason
why he should be more lenient with Burr; and yet this very reason
seemed to swell his wrath and hold him more deeply responsible for a
deeper disgrace. When he had shut the door hard upon Burr, he turned
to his sister. "I would have killed him rather than let him in," said
he.

Madelon took another stitch in her work. Her face looked as if it
were carved in marble. Richard stood staring at her a second; then he
flung out of the room, and the doors closing behind him shook the
house. Richard's manner towards his sister was sometimes full of a
fierce sympathy and partisanship, sometimes of wild anger and
aversion. He looked ten years older in a few weeks. Both he and Louis
appeared to avoid the other members of the family, and kept much
together, and yet even in their close companionship they also seemed
to have a curious avoidance of each other; one was seldom seen to
look in his brother's face, or address him directly.

One morning, a month after Burr's release, Margaret Bean came to the
Hautville door. She was well wrapped against the cold, her head
especially being swathed about with lengths of knitted scarf over her
silk